I put myself through three and a half years of school. It was hard, and sometimes it seemed like I could never catch my breath. I felt like I was spending more time working and managing finances than actually learning anything at school. I was disconnected from myself and exhausted most of the time. So, at the beginning of my junior year, I decided to try to free up more time in the day for basic things like cleaning, studying, napping, and going to the gym. 

My brain is really analytical, so I sat down and made a list of everything I do in a day. I put equal signs next to all the activities, then tracked the amount of time spent on those activities for the next week. I found that if I put school work, classes, and waiting tables into the same category (work), I was doing an average of ninety-six hours of work a week. That number blew me away. The next highest was watching TV/scrolling social media. I was killing time on screens for an average of twenty hours a week. And for what? When I sat down to think about it, I couldn’t remember a single one of those twenty hours clearly. 

I’m gonna pause here and say this post isn’t about how to be more productive. Because ninety-six hours of work a week is more than enough for me. This post is about the emotional stress and low life satisfaction caused by screen addiction. There are currently several studies going on about screen addiction, which is a term yet to be strictly defined. Essentially, screen addiction happens when an individual uses screen time as a coping mechanism and eventually devolves into a screen dependency. Common signs of screen addiction include: binge watching daily, checking for notifications frequently, screens interfering with daily tasks (keeping you up late, staying on the toilet too long, missing appointments), using multiple screens at once, inability to leave the house without your phone, and choosing screen time over family and friends. A study conducted in 2019 on 654 self-reporting participants concluded that “Those who depended on screens for entertainment and social networking had up to 19% more emotional stress and up to 14% more perceptual stress. In contrast, those who relied on screens for work and professional networking had up to 10% higher levels of life satisfaction.”(https://www.jmir.org/2019/4/e11485/) When I was using my TV and phone to decompress every day, I often ended my days feeling unsatisfied and disconnected. I would lie in bed feeling at once empty and overwhelmed. 

I decided to do something personally radical: I got rid of my TV, I deleted all my social media apps, and I put a screen time limit on my cell phone. Going cold turkey was harder than I thought it would be. The first week without my TV I was so lost I went to Walmart and bought a puzzle. Then I sat down after dinner and poured out the pieces, bored out of my mind, thinking, Is this my life now? But that weekend when my long distance boyfriend visited, we spent more time talking and enjoying our time together than ever before. In the past we would order pizza and watch our show together, maybe talk for a couple hours, and that was it. But without the TV as the center of the room, we became each other’s priority. 

I took that special weekend as a personal lesson and spent the second screen-free week trying to prioritize (rather than entertain) myself in my free time. I reorganized my room, went for a couple walks, called my grandmother, wrote some poetry, and even started reading a new book. I spent time with friends on campus in the gym and doing grocery runs. By week three, the novelty of my new “lifestyle” had worn off, and I was able to settle into little habits that prioritized me and my studies. 

At the end of the first screen-reduced month, I found that while I was still tired and overworked most of the time, I also felt more satisfied and appreciative of the moments I got to myself. I found it easier to focus in class, take care of responsibilities in my dorm, and process my emotions. I think that growing up in the 2000s gave me a bit of a disadvantage in the fact that I was always entertained, no matter what. I always had music playing or Netflix running. I got my first smartphone when I was thirteen, along with all the social media profiles. The screen has always been there for me to use as a crutch to turn off my brain, unwind, and decompress. But when I was pushed to my limit, working almost a hundred hours a week, I needed a more well rounded approach to relaxation. My advice is if you’re feeling burnt out, the first thing you should try is unplugging yourself from the digital world and reconnecting with yourself and the people around you.