These days everyone is addicted to their screens, and sometimes we don’t realise how bad for us it can be to scroll all day every day. Here at Funktional, we think social media is great, but finding a balance is more important than being up to date with everything! 

If you’re trying to find a way to lower your screen time, this one’s for you! We’ve got a couple of tips to help you detox from your phone and reap the benefits that come along with it. 

Schedule your day

A great way to ditch the screens is to make a schedule every morning of your tasks and goals for the day. It can be simple things like “Go to the shops” or “Go on a half-an-hour walk,” for example. Writing these tasks down can actually make it more likely for you to do them. Plus, it feels quite good to tick things off once you’ve completed them!  

Also, if you’re keeping yourself busy and allocating time slots for everything you need to get done, you have less time to start scrolling through social media and get lost down a rabbit hole of content. 

Bonus tip: start taking notes with a pen and paper instead of your phone or laptop, for a little less blue light exposure. 

Try getting some wheatgrass in at breakfast time

Looking at our screens all day, whether it’s for work or for pleasure, can actually be super damaging to our skin and our eyes. The blue light that’s given off is very harmful and can damage your retinas, blur your vision, and pigment your skin.  

Luckily, wheatgrass has a load of vitamin A, which will help keep your skin and vision healthy. Try adding a tbsp to a smoothie, a glass of water or your favourite juice. Spirulina is also absolutely stacked with vitamin A (which also happens to be great for supporting immunity).

Set yourself boundaries

Like we said, you need to find a balance, and setting some boundaries between you and your phone is a great way to do this. Make sure they’re achievable though, otherwise this won’t work. Try turning off your notifications – maybe start with one app at a time and gradually build up until you’re not picking up your phone every 5 minutes, but every 2 hours instead. 

You are also able to go into your phone settings and set yourself screen time limits for each app. You’ll be notified when you’ve reached your limit and it will help you gain more perspective on just how much time you’re spending on your phone.  

If none of these tips work, you’ll have to take it to the next level: physically distancing yourself from your phone.  

If you know you have a task to do or a deadline to meet but you keep getting distracted, put your phone in another room and get on with what you’re doing. After a while you’ll forget about it altogether.  

Then, when you’re done, you get the treat of going back on your pone for 5-10 minutes and catching up with everything you missed. 

Do some exercise

An obvious tip for detoxifying digitally, is to get outside and go for a run, a walk or even do some yoga in the park!  

Connecting with nature is very helpful, it makes us appreciate the world around us in real time, instead of through a screen.  

Social media can get us down sometimes, so it’s great to get some exercise as it releases endorphins, our happy hormones. Try doing some light outdoorsy exercise in your lunch break, between lectures, or after work. Exercise will also tire you out, ensuring you’ll have an easier time getting to sleep that evening. 

Have a Cacao Maca Latte before bed

Being on our screens all day also effects how we sleep, the blue light supresses the body’s release of melatonin, the hormone that makes us feel sleepy.  

To fix this problem, try turning your screen off at least an hour before you’re planning to go to sleep and make yourself a cacao maca latte (basically a healthy hot chocolate.)  

Just mix 1 tbsp of Cacao powder (add more if you want it to be more chocolatey,) 1 tsp of Maca powder and a sweetener and plant milk of your choice.  

Put it in the microwave for 2 minutes and voila! A drink that’ll help you relax whilst you read a book, ready to fall asleep. 

We know that no one’s perfect, sometimes it’s hard to avoid the screen as much as you’d like. But just make sure that the rest of the time, you’re doing your best to minimise your screen time, you’ll be able to tell the difference in your wellbeing after a while.