The best thing I did to help curb my smartphone addiction was banning the phone from my bedroom. Like many people, I had fallen into a bad habit of scrolling through my feeds late at night and then checking them again the moment I woke up. This impaired my sleep and kept me on an endless cycle of stressful updates that, frankly, I didn’t need to know about at 11pm or 7am. Now, as I’m getting ready to go to bed, I simply turn my phone off and leave it on the kitchen counter, far from my bedroom upstairs, where it sits until I allow myself to turn it on when I’m eating breakfast in the morning. My bedroom is now a serene oasis, free from information and updates. No one can contact me when I’m up there, and I can’t contact anyone. Everyone has to wait to hear from me until morning — friends, family, coworkers, and, I suppose, even the police. With this system, if someone were to break into my home — say a big guy with a heavy pipe — and charge up the stairs headed straight for my bedroom, I’d have no way of alerting the cops before he got in here and beat the hell out of me. Jesus Christ. There’s no way I’d be able to make it downstairs to get my phone before this huge guy noticed me and bashed my god damned face in with his thick lead pipe. This son of a bitch is out there plotting his attack right now. He’s probably reading this, scanning the internet to find dumbasses like me who leave themselves vulnerable and defenseless to men like him. So, look, I’m going to adjust my routine. From now on, I definitely keep my phone in my bedroom, active and plugged in all night. Right next to my bed. With a 9-1-1 speed-dial button on the home screen. And there are three more backup phones stashed in secret locations in the bedroom, in addition to the seven 55″ monitors mounted at the foot of my bed, each displaying live feeds of security cameras covering the perimeter of my home. Extremely bright blue light blares into my eyes all night long. I don’t sleep anymore, as there’s always some movement to inspect on one of the seven screens while I sit upright in bed grinding my teeth and gripping two guns. But for the first time since starting my foolish attempt to curb my smartphone addiction in order to get more rest, I feel safe. You’re going to want to install your own command center as soon as possible. I wish you all the best of luck stopping the scroll, spending more time in the now, and defending yourself from the dangerous man who’s on his way over right now.
Breaking Your Smartphone Addiction
