How to Digital Detox for Better Sleep

What is a digital detox?

Minimizing and reducing the exposure to blue light-emitting gadgets for a particular period of time is known as a digital detox. Detox means abstaining, and digital detox means abstaining from digital products like Cell phones, laptops, TVs, etc.

In today’s smartphone age when we start to feel lonely and depressed the moment our phones run out of battery, A phone charger is more important than the phone itself. According to a study, an average smartphone user spends more than three hours staring and scrolling the screen.

The smartphone revolution enabled us to depend on our handheld computers even for basic calculations. the moment our phones die we feel like living in the stone age. this dependency is making our generations dumber. I’m telling this the moment I asked my 5 years old nephew to calculate multiplication of 2 to 12, he immediately showed me results from his smartphone.

Time management courses and apps are on the rise, just because of this. The funny part is people are writing blogs about spending time away from gadgets, which is the same thing I’m doing right?

Well, I learned about digital detox at the point when I was obsessed with social media and started to have anxiety attacks. I took pills, meditated, talked to my doctor but nothing helped, then I started to refrain from gadgets, and again loneliness and depression struck.

The fact is you cannot live without the internet and gadgets. Your survival and income depend on it, most people detox by abstaining from using phones, then they feel guilty, and then they use the phone again for a longer period of time to catch all the info they missed.

How Digital detox works.

To gain the benefits of digital detox one must understand and prioritize the digital activities. What I’m trying to say is to treat gadgets as a necessity, not for entertainment, don’t play games during work hours, and don’t check mail outside of workhour. Just limit the usage.

Remember digital detox should not refer exclusively to a period of time during which a person abstains from using gadgets completely, but instead, it should be monitoring and reducing the time period during which a person does not use certain types of applications like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat. and disconnect from unnecessary chats and messaging.

So how digital detox helps in sleep.

one of the biggest enemies of sound sleep is anxiety and depression. Depression won’t let your mind get empty and feel peace so that your body can release sleep hormones, and I’m living proof that prolonged social media usage triggers anxiety and depression.

Take your time to complete your daily tasks, read something peaceful or something that you love. using books instead of devices can help you feel less anxious.

Another culprit is artificial blue light. Do you know our body uses natural blue light from the sun to determine our circadian rhythm? Prolonged usage of artificial blue light confuses the circadian rhythm.
So it is important to reduce the gadget usage 3 hours before your bedtime.

one of the most important reasons for a digital detox is to shut down your brain. chatting and playing games on your phone keeps your brain engaged, making it difficult to relax. This always-on and WFH culture has robbed us of our wind down time, hindering our focus and ability to deep thinking.

So how to digital detox without unplugging completely.

Leave the phone at the desk.

whenever I leave my work desk, I leave my phone in the office. there is nothing more important than the time with my kids and family, spending time with family and playing with my kid eradicated my anxiety problem completely. It might be tough for you in the beginning but you’ll manage. Trust me it works.

Disable push notifications.

This helped me with my cognitive ability, not having constant pings begging for attention helped reduce the brain fog problem for me, now I can do deep work for 3 hours straight, which in my condition is a miracle.

Create a morning routine/ Prioritize your work.

Personally, I make a to-do list for my day. instead of waking up and scrolling, I make sure to wake up to complete my tasks for the day. So make sure you prioritize your work, and if possible establish tech-free zones, where gadgets are not allowed if they are not necessary for that work.

If possible Downgrade your phone.

This might sound hilarious for some of you. But on my day off’s I only keep my feature phone on just for emergency calls and texts. studies and my own experience have shown that it really helped with the peace of my mind.

Set a time limiter for social media or whatever apps you use.

iPhone users can set limits with Screen Time in the phone’s settings and schedule Downtime when only phone calls or specific apps are allowed and specified apps have a time limit. for android users, Digital wellbeing also works perfectly where you can set time limits and adjust the downtimes for your devices.