Have you checked the screen time on your phone lately? Did you get a fright? Well, what might give you even more of a jump scare is to know that if your activity exceeds four hours a day, you are in good company, as this is now the national average daily smartphone usage in Ireland*, which is already among the countries with the widest internet use in the world.
Recent research indicates that nearly every adult in Ireland (95 per cent, according to a recent Deloitte survey) now owns a smartphone, and according to projections, the number of users in Ireland will reach 5.22 million by 2029. Middle-aged women are spending the most time on their devices, with 78 per cent of women between 45 and 54 using their smartphones most consistently.*
The irony is that if you’re a midlife woman with teenagers, like me, how often do you bemoan your children’s phone usage, when really it is your own checking of messages, social media apps and consistent doomscrolling of news that needs to be equally reined in? But then on the flipside – and to be brutally honest – how useful is it to pick your phone up when you want to check a recipe, fact check, look up your shopping list, listen to a favourite podcast or just keep in touch with everyday work and social plans?
As for social media apps, if you are living far away from your family, WhatsApp can become somewhat of a lifeline, just as Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram can keep you updated with friends and colleagues, both old and new, as well as be an excellent way to network for both work and business.
So, with the reality that smartphones are not only incredibly useful tools but also that they are not going to vanish anytime in the near future, the sooner we get to grips with their proper and correct usage, the better. But what is normal now, and who is making the rules? And with a newly released national survey by Mental Health Ireland showing that the biggest barriers to people supporting their mental health daily are spending too much time on screens (36 per cent), it seems we all need to stop and take a reality check.
“Start by setting your own boundaries,” says psychotherapist Daniella Moyles, who, while wary of social media and too much phone usage, also has to navigate her own use of social media in the promotion of her online wellness hub, thestll.com. “First, I think it is very important to say and to realise that being on your phone too much is not about self- blaming,” she says. “It is not our fault. Tech companies play purposeful mind games to keep us hardwired to our phones, no matter how good our willpower. Phones are designed by highly skilled teams of people who understand vulnerabilities in human behaviour and want to exploit that.
Social media, particularly, is all about them capturing your attention for the longest time possible and harvesting as much information as they can. If you accept that this is going to happen – in other words, that our brains will keep you sucked into our phones – you can then face that reality and take your autonomy back.”