The Problem with taking a Digital Detox

http://www.digitaldetachapp.com

Up until 6 months ago, I had a flip-phone. I recently upgraded to a smartphone, and noticed that it was slowly taking control of any “down-time” I had. I started researching a digital detox.

1. First, there’s many people that think they aren’t addicted to their smartphone.

2. A recent study by Baylor concluded that women college students spend 10 hours/day on their cellphones.

3. “Women college students spend 10 hours daily on their cellphones, Baylor study finds.”

4. 60% indicated that they get “agitated” if their phones are not in sight.

5. Another study by Mary Meeker suggests that mobile users reach to their phones 150x/day.

6. “Mobile Users reach to phone 150 times/day..“

7. As smartphones and smart watches permeate into the masses, more and more people are looking to disconnect from their devices, taking a “digital detox.”

8. David Roberts from grist.org took a year-long break from technology, and recently wrote about his experience.

9. Camp Grounded offers summer camps for adults, where attendees are forced to disconnect with their phone and do other activities.

10. Hotels are adding “digital detox” packages to their offerings.

11. The Huffington Post (UK) has called for September to be “digital detox” month.

12. These efforts are a wonderful start, and it’s great that people are becoming aware of their smartphone addiction…but

13. The focus is on going cold turkey. They focus on vacations, weekends, and unique experiences, instead of daily life.

14. In other areas of addiction, going cold-turkey is not suggested. Instead, people are encouraged to “wean” themselves by slowly turning down the dosage/usage.

15. Here’s my question - is taking a digital detox an effective way to combat smartphone addiction? I think we can do much better. We have to.

16. Put simply, we need to disconnect on a daily or weekly basis. It needs to become part of our daily life. It’s important to create lasting habits, instead of going cold-turkey and then relapsing.

17. We need an easy way to disconnect from our devices.

18. We need to combat technology addiction with technology. Technology got people addicted, and it can certainly help them decrease reliance and dependance.

19. I’m building an app to help - it’s called Digital Detach, and it’s available on the Google Play store. It’s not available for iOS because I can’t build the functionality on the Apple platform.

20. Digital Detach is a smartphone app that limits distracting apps for a period of time that you choose. The goal is to make disconnecting extremely easy..and something people do a frequent basis.

21. In closing, I believe as smartphone addiction increases, major operating systems will be required to set constraints on smartphone usage. I don’t think it will be a requirement, but I see them exposing more of the operating system to allow