We’re spending more time looking at screens while staying at home.

At one point, my screen time was an average of 5-6 hours a day. Most of that time was spent mindlessly scrolling on social media or updating myself on the news. With a goal of simply limiting my social media consumption, I ended up staying off social media for about a month.

Here’s the tips that helped me decrease my screen time and the lessons I gained in the process:

Lesson #1: Bad user experiences are hard to ignore.
Tip: Break the muscle memory by deleting the app versions and use social media on web browsers instead.

Have you tried using Instagram on Chrome? IG Stories on Chrome don’t have all the features of the app, you can’t save posts to Collections, and using Instagram on a browser is just a bit more clunky. The only thing I like on the browser version is that videos don’t play automatically.

Have you tried YouTube on your mobile browser rather than going directly on the app? Double-clicking the right side of the video doesn’t fast-forward the video on the browser; it skips to the next video entirely.

These little things we’re used to doing on the app version add up to create a seamless user experience. When we take those features away, we get something that might be a little more frustrating. In changing the experience, we start to break the muscle memory we’ve built up by scrolling and liking and following.

If you’re like me, you’ll end up questioning why bother and find something else to do instead.

Lesson #2: We can’t control life’s unexpected circumstances, but we can control our actions.
Tip: Have something else to occupy your time and energy in place of using social media.

The end of my summers are typically filled with birthdays, back-to-school season, a Labor Day BBQ, and soaking up as much of the summer sun as I can while beating the heat. Summer in a pandemic and fire season in California is nothing like that.

Sure, David and I went to the beach once—our first outing in the last six months—for an hour or two when summer school ended for him. Then the first heat wave and Flex Alerts came, followed by lightning in August, then the fires. One fire came pretty close to our area and, for the first time, I found myself discussing evacuation plans with friends and family. We also haven’t seen a blue sky or a sun that wasn’t red in weeks.

Gratefully, we haven’t had to evacuate and I’ve found ways to bring back summer vibes, like binge-reading novels in bed all day or waking up early to watch TV. (Although, instead of Saturday morning cartoons we’ve been waking up to watch Sunday morning F1 races.)

While, like many individuals, I didn’t expect to be occupied with trying to stay safe from COVID, record-breaking heat, wildfires, and poor air quality, these events have forced me to be present. I’ve spent more quality time with friends and family during this social media break than I have during this whole quarantine, even more so than the initial wave of connecting with my social network. I’ve also spent more quality time with myself, cultivating my hobbies, like trying to beat David’s fastest lap time in Assetto Corsa, and exploring my curiosities, like how to create an evacuation plan for fish.

It’s amazing how much time you gain when you stop picking up your phone more than 50 times a day. (According to Asurion, we Americans pick up our phones closer to 96 times a day.)

Lesson #3: We’re more capable than we think.
Tip: Practice kindness and self-compassion.

Social media can lead us to thinking we’re not enough. In my scrolling and posting before my break, I found myself getting more and more anxious. Narratives of not being pretty enough or creative enough or smart enough insidiously crept up on me. Even when I started limiting my time on Instagram and YouTube, I’d scold myself for not being disciplined enough whenever I went on each platform. I had to practice speaking kindly to myself like a good friend again and the more I did, the more I found that I am not my thoughts.

Like mindlessly scrolling on social media or watching video after video out of habit, we have habitual thought patterns that can be broken. A dose of kindness, self-compassion, and a change of perspective can help us think and live more intentionally.

In taking a break from my phone and living more in the present moment, I am reminded that it only takes one small step to move forward towards a better life, towards the life we want to create.

The life I want to create? One that’s kinder, more intentional, and filled with little pockets of joy, like spending a whole day in bed listening to music and reading a good book.

What about you? How are you creating the life you want?

If you have no idea, maybe take a break from social media and spend a little more time daydreaming.