Showing posts with label JOMO. Show all posts
Showing posts with label JOMO. Show all posts

Monday, February 18, 2019

Are You Married to Your Phone? More Ideas to Turn Off the Attention Merchants


A recent video created by Educated Change does a great job of getting us to think about our device use. Watch it above first before reading below:

(Spoiler alert) As you've seen, the video first gets us thinking we are watching a couple's wedding vows, most likely personally written by one another. Soon, however, we start to question the situation and by the end we realize that the partner in this marriage is actually a device and data plan! Creative videos like this with a surprise do a great job of jarring us into reality to self-reflect on our personal use of technology.

I’ve written a few times about efforts to get others to realize how much time they are spending on their personal devices (from adding up the hours gained on a social media fast and converting them to vacation time, to Prince EA’s Can We Autocorrect Humanity? to Keeping Tech Away from the Dinner Table and much more.) Getting ourselves and others to look at the amount of time we spend on our phones and other devices is tough. Even harder is getting us to make a change and consider reducing this time. Educated Change offers two hacks which I have not thought of before:
  1. Turn off your device's Raise to Wake setting so you don't feel compelled to look at your screen every time you slightly move your device and it turns on, interrupting your attention and distracting you with any notifications on the screen. Educated Change creatively call this "Turn Off the Attention Merchants." In the past I've written about turning off almost all notifications and taking control of your phone and need to add this to my list.
     
  2. Enact Breaking Bad Mode, their suggested hack which involves turning on Do Not Disturb for most of your contacts. This means that your phone won't buzz or make a noise when new text messages are received. If you've used the Do Not Disturb While Driving Feature, this is similar but is enacted at all times, not just when driving. This is a creative way to use a feature for a new purpose. Educated Change even suggests editing a custom reply to text back, letting people know you are on a "Phone Detox." 
If you try out either of the hacks above, let me know your success. I'm trying the first but not yet ready to go to "Breaking Bad Mode." 

I continue to be a big fan of Apple’s Screen Time tools. My family and I use it and I encourage others to do so as well. Using personal data and stats to reflect on one’s own use is the best way to become aware of habits and make changes.

Read more about this topic through these related posts: 
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Monday, December 31, 2018

Easy New Year's Resolution: Add 40 Vacation Days to 2019 by Cutting Back on Social Media

The average time spent per day on social media in 2018 for most adults is around 40 minutes: Facebook users spent around 41 minutes per day, Snapchat users spend around 35 minutes per day and Instagram around 30 minutes per day. Back in 2016 Facebook reported that the average user spent 50 minutes per day across Facebook, Instagram and Messenger. Depending on the age of the adult some spend more or less--for example younger adults spend more time on Snapchat and Instagram. (Source) While 30-50 minutes per day may not sound like much, added up over an entire year the numbers get startling when converted to eight hour work days. This seems more reasonable than converting to 24 hour days since (hopefully) no one is on social media 24 hours a day:
  • 30 minutes/day=183 hours/year, or almost 23 eight hour work days (over 4.5 weeks of vacation) 
  • 40 minutes/day=243 hours/year, or over 30 eight hour work days (six weeks of vacation) 
  • 50 minutes/day=304 hours/year, or over 38 eight hour work days (almost eight weeks of vacation) 
Imagine adding this amount of time to your life in the coming year! Even if you aren't spending this much time per day on social media (perhaps you are on Netflix?) consider these numbers:
  • 5 minutes/day=30 hours/year, or almost 4 eight hour work days
  • 10 minutes/day=61 hours/year, or almost 7.5 eight hour work days
  • 15 minutes/day=91 hours/year, or almost 11.5 eight hour work days
  • 20 minutes/day=122 hours/year, or over 15 eight hour work days (a three-week vacation)
In October I ended a one year Facebook/Instagram fast. In the past my longest break from Facebook had been about seven months and prior to that three months. Since ending this fast I've barely opened either tool. When I do I'm reminded of why I went cold turkey and stopped looking at it completely: I find it to be a time drain, a nearly endless string of posts that often don't improve my relationship with my friends and family. It seems to me that amount of non-essential posts such as check-ins at restaurants, posts about shopping or some link to a video is exponentially greater than the posts about something I really need to know.

