Digital detox

0:02 A listener production. You're listening to Crappy to Happy with Tip and Cass. Last episode, we were chatting about the importance of healthy relationships. Today we're going to talk about digital detoxing. We touch on similar things time and time again because they are so connected in looking at trying to achieve balance and a holistic lifestyle. Yeah, and they are often interconnected. And the other thing that we know, and I know this from working with clients, and I know this from working in the TIVXO community, is that people will say, oh, it only took me fifty times to hear that, but now I finally get it.

0:45 And sometimes, you know, we only retain a very small bit of information, so the more that something is repeated, the more likely we are to hear it in a different way or to take it on board. So I think it's important. It is so important, And you can't talk about any of these topics without bringing mindfulness in or the way you think, the thoughts, your physiology. It is so connected. So today we're talking about digital detoxing, and it's something that didn't really exist. When I was at school, but now. It is something that I am trying to tell my nineteen year old brother and he can't imagine a world without Snapchat and what's happened Instagram? That he needs time off his screen. He needs some time.

1:26 We all read them off our screen, probably more important for those younger people who don't know a world about it, but we are all kind of hooked on our screens, and it is potentially problematic. And I actually was reading the other day because I was writing an article about this topic that when Apple collects data, I don't think. I think it was like twenty sixteen. Maybe this data came out, you know how Apple collects usage data. Yes, and they found that people generally unlock their phones, swipe open their phones eighty times a day, eighty plus I think times a day. And there was some other research that said they'd put a chip in their phone to see how many times people actually annually handle their phone over two thousand times a day. Ooh, that's scary. Yeah, it really is. And in fact, I heard about a book written by Nancy Collier. I haven't read it myself, but in her book it's called The Power of Off.

2:14 She says that she has data that we check our phones one hundred and ninety times a day, which is basically every five minutes, So that rings true. That rings true. We are on our phones constantly. It is the new addiction, and it's making us feel crappy. Absolutely, it is. The problem is though that we're all on our phones all the time, and so it's we don't actually know any different. It is the new addiction. And the difference between the addiction to our phones compared to other addictions that we hear about gambling addictions and alcohol and sugar addictions is the other ones we identify as problematic and this one we don't so much. Because everybody's doing it. It's such a normal, integral part of our daily life that we accept it that we don't necessarily identify it as a problem, except that we kind of do. I think we all know intuitively that we're a bit attached to our phones, but we don't necessarily relate to the We don't necessarily perceive it to be the problem that it really is.

3:23 Yes, and as a psychologist caster are you're seeing other issues arise, people feeling really crappy from being on their phones. To be hostcreens all the time. To be honest, if no, people don't identify it as a problem, and I do get asked that question, Oh, do people present to you because they're addicted to their phones? We'll actually know because people don't identify it as a problem because it's very normal, and I think that in itself is the problem. Do you think that there's been a rise in things such as anxiety and depression? For sure? For sure? And I think there will be more and more research coming out about this. I know, I don't have any studies right in front of me. I know there was a survey done in the UK which found direct links between social media use and depression, the rate of depression, and that was to do with time spent, So two hours plus a day on social media was considered to be a problematic and considered to be linked to increased rates of depression. Now, the thing with that, we need to do more research there because you could say that people who are depressed tend to spend more times on more time on their phone, because when we're depressed, we tend to cut ourselves off socially, and you're potentially looking for those connections through your phone as opposed to going out into the world, and that's a symptom of depression.

4:38 So whether it's a cause or a correlation, I'm not sure, but I do know that there's other research about particularly about Facebook use and depression and anxiety, and there's lots of reasons for that, and you know, we can talk about what the problems are for sure. Yeah, what are some of the other problems with being on our phones all the time? I mean, for myself, I find the fear of missing out fomo. That's a real thing. Yeah, the phomo thing is a big one, I think, particularly for young people. And it's the fact that we are presented with what everybody else is doing, and we almost we see We've said this before that we see everybody else's highlights, real and the fun that people are having, and we see a distorted view of people's real lives.

