Take A Vacation From Your Screens

August, summer’s last gasp, is a popular time for vacations. It’s hot out, work slows down, and families are counting the days until the school year resumes. With many TV shows on summer hiatus, it’s also a great opportunity to step back, evaluate our recreational screen time, and schedule some time away from the digital world.
 
You’re encouraged to participate whether you live for the dopamine hit from social media or spend a fair amount of time watching shows and movies. When I say screen time, I’m referring to devices and TV.
 
Over the years, much has been published about the pitfalls and dangers of too much screen time, from Computer Vision Syndrome (CVS), text neck, and reduced memory and attention span to mental health concerns such as anxiety and depression, work-life imbalance, accidents and injuries, impaired sleep quality and quantity, increased sedentary behavior, expanding waistlines, and chronic diseases related to obesity. Another often overlooked consequence of doomscrolling and binge-watching is opportunity cost. In other words, what could you accomplish if you weren’t looking at a screen?
 
Whether your habit is doomscrolling or binge-watching, changing it now can help establish a new pattern of behavior for the fall, with less recreational screen time.
 
Health organizations typically recommend reducing recreational screen time by 14 hours per week. We have all heard some version of the quote, “Fail to plan, plan to fail.” With that in mind, here are a couple of suggested schedules to help you step away from your screens each day—TV and phones included:

1. Eight hours on Sunday and one hour per day, Monday through Friday; or
2. Two hours a day, which can be either:
   1. during one meal a day plus the last hour before bed; or
   2. the first hour upon rising and the last hour before bed; or
   3. the last two hours before retiring.

 
For those of you reporting challenges with sleep, avoiding the blue light from screens before bed is a great way to improve sleep quality and quantity. Both TVs and smartphones emit blue light, a known sleep disruptor.
 
After choosing your schedule from the options above, decide how you will fill that time with activities other than screens. You might consider reading a paper book, meditating, calling loved ones, going for a walk, playing a game, working on a puzzle, journaling, exercising, addressing mail or bills, tackling that pesky household to-do list, or prepping healthy food for the week. You may even use the time for a hobby you have always wanted to try but somehow couldn’t fit in.
 
It may be challenging at first to suppress the instinct to grab your phone or turn on the TV, but that urge will dissipate over time. Once you have succeeded, you may choose to maintain a strict schedule or consider alternatives:
 
Controlling your binge-watching habit:

• Consider limiting viewing time to the amount of time you have invested in exercise that day. For example, if you exercise for one hour, you are allotted one hour of TV viewing time.

 

• Choose shows that expand your horizons, such as programs on the History Channel, NASA’s digital streaming service, National Geographic, or cooking shows focused on healthy food.

 
Controlling your scrolling habit:

• Move your most-used apps off the home screen, turn off push notifications, change the color scheme to black and white, establish device-free rooms in your home, and monitor your usage with built-in features that show how you spend time on your device.

 
I welcome your feedback about all the things you accomplished with reduced screen time!