Are you tired of being distracted? Are you sick of going to your phone for one thing, seeing a notification that sucks you in, and end up forgetting why you got on there in the first place?
Do you feel helpless as you see your screen time affecting you as a wife and as a mother?
If you’re searching for how to break free from phone addiction and reclaim your life as a mom, you’re not alone.
Digital addiction is keeping a lot of moms from becoming who they want to be. It is keeping a lot of moms in a burnt out, overstimulated, and exhausted state.
I am almost 2 years without a smart phone.
Learning how to break my phone addiction and stop scrolling has transformed my life, my motherhood, and my marriage. I didn’t want to let my phone addiction steal from my motherhood anymore.
In this post, I am going to share how I broke my addiction to scrolling social media and how I started living life again.
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I WAS ADDICTED TO MY SMARTPHONE
Have you experienced any of this?
Despite the boundaries I had set, by the end of the day, my willpower was spent and my ADHD tendencies would overpower my good desires to have minimal screen time.
When times got tough, instead of turning to the Lord, I would retreat and numb out with my phone. The constant notifications were pulling my brain away from where I wanted my focus to be.
Or I would go to my phone to check a text message and all of a sudden I’m on Instagram or listening to a Podcast or checking my email. After a while, I would snap out of it and realize how much time had gotten away from me.
I got so tired of those feelings.
MY SMART PHONE WAS MAKING ME MISS MY LIFE
My smart phone felt like a drug and my willpower was no match for it.
Smart phones are created to be addictive!
Real life was happening in front of me and I was missing it.
The idea of getting rid of a smart phone feels like a HUGE jump because there are so many tools wrapped up in our phones. So I’ll tell you what I did.
MY FIRST STEP:
I deleted Instagram.
I got rid of any time sucking apps in attempts to turn my phone into a more minimal phone.
But I would still return to Instagram every once in a while.
MY BREAKING POINT
In the car with my kids one day, I asked them how I could be a better mom.
First they said I could stop yelling. Yes, I am actively working on that… I honestly think my phone was contributing to that.
But then they said, “You could be on your phone less”.
That really hit me.
I felt like I was trying to be a very intentional mom and like I was already pretty hard to get a hold of.
But I was the one who asked them for their feedback, so I took it seriously.
I GOT RID OF MY SMART PHONE AND GOT A LIGHT PHONE
(keep reading to see what phone I am using now)
MY DIGITAL DETOX
A Smart phone is like a swiss army knife, it has all the tools you could need.
When I got rid of my smart phone, people asked how I was going to replace all those tools, but that was the thing: I didn’t want to replace all the tools… the tools were the problem.
You can choose what is available on the Light Phone and what is not. I chose to only have the phone, settings and alarm set up.
It made me less available to the outside world, but it made me more available to my kids.
For the first couple weeks without my iPhone, I kept going to my Light Phone searching for dopamine but it doesn’t offer any.
So I would move on and read a book or do something with my kids and just find better ways to receive dopamine.
It was a great digital detox.
Someone asked me if I was not doing Instagram for my business – no I’m not! I may be missing a few sales, but I’m okay with that. The freedom in my life I have received is worth the loss in a couple sales.
CLEAN SWEEP OF FRIENDS
My true friends have not been bothered by me not responding to things on Instagram. Instead, we have a lot more phone conversations
I think you CAN transfer all your contacts over but I didn’t feel like doing that. I wanted a clean sweep.
If someone wanted to get in contact with me, they would reach out to me. And if I wanted to reach someone, I would find their number in my computer.
I slowly built up a fresh contact list with people I actually communicated with.
LIGHT PHONE REVIEW (used for 6 months)
- The screen has a Kindle-like screen and it lags a little bit. Although, I think they have worked on this and have a normal screen with the newest version.
- It does not have a camera. I didn’t take many photos of my baby because I wasn’t walking around with my professional, clunky camera and my Light Phone didn’t have a camera.
- If anyone sends me photos or links, it doesn’t come to the phone but is forwarded to my email.
- I mess up group messages haha
- There is no GPS. I ended up buying one for my car from Walmart.
THE END OF MY LIGHT PHONE
I was getting my kids out of the car one day and my daughter knocked a drink over and it spilled into the cup holder that my Light Phone was sitting in. I didn’t notice until we got back into the car and I saw my phone floating in the cup holder.