5:23 And then we compare our real life and all of our anxieties and flaws and worries and struggles with what we think other people are doing. And if you're not really attuned to that, or even if you are, you can't help but sort of buy into that a little bit. And the more people more time people spend on social media, the more depressed they tend to be. Because you're comparing two people aren't you. And Instagram, in fact, I just remembered it's the worst for that. I think it's because it's a visual platform, and so we see a lot of very pretty, filtered, polished images of all of the fun. Professional images most of the time celebrities things. Yeah, well not even celebrities, though we can look at the celebrities, but what about it just our normal friends who always seem to be having a great time, and their kids seem to always be really well behaved, and they're always having a holiday and having picnics and beautiful lunches and restaurant meals. We see it all, well, we're kind of seeing it at home, feeling a bit miserable and you know, stressed or whatever is going on, which is very normal real life, and we're comparing it to a distorted view of other people's lives.

6:29 And not only the comparison and the fear of missing out, but there's also bullying. There's more bible where we used to just have bullying in the school yard where someone comes up face to face or you know, you have to be in the same room as a person. Now it's all filters lined. Yeah, that's the scariest thing for me because my daughter's just started high school and she doesn't have a phone. She's eleven and a half. She would tell me that everybody else has got a phone except her. I don't believe that to be true, and I don't even care she's not having one. Yeah, because we even Steve Jobs and even Mark Zuckerberg. Is it Mark Zuckerberg. No, but the people who developed the Bill Gates sorry, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs said that they would not let their kids have phones until they were fourteen or fifteen. And they know. They're the people on the inside that know how dangerous and how addictive they are, and they won't let their kids. So I think it's enough for Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, it's good enough for me.

7:26 As a taekwando instructor, we have classes for kids as young as four, and little four year olds were coming in with a phone touched to them on a lanyard around their necks, and they knew how to operate it, how to ring mum, how to text mum when they'll finish class. But of course they're on games straight after class. Yeah. Yeah, So it's as young as that that they have their own phones. On a lanyard, and I just think, oh, this is bad because it is so addictive. And can you tell us Cass Howard is addictive in your brain? Yeah. The thing about addiction is that if you think particularly about say, gambling addiction and poker machines, they operate on this this principle of intermit and variable reward. So you never know when you're going to get a hit, when you're going to get a win, So you keep on going back and going back, and then you get a win and ding ding ding. You know, the dopamine receptors in your brain, you know, go off, and so that draws you back to keep on going.

8:22 Having a machine, it's a slot machine. And so phones act phones sort of function very similarly. It's this every time I pick it up, is there going to be a message or another for cash? Is somebody going to a like a comment? You know? And so we we thrive on that, whether we think we do or we don't, or we don't believe it. We we kind of are hooked on that that feedback, you know, that social feedback and the like and the comment, and there'll be a message, or there'll be an email, or there'll be I'll check my email. If there's no email, then I'll check my instant message, and then I'll check Instagram, and then I'll check You know, we just see this constant checking, check, checking, and every now and again there'll be something and that draws us back in. The thing about dopamine is it's we call it the rewards center in the brain. It's actually the motivation center. Dopamine in and of itself doesn't give us a reward. There's other parts of the brain that light up with reward, but dopamine is the thing that identifies something as rewarding and so it compels you towards that thing. So this is where ques when we talk about habits, you know, on queues and behaviors and then rewards. So certain ques and certain triggers and the environment just being bored, just sitting down waiting for a coffee or waiting for the bus is a queue to do the habit, which is the pull out the phone and you get the reward of the notification. And so that's wired into our brain to continue to seek that reward. And dopamine's very powerful. I mean, that's the driver of all of our addictive behaviors. Is we are heavily, heavily motivated and compelled to do that thing,

9:58 and it becomes habitual. Habitual things become addictive things. And we're not saying that social media is all evil or that the phone is evil, because I love my phone. It is my map, it's my alarm clock, it's my calendar. Everything's in that phone and it's so convenient. And also running an online business, I find I help mums to exercise at home who can't leave the house or go to the gym. I'm so proud of what online can do. Yeah, I agree, And that's the problem with it. Yeah, it's because it serves some really useful purposes. It is, and it can be very positive. But we're just about balance, aren't we, cass for sure. And even social media. We talk about social media and the links to depression and the dopamine and the addiction.

