Doing this one thing can boost your health and happiness⦠[The Jolt with Stephen McBride] I challenge you to take this pledge in the new year Editorâs note: Today, weâre sharing one of Stephen McBrideâs most popular essays to date. In it, Stephen shares his #1 tip on living a happier life: Stop staring at your phone! Putting your phone down around friends and loved ones is a simple pledge you can make in 2024 and beyondâand will help you become more present at the times that matter most. Please note thereâs no Jolt on Monday. Weâll pick back up next Wednesday, January 3. From all of us here at RiskHedge, weâd like to wish you a wonderful holiday season and a happy New Year! *** âLook over at that table⦠everyone is staring at their phones.â My wife and I are on the same page with money. Weâre both savers. I often joke we get more enjoyment out of watching our bank balance grow than we do buying stuff. But we recently splurged on a nice restaurant. We booked a babysitter in advance so we could have a nice meal at Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud here in Dublin. It has a coveted two Michelin stars, and itâs one of the best dining experiences you could imagine. Itâs not cheap. Youâll hand over at least $500 for two people, but itâs worth it. Youâre treated like royalty, and the food is amazing. We spotted a table of four from across the room. About halfway through our meal, my wife leaned in and whispered, âLook over at that table⦠everyone is staring at their phones.â She was right⦠Everyone at the table had their heads stuck in their phonesâas they sat in the best restaurant in Ireland! The rise of the internet and smartphones has mostly improved our lives. High-speed internet allows us to work from anywhere in the world. Thanks to Google, you can access practically any information 24/7. The downside is many folks are hopelessly obsessed with tapping, typing, and swiping on their phones. Research from Harvard shows the average American touches their phone over 3,000 times daily. 3,000 times! That works out to roughly four hours/day staring down at our screens. Think about it like this⦠thatâs 28 hours/week we could spend doing something we âhavenât got the time for.â In the morning, our phones buzz to wake us up. Emails stream into our inboxes all day long. Even when you donât have any notifications, you might whip your phone out every few minutes or so to check if thereâs anything new. In short, weâve become addicted to our phonesâand itâs hurting our lives. Smartphones are a black hole where âto-do listsâ go to die. Research from the American Psychological Association (APA) shows we have limited âbrain power.â Said differently, our minds are like batteriesâthey can only perform a finite number of tasks before they need to be recharged. Phones put the world at our fingertips. The next article or video is always just one click away. Each time we whip out our phones to check the news⦠the latest sports scores⦠or our Twitter feeds⦠weâre âdrainingâ our mental batteries. The average American does this roughly 1,000 times before lunch, leaving no energy for important work. The APA study found this puts our brains into a state of constant distraction. We canât focus on important tasks for more than 10 minutes without checking our phones. Research from The Journal of Social Psychology found smartphones are also hurting our relationships. Researchers found when participants had their phones on them during a meal, it reduced their enjoyment during the time spent eating with family and friends. Our phones allow us to connect with folks across the world⦠but theyâre hurting our relationships with the people that matter most. Thereâs a reason putting our phones down is so difficult⦠Ever hear of the chemical dopamine? Our brains produce dopamine to reward us for taking a bite of food⦠completing important work⦠or exercising. We get a little hit of dopamine when we do something âgood,â which motivates us to repeat the tasks. Research from Harvard Medical School shows social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Snapchat have engineered their platforms to give us bite-sized hits of dopamine. Every time we scroll, click, or swipe, our brains get a little âreward.â Constantly being on my phone is something I struggled with before COVID hit. I hated how I would reflexively check my phone a dozen times an hour when spending time with my daughter. I wasted whole evenings on YouTube. I wasted valuable time in the morning scrolling through Twitter. But now, Iâve made a conscious effort to turn off my phone outside of work hours. And I shut down the computer once Iâve finished work for the day. This one changeâcutting down time spent on the internetâhas improved my life big-time. Iâm more productive when Iâm working⦠Iâm a better person to be around (so my wife tells me)⦠and my mood has greatly improved. A suggestion for 2024 and beyond... consider cutting down on your phone, computer, and internet usage. For me, itâs tempting to ALWAYS try to learn new things. Iâd listen to podcasts while I worked out... and read articles as I ate breakfast. Thereâs so much great information on the internet today, I felt like I was missing out if I wasnât always absorbing as much as possible. But really, by constantly staring at or listening to my phone, I was often missing out on real life. If youâve felt this way, try putting down your phone. Do something ârealâ and be in the moment. Go for a walk... throw a ball with your dog... cook a dinner for your family. I practically guarantee itâll make you happierâit did for me! Do you think smartphones are bad for our mental health? Let me know at stephen@riskhedge.com. Stephen McBride
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