Staying away from your phone
Exams are a week and a half away, but you cannot keep the phone down. When you do try to ignore your phone, you absolutely cannot resist checking your notifications every time your phone pings, or scrolling through social media for lengthy amounts of time at regular intervals. If this sounds familiar, you are not alone. Social media is designed to be engaging, to be pleasurable, to be stimulating, and to grab your attention.
Most of us are so tempted to keep our phones at our desks during study sessions. In fact, online addictions—overusing our devices, apps, certain websites, or a game—activate the same pleasure centres in our brain as other addictions. The problem is that uncontrolled use of our digital devices can hinder our productivity while reviewing or working on assignments.
It’s absolutely crucial to monitor and limit your unproductive screen time while studying. Recent research shows that students spend up to thirteen hours a day on their phones, which can seriously affect study time.
To be concise about this, you need to get rid of your phone while studying, and there’s one way. Out of sight, out of mind. If you need alarms, use a real alarm clock. If you need a calculator, use a real calculator! Get these tools so you don’t need to rely excessively on your cellphone.
If you absolutely cannot part with your phone, at least turn its power off, limit notifications in settings, turn it onto airplane mode, or turn your phone to silent (noises can interrupt your study session, even if you don’t notice—and it can take a long time to get your focus back). You may find it helpful to inform your friends when you will be back online.
There are many apps on your phone that can be used to restrict distracting websites. Social media tends to be a major distractor for students, usually leading to unproductive screen time where they’ll find themselves scrolling through their Instagram explore pages aimlessly for long amounts of time. For example, Screen Time for iPhone, Digital Wellbeing App for Android. Most phones nowadays have a Focus Mode, which will allow you to determine which notifications can come through during your designated working periods. This is a great feature that I hope to explore more myself. In the meantime, I love making sure students are aware that this exists! If your distractions tend to be on your computer rather than your phone, I recommend downloading a browser extension that will help you stay on track.
Here are some other tips that may be helpful:
Use friends to keep you accountable. Tell your online buddy that you need an hour and a half of undistracted time to get your work done, and then you’ll be back.
Give your phone to a family member to “supervise” while you work.
Deactivate your social media accounts. Deactivation is unlike deletion in the sense that you can still access deactivated accounts whenever you choose to go back.
There’s no doubt that social media, and our phones in general, help flood our brains with feel-good chemicals. This is why I usually recommend that students find another form of these “happy chemicals” for their study time. For example, having a delicious hot chocolate during a study session can boost your motivation, or promising yourself a favourite song, face-to-face interactions, or a fun walk post-study session.
When you set out to study, there can be so many distractions in front of you that want to throw you off-track. Keeping these temptations (especially social media and other digital distractions!) in check is key for maximizing your productivity. Moral of the story? Be aware and in control of your screen time usage, especially during study sessions. After all, the sooner you get academic things done, the sooner you can step away from your study zone and do other things you enjoy. You are getting this education for yourself, so don’t cheat yourself, and get the most out of your hours!