10:42 That connection can also be positive. That connection can be very positive. I love being able to connect with people. I've moved into state four times or something, and I can keep up with all of the people that I would have normally lost contact with. And look at our community. We've got people all over the world who. We know and we coach and who who of you know friends and finding ways to make change. That's great, but we're trying. To just give you some tools and tips and to help you to be aware of adlic can. Identify with problem and yeah, be able to do something about that. Because I was going to say too, there are lots of really beyond social media. Our phone has I always recommend mindfulness meditation apps. We track our fitness, we can track our sleep. There's lots of really positive functionalities built into phones as well, as you said, our camera and our music, and our GPS and our maps and everything is in there. Weather the weather. I checked the weather. But that's the reason it becomes so difficult to separate from it. If you do notice that it's becoming quite compulsive. We all know when it gets a bit compulsive, then it's really difficult to take a break from it because there's so much use, fullness and functionality built into it as well.

12:03 So you can take your break from it, you can, or you can just look at ways that that device is impacting your relationships as well. Speaking of which I'm glad you mentioned that because there is some research that shows that the mere presence of a phone that did some research where they got people to sit down and have a conversation, and just the mere presence of a phone, even if nobody was looking at it, or there was there was no action happening on the phone, just a phone sitting on the table reduces the level of trust and intimacy in that conversation. People are less inclined to be open and sharing in a conversation if there's a phone present. It's amazing. And you know, the other thing it does, or what it has done, is that constant sort of needing to check, or that constant distractedness, because we know board it's reduced our attention spend. We're highly distractible now, and so focusing on a project or focusing on I mean, I do some writing for a living, as you know, and I so do you. And I guess down and I start writing, writing writing, and I go bitbored. Check Facebook, check my email.

13:06 This constant distracts. We talked about how we're not fans of multitasking. We're not fans of multitasking, but this is what we do because we can't sustain our attention for any length of time anymore. And I. Read recently that if you get a message, like we know, if you get a message and you check it. I've been in workplaces with people who are constantly like they're working and they're checking a message in replying. They're back to work and then the're checking a message and replying and well you just put it away. But even if you get a message, and even if you don't respond to it, it reduces. Your Okay, it's not thinking about it. I respond straight away just so I don't have that hanging over my head.

13:47 There you go and think about that when you're driving. So what they're saying is, if you're driving a car, even if you if your phone's next to you, even if you don't look at the message, your attention is not on driving, it's actually on the message that's unread. So it's very dangerous actually. So there's lots of you know, there's more and more and more research coming out that's highlighting some of these issues and the reasons why we need to create some space from our devices. And it can be simple things, and we'll come back and talk about those tips and tools. And what about sleep. I have a really terrible habit winding down. Has begun getting in bed and my husband goes earlier because he gets up earlier than me, and I creep.

14:28 Into bed after the baby's asleep. Everything's done, and it's my time to get on Facebook, get on Instagram, and scroll through my phone. And it's actually like relaxation for me. Why is that so bad from my sleep? We've talked about this. It is so bad because still doing it. Yeah, So the blue light from your screens, not just phones, but all electronic screens. I think the only the one that's okay is the Kindle. If you're reading a book on a Kindle, boo, because that's been designed to have a healthier lot, different light. But the blue light from those screens, what it does is it stimulates. Sorry, what it does is it slows down melatonin production. So melatonin is the hormone that calms you down quartersol in the morning, ReBs you up, gets you ready for the day, and your natural biological cycle is that as the day goes on and as evening comes and it gets dark, the melotonin increases to make you drowsy. So when you are looking at a blue light on your phone, what it's doing is your brains getting confusing signals because it's thinking I'm supposed to be winding down, but this blue light's telling me to wake up, and it can keep you very alert and impact the quality and of your sleep.

15:36 The other thing is the content that you're looking at. If it's an email comes through, or if something comes through and you feel compelled as we do, to reply or to comment, or something comes through for work and then you're thinking about it, then that is going to play on your mind and impact your sleep as well. So the space, you know, the phone's in bed, it's very like a lot of people. A lot of people do that and hop into bed and they started playing a game to wind down, a bit of candy crushing or something. But it really does impact your sleep and it's not good. It's not good at all. So I have some tips that I'm trying to implement to change my habits a little bit and bring back that balance. We're going to take a quick break and we'll be back with those tips and pools in a sec.

