Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Screens and attention
For a week, jot down what was going on just before you picked up the phone, what you were thinking while you scrolled, and how you felt when you put it down. Nothing cleverer than that.
What usually surfaces is not that screens are bad but that two or three specific things are: one account, one time of day, one mood you always reach for it in. That is far more workable than a blanket cut, because everything else can be left alone. Keep it rough, a line in your notes app, and read it back at the end of the week rather than judging each entry as you write it.
Qur’an and Sunnah
Do not gaze longingly at what We have given some of them to enjoy, the finery of this present life (Quran 20:131). Often the honest entry in the after column is that you were looking at somebody's edited life and came away feeling smaller.
وَلَا تَمُدَّنَّ عَيۡنَيۡكَ إِلَىٰ مَا مَتَّعۡنَا بِهِۦٓ أَزۡوَٰجࣰ ا مِّنۡهُمۡ زَهۡرَةَ ٱلۡحَيَوٰةِ ٱلدُّنۡيَا لِنَفۡتِنَهُمۡ فِيهِۚ وَرِزۡقُ رَبِّكَ خَيۡرࣱ وَأَبۡقَىٰ
and do not gaze longingly at what We have given some of them to enjoy, the finery of this present life: We test them through this, but the provision of your Lord is better and more lasting
Qur’an 20:131read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
What the research says
In a survey of 296 people, fear of missing out was the thing most strongly related to problematic smartphone use, more so than low mood or fear of being judged. That is a useful hint about what to look for in the before column, since the trigger is often a worry about being left out rather than plain boredom. It is a cross sectional survey, so it shows what goes together and not what causes what.
Wolniewicz CA, Tiamiyu MF, Weeks JW, Elhai JD. (2018). Problematic smartphone use and relations with negative affect, fear of missing out, and fear of negative and positive evaluation.. Psychiatry research doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Why it works
A pattern you have watched in your own week is much harder to argue with than one somebody tells you about.
This one is still a draft. It is waiting on a scholar and a clinician to read it before it is published.
Near this one
For some people the online part is not a side issue sitting next to the depression or the anxiety. It is one of the things holding them in place.
You are comparing how it feels inside your own head with what other people chose to show. Those two were never the same kind of thing.
A young person on the sofa with their phone looks like nothing is happening. From the inside it is often the first hour all day that has asked nothing of them.