Everyone around me was saying “Just get another iPhone!” “What are you trying to prove?” “You can just not be addicted”.
But I knew in my spirit that I could not go back to a smart phone.
The amount of freedom I felt from the pull to a phone was something I could not give up
WISE PHONE Review (6 months and still going!)
This was my chance to try out another non-smart phone and I had heard great things about the Wise phone so I ordered one.
This phone has a lot more capabilities that has eased some of the tensions that come with not having a smart phone. My husband appreciates me having the Wise phone capabilities as well.
WISE PHONE IS A GOOD IN BETWEEN
I loved that the Light Phone was a digital detox for me. But it was almost so far into the “dumb phone world” that it almost detached me from the people that I want to keep up with.
The Wise phone has a lot of capabilities that I missed about my smart phone.
WISE PHONE HAS APPS YOU CAN DOWNLOAD
Now that I have a Wise phone, I have the Bible app, Maps, Venmo, Spotify, Waze, and Audible. I needed the detox with the Light phone initially, but I am grateful to have these apps back.
There is a list of approved apps that can be downloaded onto the Wise phone. Everything is vetted by Wise because they have a 99% guarantee that no one can access anything explicit on their phones.
The only thing they can’t do is block explicit music on Spotify.
I think this is incredible.
IT PROCESSES PHOTOS
This is another thing I really missed when I was using the Light Phone. Using the Wise Phone, I can now take photos, send photos, and receive photos.
However, I still can’t access links that people send because there’s no browser. My workaround for this is to ask people to send any links to my email address which is my Apple account on my computer, so I can access the links there.
IT IS NOT AESTHETIC
Not being aesthetic is actually a big pro.
Inside the apps themselves, they look the way they do on smart phones, but the front screen is just text on a white background. There’s no colors or pretty backgrounds, so there’s no pleasure in looking at it.
IT IS TRULY A TOOL, NOT A DISTRACTION
My phone is now a tool for learning and connection. I’m no longer going to it for entertainment. It is something that has helped me be more intentional with my time.
With a typical smartphone, I felt like I was wasting time and being sucked in when I was trying to use it as a tool for learning and connecting. This phone simply eliminates those things that were sucking my time and left me with the tools I wanted in the first place.
CONS OF WISE PHONE:
- It is an Android and we are an Apple family. So everything we have is integrated except my phone. But it hasn’t been as big of a deal as I would have thought.
I HAVE 6 SMALL KIDS, I JUST NEED TO BE LOCKED IN
I know that this is NOT for everyone. But I can definitely say that if you want to be more present and you want to lose that pull to grab your phone, ditching the smart phone will help immensely.
I challenge you to look in your settings and see how many times you have picked up your phone today. It might be startling.
I heard a story of a man who saw that he had 700 something pick ups a day and he calculated it out to see that he was going to spend 10 total years of his life looking at his phone.
That bothered him so much that he went cold turkey and ditched his phone for 2 or 3 months just to detox himself and break the cycle.
BREAK FREE FROM DIGITAL ADDICTION WITH ME
If you feel tugged to give up your smart phone, give it a try! You don’t have to commit to a dumb phone forever, you can just take a digital detox for 6 months or so to give it a try.
You can simply take a break, take a season without the constant dopamine hits from a screen and the temptation to scroll.
DISCOUNT CODE for Light Phone and Wise Phone
If you want to try the Light Phone to give yourself a digital detox, here is the link.
If you want to try the Wise phone, this link and code GIRLTEACHME will give you $25 off your phone.
THE CHANGE SINCE DITCHING MY DIGITAL ADDICTION
Now that I’m not on a smart phone, I notice how many people are on their phones in public. I feel sober to what’s happening around me even if the people around me aren’t mentally present.
It feels good to be awake to life and be present.
THE TIME I’VE GOTTEN BACK
Being on my smart phone as much as I was was stealing my precious time.
Instead of getting my time stolen by scrolling, I have replaced it with things that actually matter.
It is so important to redeem the precious time that the Lord has given us. Things like reading, working on a business, spending time with our families, and nurturing the relationships we have.
It is SO important! Our motherhood is very important. It is hidden work, but our children will know and the Bible says that they will rise up and call us blessed.
Taking control and being intentional with your phone is a really important step in leveling up as a mom.
It has helped improve my life so much, and I hope it can improve yours as well.
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