16:26 You're listening to Crappy to Happy with Tiff and Cats. We're talking about digital detoxing, just bringing. Back a bit of balance. If we want to take a digital detox, it doesn't mean going cold Turkey, putting your phone away, and then living in the dark ages. Bid Yeah, God forbid not having a phone with you. But there are a few things you can do to create healthier habits. For example, I am trying to get off my phone in bed because I find I'm so busy with the baby that I don't get to have that time on my phone, which I love, and the only time I'm doing it is in So two things I'm doing. I'm making sure that my charger, my phone charger isn't beside my bed, but I've set up a charging station in the kitchen, so I put my phone down and it charges overnight in the kitchen.

17:13 Arnie is my alarm he wakes me up early. And I also have another alarm clock as like an old school just an alarm clock as my backup. If Arnie sleeps in, which he never does. So that's two things you can do. Get an old school alarm clock and set up your charging station outside of the bedroom. Yeah, keeping the phone out of the bedroom is a really really important one. I think for all of those reasons that we talked about to do with sleep, I think also that turning your phone off, Oh I know it makes people nervous, but I think if you can turn your phone off at least thirty minutes before you go to bed and give yourself a break from that. Wil life down time.

17:54 Yeah. So you know, we did talk a lot about that in detail in season one in our sleep episode. So just to reinforce that point of getting getting off your phone thirty minutes before bed, and I like to then say, keep it off when you wake up in the morning. Don't turn it on straight away. If it's on, even if you've got it in flight mode, you will tend to just get up and go straight to it, whereas if it's off and you wait until after you've done some meditation, had your cup of tea, had a coffee, whatever it might be. But to give yourself that time in the morning, while your brain is fresh and open and clear, just give yourself a break before you actually turn it back on and start to be hit again with all of that stimulation of all of the emails and the social media and what's happened overnight and.

18:40 Feeling what have you missed out? Compelled to check what happened overnight on Facebook or whatever it is. So that is so helpful. Keep it off. I do that. I keep it out of the bedroom for sure. We've always had an old school alarm clock. Don't know how to think. They don't make them like they used to. It's been going for fifteen years or something. But I keep the phone out of the bedroom generally, and I have made it a rule to turn it off and to not turn it on immediately have a break in the morning. And when I was working with a sleep specialist who came in and just helped us with some tips for Arnold, one of the first things she said is when he's winding down before bedtime, he's had his bath, he's had his feet and now it's bed The winding downtime is so important. And she said half an hour, make sure there's no screens around him. So sometimes I realized he was sitting on my lap and I'm.

19:29 Texting, so he's getting the blue light. But yeah, he's getting the blue light, or he's the TV's on in the background, or there were screens and stimulation and the overstimulation of watching television even if he's lying on his mate, he's not even sitting up, was keeping him up. So now all screens are off and until he's fast asleep, I'm making sure that that's the thing in the house. And it just really it was a great shock to put me into action to make sure, Okay, I've really got to put the phone down at night and I've got a wind down like a baby does. Exactly. We all need that little bedtime routine. So if you want more advice on how to have better sleep Hygen, go back to season one or Crappy to Happy, because we do talk about it in depth.

20:10 Phones do impact, like you said, the trust and the openness when you're having a conversation with someone having your phone there. So a great thing I do when I catch up with my friends, I say to them, hey, let's phone stack. So when we start we get we put the phones out of sight and we stack them up and like that game gender, if you pull your phone out, the whole sack's going to fall over. You don't want to be the person that collapses the stack. You can just relax. The phones a stacked there and it's a great way to just have fun. And I do that if I'm having people over for dinner. Don't go out too much these days. I find the phone sacking really helps just away, they don't have to be on the table. Yeah, keep them away and making it a group rule.

