Recognizing My Phone Addiction

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about distractions, what I allow to distract me, and what it’s distracting me from. This came up for me while I was reading Happier Hour and I was thinking about how I am spending my time. I spend a lot of time distracting myself on social media. Like… a lot. My screen time stats are embarrassing.

I remember how it got so bad too. It was during the pandemic and I had just had my first child. I could not have prepared for the all-consuming nature that I now know comes with parenthood. I knew I would always be on, but I’ve never had a job where I always had to be on the way you are when you’re a parent. I quickly found myself yearning for those moments that were just mine. Overnight I had gone from having all the free time in the world to being permanently on-call and needed. I spent a lot of my time with my newborn just trying to stay awake, and I did so on my phone. And having my phone at all was sort of necessary as I was constantly tracking everything my baby did - when she ate, when she slept, etc. So it was easy to turn to my phone, especially when I was nap-trapped and didn’t want to fall asleep.

It got worse when I read a post or a comment from someone in a baby group talking about how they use any time they can on their phone to dissociate. I read it and knew it was a joke. But then I internalized it and went fully in on these little moments on my phone so I could also reclaim some time for myself. I would spend so much time on my phone that I would rotate through the apps (Instagram, Reddit, Facebook, Gmail, repeat) just waiting for something new to pop up and it wouldn’t. I had seen it all. And that behavior carried on for me until after my second was born and I realized that I was spending so much time on my phone that things like chores and getting myself ready were being neglected. 

I’d seen the screen time stats on my phone but it didn’t bother me. And I justified that some of that had to be real work I was doing so obviously that didn’t count. So the screen time info did not affect me. Putting time limits on apps also did not affect me. I would just dismiss the notification and carry on. (Side note: I find Apple’s screen time feature to be interesting but completely unhelpful when it comes to actually deterring anyone from continuing to use their phone) 

Finally, I started to make small challenges for myself. Instead of sitting there on my phone while the baby napped, I would make a point to put him down and unload the dishwasher. When it was just me and my first baby, I think part of me felt like I couldn’t do anything else but tend to her all day. I didn’t know how and if I couldn’t perform the same every day I was somehow failing. By the time my second baby came, I had developed some of that second-time mom confidence. It also helped that I find that newborns and infants need less tending to than a young toddler. Now, if something needs to be done and all that’s keeping me from doing it is that I am on my phone I put my phone down and do that thing. 

That doesn’t solve everything though because sometimes what I need to do is just be there while my kids do their thing. I’m big on letting them play independently and don’t like to intervene too much, especially now that they are starting to play together more. And sometimes I will do something else in the room with them but I can’t leave them unattended at this age. So I still do a lot of sitting and scrolling. The problem I have found is how frustrated I can feel when they need me and I’m deep into my phone. Which is a ridiculous issue. Of course, my kids are more important than whatever is happening on my phone. And yet, it still feels like I am losing those stolen moments of dissociating. And being pulled away from those moments makes me feel frustrated. 

A couple of weeks ago I did a weekend with little phone interaction. I deleted some mindlessly time-consuming apps from my phone (TikTok and Reddit which had since been reinstalled but I’ve now deleted them again because I realized I was just using them to dissociate) and kept my phone away from me while I was with the kids. It was nice. I experienced far less frustration and noticed little things I wouldn’t have if I had been on my phone. I’m working on making this a larger part of my routine. 

What it boils down to for me is that I know at the end of my life I won’t regret that I missed a social media post or didn’t see an article, but I know that I would regret not spending more time with my family or doing things for myself. Life is happening outside of these screens. Part of me believes that maybe if I spend less time with my nose in my phone, I will end up having more alone time after the kids go to bed instead of needing to use all of that time to do little chores that need to be done to wrap up the day. 

I often wonder what parenting was like pre-iPhone. I’m very grateful to have my phone for all the middle-of-the-night wake-ups or when I need to google a quick question or add items to the grocery list when I think of them. But I also don’t know parenting without a smartphone and my kids will never know me without a smartphone. It’s such a strange time to be alive.