As I wrote before, I really wish there was a way to get the most important updates and highlights from my connections without having to scroll through so much other stuff. Over the past year I've had more and more family and friends who have actually gone as far as deleting their account. I haven't done that...yet. (For more on that, check out this NYTimes article, Breaking up with Facebook is hard to do: Here's how.) But as I pay more attention to the amount of time I spend on social media and entertainment screen time, I've started thinking about what I'm not doing...and what I used to do years ago before these tools existed. It's not just Facebook that I'm monitoring. It's Twitter, Instagram, the Apple News Feed, YouTube, and more. Apple's new Screen Time tool is a great help with this personal monitoring as well as talking with my kids about their use and time allocation. 

 So as I self-reflect and encourage my own family to monitor time on social media, I encourage you to do the same. Set limits and don't fill the extra time you gain with other forms of entertainment technology. As a family we continue to try to spend time together, playing board games, going on walks, sports, crafts, and even scheduling fun time together. Reflect on what you did before social media was part of your daily routine and help your kids, relatives and friends experience and build relationships through these activities, too, maintaining a healthy balance of social media and entertainment technology. 
Read more about this topic through these related posts: 
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Monday, November 6, 2017

Family Fun Day- Making Quality Time for Relationships

Spending quality time with others is important to build relationships and deepen friendships. It is critical for healthy families. Technology can certainly help strengthen these connections, and of course, it can also distract us from them. Finding a healthy balance and modeling this for today's youth is important. In the past I have written quite a lot about this, such as Be Where Your Feet Are: #RealTime with Those Around You, Tech Free Family Dinners Focused on Gratitude, Five Ways to Raise Digitally Balanced JOMO (Joy of Missing Out) Kids in a FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) World and much more (see links below). Last spring during one of my Parent Webinars with Mathew Meyers, as we were discussing the need to do things with our children that weren't just screen based entertainment, one of the parents submitted this question: "What are some activities to do without screens?"

At first I was pretty surprised by this question, but in discussing it with Mathew afterwards I realized that for many parents, this is a challenge. Much of our lives are busy and scheduled, and by the time we have common free time together, we may be exhausted! What little time many families do have together is often spent with screens on, either collectively watching TV or a movie, gaming, or each on their own device. Sometimes it can be this way in our home, too, but my wife and I continue to make an effort to not have this be the norm. One super fun activity in our home is called "Family Fun Day."

Source
Family Fun Day is a reoccurring monthly appointment on our calendar. It may be shifted due to conflicting events, sports games, etc., but we try hard to have it happen at least once per month. Basically, each of the six members of our family picks an activity for 20 minutes. We draw names to determine who goes first, second, etc. Activities are a surprise and aren't announced until the start. In the span of a couple hours, we spend quality time together doing a variety of activities such as those listed below. It's not always entirely tech free, such as playing Just Dance on Nintendo Wii, but it is a group activity done together. It is a lot of fun, great conversation time, and great memories are made. I'd encourage you to give it a try--let me know if you do and if you have other fun ideas to try!
  • Minute to win it relays (Google that for hundreds of ideas)
  • Cup stacking
  • Playing with Play doh, Pictionary with Play doh
  • Making brownies, cookies or caramel apples
  • Egg drop in a shoebox from the roof
  • Card games like spoons
  • Board games like 5 Second Rule
  • Darts
  • Paper airplane contests
  • Four square
  • Basketball
  • Touch football
  • Street hockey, ice hockey
  • Bike rides
  • Walk to the park
  • Coloring
  • Wii Sports or Just Dance competitions
  • Mini golf (on a homemade course in the basement)
  • Looking at family pictures from a past trip
  • Water balloons
  • Stacking pennies on tinfoil boats
  • Ping pong, blow ping pong, round robin ping pong, etc...

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Monday, October 2, 2017

Top Tips for Educators to Help Students & Parents with Technology (video)

A few days ago I had the opportunity to join Mathew Meyers once again for a presentation about technology. Specifically, our presentation was designed to help teachers understand ways to help students and their parents use technology in a balanced and appropriate way. This conversation is one that I’ve had in the past with Mathew—last spring we recorded two parent webinars on this topic. (Watch Part I or Part II of Parenting in the Digital Age). In this latest presentation, we cover some of the same topics with teachers that we addressed with parents, but focus more from the perspective of how teachers and educators can help students and parents. A more detailed outline is listed below.