20:51 I think yes, and people are happy to do that. They go, yeah, yeah, let's put the phones away, let's relax. Yeah. I think another really good one is to if people have trouble weaning off. I know you said, like you don't need to go cold turkey, but you know what, sometimes actually you might want to look at building up to having a day off. Yeah, like social media holiday or I know that. Ariana Huffington and Katie Perry when they did one of their podcasts, they talked about shut off Sunday, like just having a day off social media and having a day off technology for it for a day and if you can't do a day, maybe it's a half a day or maybe it's a few hours and start to build it up. But there's other ways that you can take a break without feeling completely disconnected. And one that I like is absolutely using flight mode. If you can put your phone in flight mode, because people get nervous because but I use my phone for my camera and I use it for my music if I'm going for a walk, so you can still access all those functions. If it's in flight mode. So that's the useful one. And I think the other really important one is turn off. I've done this, turn off notifications. It's the constant. Even the little you know, the little number in the red circle, pulls your attention. You compel to want to go and check what those notifications are. Oh, how many people have commented on that? How many people have liked that? How many emails have I got? So if you turn all of that off so that you're not drawn all the time to wanting to check notifications, not having your attention disturbed, yes, because very intrusive. Actually it is so turning off notifications,

22:23 putting it in flight mode, putting it away when you're in a company for sure. For sure. And one thing that I've been doing. A couple of weeks ago, I went out and I bought a camera. I didn't own a camera because I held my phone. I picked up my phone to check a message, and Arnold smiled, and I realized that he was smiling at the phone because I take all these photos of him, and he's actually learnt to smile. When the phone's near him. Wow. So that freaked me out. So when I bought a camera, and I thought, I don't want him thinking I'm always on my phone, and but I always have my phone on me because I want to take baby photos. So getting a camera and help to not be on your phone as much and have that compulsive I've got to take a photo. And also something that I do with Ed at home, we seem to talk to each other through our phones. I'll be on my phone and I'm talking to him, and so we have a rule now where phone's down when I'm.

23:18 Talking to you, look at me, phone down, eyes eyes up. And if I have my phone up, then I put two bucks in a little sweager just in the kitchen, and then we go out without our phones, have a coffee and it's like, oh, we made it through, you know, a whole coffee date without being on our phones, using the money from our phone sweagar. That you just touched on something really important when you mentioned Arnold, which we haven't even talked about, which is the impact on your kids. I'm really aware of this, yeah. Of us as adults being on phones, that lack of connected attention. When kids are around, they pick up on the fact that we're not fully present because we've constantly got our eyes on our phones. I'm so scared of this. That's why it's down now, it's apps down.

24:00 And we talk about kids being on their phones all the time. As adults, we've got to take some responsibility for how much we are not present with the people around us, and especially our partners, and our is so. Much more important. And I just think, no, and no one's waiting for that post or that message from me or an update on Facebook. No one's waiting for it. As much as you feel like I have to let people know they're not waiting for it. Especially when you have a business like I do as well, and I get the guilts, like if I haven't posted on my social media, I think, oh gosh, I'm letting people down. Nobody actually cares. They're not keeping chats on They're not Unfortunately, no, Sadly, no one cares. So I think a lot of people don't realize how important that is to give kids, especially our full attention.

24:48 And look, it's difficult because I know that sometimes stuff goes around you. We've talked about the Mummy Wars, and we don't want to go down that path of judging other parents because sometimes getting five minutes on your phone is like the only break you might get all day after a bad day. So we're not doing that. But I think just to be more aware as parents of where our attention is in the presence of children. That emotional connection, that emotional attachment is fundamental for healthy child development and for brain development, and for conversations and talking about feelings and facial expressions and all of that from infancy but all the way through childhood and growing up.

25:29 Those healthy relationships are so crucial, and we are, I know sometimes in our house, so there's I might be on my phone looking at something. My daughter's just outed high school and she's got a laptop, so that's a huge novelty for her. Not that she's never been on technology before, but now she's got her own laptop for school. And my husband's a big iPad man, so he will often be reading the paper, for example, he reads the paper or things like that on his iPad rather than getting a hard copy paper. So where three of us can be in a room and all of us on our various screens, and sometimes one of us will just say enough, come on, you put them away, like enough is enough. But you've got to be aware of it. And catch yourself and make that.

