Why is information detox vitally important?

Would you be able to spend at least a day alone without social networks and news from the lives of your friends? For example, the first thing I do in the morning is checking incoming messages and the latest news.

Recently, in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, we receive a huge amount of information from different sources every hour. To be honest, even if 70% of the news you read were left without your attention, your life wouldn`t change. The point is that we forgot how to focus. Everything is good moderately, but this statement does not fit in with modern realities. It is difficult for us to concentrate on work if there is a phone next to us with incessant notifications about new publications, likes, etc. Ignoring them, we get the impression that we are missing something really interesting and relevant. And don’t tell me it’s not about you!

We are absent. It sounds strange, but if you look around from anywhere on the planet, you will see an identical picture: people who are absorbed in mobile phones and endless conversations with several people at once — they are all disconnected from life. They literally don’t live in the moment.

Information detox provides a “restart” of the brain. Here the principle of meditation works, during which we stop our thoughts and dialogues and just find ourselves in a certain vacuum. When we switch back to the usual life, we already begin to track our thoughts and perceive everything a little differently.

You don’t have to completely stop using gadgets right away, not reading absolutely all news, or delete all social networks. To get started, just try not checking your phone 50 times an hour. For me, this has become one of the biggest problems. I started noticing that I looked at my phone even if I didn’t get any notifications. What if I just didn’t hear the sound of the Instagram notification? To avoid this becoming an addiction, you need to gradually reduce the amount of time spent on the phone.

1. First, consider which applications you use most often. By the way, many phones have a feature installed by default that allows you to see the time you spend in a particular social network.
2. Day by day, reduce your phone usage time. For example, you can set a timer on Instagram for a certain amount of time spent on this network. After a specified number of minutes/hours, you will receive an alert that you have already spent too much time on the Internet and it is time to go out in reality.
3. Set a schedule for specific apps. Now you can watch YouTube 4 times a week, and spend 30 minutes a day on Tiktok.
4. Teach yourself that before going to bed, you no longer watch memes and stories of friends in Snapchat, but read a book/do sports/draw, etc.

Thus, step by step, you will develop habits that will reduce your headaches, “unreasonable” fatigue and just give you a huge amount of spare time that can be spent usefully. Of course, all that I have listed are the basic rules, which have been discussed more than once. However, unfortunately, we forget about them again and again. I myself notice that when I start following even such simple instructions for just a few days, I feel much better, both mentally and physically.

Nowadays, it`s almost impossible to give up gadgets for a day or a week due to working and living conditions. Therefore, I recommend you to reduce your online time and better control it. After a week, you will no longer have a busy brain, and you will feel the emergence of fresh thoughts and ideas.