We all want our students to have safe, healthy, and responsible relationships with technology. Mathew points out that
“adults don’t have a template for this—we really are historically blind with how we lead people into a safe, healthy relationship with technology. Parents and educators don’t have the wisdom of those who came before us in regards to how to raise kids with technology. We need to be thoughtful and mindful about how we are engaging with technology. It is resetting how we do relationships, human development, important to be thoughtful so the the implications aren’t detrimental to our future.”  
The K-12 school years are the opportune time to help students learn to have  healthy relations with the technology in their lives, and educators play a critical role in helping with this. As the lines between personal and school related technologies becoming increasingly blurred, it is more important than ever that today’s students hear about these topics in the school setting. 

Watch the presentation recording in full or skip ahead to a section:

Introduction

Staff-Student-Parent Triangle
Parent Anxiety, The Device is Not the Problem, the Importance of Alignment and Working as a Team to Help Students, The Power of a Phone Call vs. Email

Screen Time & Balance
Entertainment vs. Educational Screen Time

Attention & Focus, Addiction
Two Different Attention Systems
Turning off notifications
Addictive apps like a pocket slot machine

Stopping Cues & Natural Consequences
Humans are finite, but technology/computers can work forever
Look for logical breaks, incremental time
Using Apple Guided Access
Address the behavior vs. taking away technology
Allowing failure, letting go

Modeling & Personal Balance
Being present—be where your feet are

Relationships & Social Media
FOMO vs. JOMO
What age should a child get a smartphone?
What age to start using social media?
Relationships, Connection, and Rice Cakes

Next Steps
Resources
Mathew’s blog, Relationships That Heal

Also, if you are in the Minnetonka area, check out Mathew’s upcoming parent workshops on Teens & Technology through Minnetonka Community Education: 
  • October 10 - What Kids Do on the Internet and its Impact on Development
  • October 17 - Identify Strategies to Keep Technology from Controlling Your Family
  • October 24 - Taking Back Control – Create a Family Digital Strategy
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Monday, July 24, 2017

Just 3 Taps to See Your Total Time of Phone/iPad App Use per Day/Week

Ever wonder how much time you spend on your phone? Or perhaps believe you don't spend much time at all but want to confirm it? Here's an easy, super fast way to see your personal phone use. In just three taps, you can view how many minutes/hours you have spent in every app in either the past 24 hours or the past week:
 
  1. Tap Settings
  2. Tap Battery
  3. Tap the clock as circled in the image.

This will display which apps you have used the most and for exactly how long. As I've written in the past, having personal data is an eye opening reality check. Data helps us see the difference between our intentions and reality. It can help us get motivated to change our practices. When you do this with students or your own children, spouse, or friends, it can lead to great discussions. Take, for example, the two phone screenshots pictured. I'm pretty sure you can quickly determine which one is from my phone and which one is from my high school daughter's phone. This personal data makes for a good discussion starter about the beliefs and values we have around the role of technology in our lives and how we choose to spend our time.

There are apps like Moment which use this battery use/time data to track and graph these totals for you, and even help you set goals and alerts to remind you to not use your device as much if you so choose. Moment now works for entire families, too, helping you share and set goals and hold one another accountable, too. Parents may wish to check out Curbi, too, to remotely access this report for your child's phone and set up rules, filters, and time limits. I'm currently testing out XooLoo, which works like Curbi but makes the data available to the kids, too, so they can self-monitor. 

 Even if you don't use a special app for this, try reviewing your battery usage totals for a few weeks. Create a reoccurring calendar appointment to take a weekly screenshot of your phone use and compare your totals. Reflect on where and how long you are spending your time. Set goals as necessary. Ask yourself whether the amount of time you are spending in apps reflects your values and beliefs about how you want to spend your time (and who you want to be). Take a careful look how you are keeping busy and therefore what you aren't doing. Personally, I just finished another Facebook fast, this time for six months. If I wasn't paying attention to my personal data and app usage, I'm sure I wouldn't even realize how much time I spend on my phone. Set a goal for more JOMO!

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