26:11 That's what a decision, just being aware of it. And also if something's coming through full work and I'm seeing a notification which I have turned off now, I. Just think, I feel like I have to answer that right now. But I take a moment and I say, I can answer that in twenty minutes when Arnold's having his nap, yes, and I can then have forty five minutes to get all done. But when he's awake, I'm mom, Yep, that's okay. Yeah. When my daughter was baby, I went back to UNI when she was about you know, I don't know, nine or ten months old, and yeah, and my husband moved into state at the same time, so it was just me. But that that point that you just made that was so important to me. Like when I was with her, I was one hundred percent with her because I felt so bad about leaving her and going off to study that I have made very clear boundaries. When we were together, I was one hundred percent on her, and then when she was asleep or when she was away or she was a daycare, then I was one hundred percent doing you know, my other stuff. And I think trying to keep some of those, it's not always one hundred percent possible trying to keep some of those boundaries when the phone tends to filter into every aspect of life, just you know, just to be aware to keep it a bit separate. And I think if you really want to go hard with the digital detos, which can be a really good thing, like having that break can be really important, you know, go away for a weekend or spend a whole day, you know, or take yourself away and not be on your phone at all.

27:36 It can be one of the best things that you can do. But what happens is we get this anxiety about what if somebody's trying to contact me? So I always say, well, if you can set up auto responders on your email, but even if you just text the people closest to you and say I'm offline. If you're concern that somebody's going to try and contact you, more than likely they're not. But you can actually tell people I deactivate my Facebook account. Sometimes I've seen you do this and I'd say to people, Okay, time for a break, I'm deactivating Facebook. And you know the funniest thing about that, as soon as you deactivate Facebook, nobody can actually see that message. So except for the people who see it right in that moment, I put it up and I leave it there for a few hours so that people see it because it makes me feel better that people don't think I've just disappeared or unfriended them or something.

28:19 And then I just say, right, I'm offline. About three hours later, then I'll deactivate it. I'll keep it off. The other thing I haven't mentioned to is taking off. If you've got a particular compulsion to be checking, for example, Facebook or Instagram on your phone, you can actually just remove the app from your phone. I've done that before. I've done that before too, and for a while there surely go for your phone and oh, that's right, it's not there anymore. And that can be a nice way to break that habit, because if it's not there and you can't check it, you stop checking it. It like eliminates that habit, and then later on you might be able to put it back on, but that compulsion's not there. I find the same with just deactivating Facebook. Actually, after a few weeks you really that you're actually not really missing very.

29:02 Much, and your real friends will call you and you're good friends will patch up and. Don't come by at all. No, it's it's a good lesson to see how much you are not missing when you take a complete break from some of those things. So I encourage it. And now people are even wearing their phones on their wrists. You've got watches and fitbits with alerts and messages and phone calls coming through your watch, so you can feel that pressure to always respond. And you're on twenty four to seven. Yeah, I hadn't even thought of that. I have got a fitbit and I wore it for a little bit and I lost its novelty and then I lost the fitbit and I haven't bothered about finding it or replacing it. But my husband has a fitbit as well, and I know we'll be having a conversation and suddenly he looks at his wrist and he disappears from the room because he really he gets a text message or something on his phone and it comes through on his watch, and then he's even without the phone present, he's disappeared out of the room to check a message. Yes, that's only because I see this quick flick of the wrist that I know going on.

30:02 It's still there, and. He I mean, bless him. He has an important job and it gets a lot of important messages so that he has to respond to. But you know what, sometimes I feel like saying it. Can wait, Yeah, it can wait, and all the same. I've been weighing up getting one because I can't sometimes holding a baby and holding a phone. I don't have two hands all the time, so I thought maybe a watch would be better being one handed. But I think it would just fuel my addiction further. So I'm going to wait. Yeah, yeah, I think that we'll limit it limited to yeah. Can I'm struggling with my addiction with the phone, let alone a phone watch. We hope you find some helpful tips and tools there to deal with the digital detox. If you want to take one, or to round out that balance.

30:43 Next on Crappy to Happy, we're going to be talking about killer self confidence and how to be more confident and assertive. Thanks for tuning in and we'll talk to you soon. Crappy to Happy is presented by Cast Done produced by Davis Lensky, Audio production by Darcy Thompson. Listener