 Welcome to The Journey. Today we're going to talk about four reasons why you need a digital detox. And you. Alex, come on. What? I'm going to give you lots without actually checking your notifications. And if the thought of getting a text and maybe, you know, you can't look at it right away and you break out in a cold sweat, uh, news alert, you might need a digital detox. Yeah, I like to call it getting lost in the feed. But of course there's always going to be upsides to your phones or, you know, the digital side of things. There's efficiency, communication or, you know, watching funny videos for hours on TikTok. TikTok all the rage. And I get it though, because like think about notifications when it comes to my calendar, my schedule, even my social life, like everything on my phone to know what I'm doing when I'm doing it and how often I'm doing it. And then you add social media in there. Stressful. Coming up with a perfect caption is exhausting. You should see Alex come up with a caption. It takes like 10 minutes. I bet your screen time is insane. Yeah, we'll get to that later. It's easy to think that only people who are absolutely addicted to their phones 24-7 need a digital detox, but really this can be beneficial for anybody just to take a step away, get a breather so that you're not getting constant notifications and everything's crazy. Yeah. And studies show when you actually take this detox and step away from the phone or the computer, in the long-term it helps with your sleep because if you aren't too much it will affect your self-esteem, your productivity and even your social life. Like I find it pretty annoying when I'm out with my friends and one of my friends just glued to their phone. It definitely gives me a bad aftertaste. Yeah, there's nothing worse than that. Yeah. Now don't worry. You don't have to live off the grid forever. It'll be okay. You can just do it temporarily and as Emma mentioned there are a lot of benefits to doing this. Oh yeah. And I know it can be hard especially right before you go to bed because maybe for you to unwind is that time today that you check your social media or look at the news on your phone or maybe you even use a fan app on your phone. You taught me that. I do. Yeah. I love that sound. It's great. Before you go sleep. But either way you do want to just separate that time and just be mindful of it. And that brings us to our first benefit. You're going to sleep better. So everyone has seen the night mode now on iPhones. That's really a huge wake-up call to that blue light that's coming from your iPhone. Oh. Switch it on over to night mode. Yes. Makes you feel a little bit better. But it shows you how much your eyes are straining looking at those blue lights all day with everything you do. So it's going to help you process that information a little bit better and sleep better. Now let's talk about mental health. There's definitely been signs of people using social media more and their mental health being affected by it. So for example, seeing anxiety, narcissism, depression and it's not really too much of a surprise because I mean we're guilty of it right. You look at someone else's life and what they're doing in that moment and you compare which only sets you up for negative domino effect in the brain. Exactly. I mean comparing yourself on social media, keep in mind everyone's social media platform is just a highlight of their life. It's a highlight reel. Yeah. So you're not seeing all the downsides so it's not really fair to compare yourself to the best you know maybe even fake portrayal of people's lives. Which is easier said than done. True. Right. Because literally we'll say this right now and I guarantee at some point we'll be on our phones looking at someone's Instagram and be like wow Mexico looks nice. I'm in Seattle. It's freezing. The third benefit of a digital detox is increased productivity. So it sounds kind of counterintuitive because when you're on your phone you feel like you're really getting a lot done. I feel efficient. Order the lift. Order Grubhub. Check Instagram. Check email. Like I got so much done. Exactly. But the truth of the matter is whenever you're actually trying to accomplish a task and you're constantly being bogged down by notifications and alerts and everything's important you're just being distracted from the actual task at hand. Last benefit you can reconnect. You can actually be present. Be in the moment. Be here. Yeah rather than recharging your phone recharge yourself. Oh that's catchy. I can see t-shirts being made. Trademarked. All right so we're all talk right now Emma. How are we actually going to implement this? So you gotta identify two variables starting with how much time do you spend online on your phone. And the good news is or maybe bad news because here comes the truth. You can see if you have an iPhone you can actually see your screen time. Yeah let's see. Moment of truth Alex. This is gonna be a scary wake-up call. I'm a little scared. Okay so you go to settings in your phone this is if you have an iPhone you go to screen time. Holy smokes. All right so my daily average four hours 48 minutes up 7% from last week that's because I was in Mexico last week. Why don't you detox when you're in Mexico? I did I'm up 7% this week. Oh then when you were on your vacate. Got it. And then if you jump in to see all activity you can actually break down where you're spending the majority of your time. So oh my goodness. It's mostly social. Five hours and 42 minutes on Instagram. Yikes. An hour 27 on TikTok. This seems about accurate. So from there you can see not only how you're spending time but how much time you're spending online. So that's the first variable and the second variable you can actually see which of your apps you're using the most. So with Alex over here. Exactly. Social networking. Right all the social networking ones and it kind of gives you an idea of if you're going to take a digital detox. You know if I were to delete Instagram off my phone I'd be saving about five hours. Look at all that time. Back. All that time's back. The next ground rule you can implement is no screens after dark. We sound like our moms right now but it is a really great way to kind of settle down for the night whether that's your TV screen, your phone screen. All of that helps keep you awake. Exactly. We talked earlier about how much it benefits your sleep cycle. So it's a really great way to start to decompress. Maybe read a book instead. I love that. Absolutely. Turn off the iPad. Binge watch that show somewhere else when it's time for bed. Lights out. Get a good night's rest and it will overall help you again with that detox. Also if you are just having an honest moment with yourself and you're like, look, I can't completely detox. Emma, just go into your notifications and turn some of those off. Baby steps. Baby steps. Like for me, I have a lot of notifications for my work. So during the work day, you know, I just know at a glance and right when it's happening in real time. Like when someone's sending a message on Microsoft's teams, when someone sends me an email, when someone slacks me. There's a lot of things going on. But after work hours, off, off, off. Don't need those, especially when it's time to go to sleep. All right. So thanks for watching. Be sure to like this video and comment down below. Let us know what your screen time is. Maybe a little scary. Let's make it a competition who has the highest score. And be sure to subscribe to our channel and ring that bell so you're the first to know when the next episode comes out. This is The Journey.