Breaking the Screen Habit

On 23rd August 2024, I decided to do the impossible, or at least what I considered to be impossible: quit doing a drug, a drug that everybody uses nowadays. It is used for work, for school, and also for fun or to just pass the time. It is a drug that is essential to one's life, but if taken too much can cause some serious harm to mental health. The drug I am talking about here is the mobile phone. It is very similar to those pharmacy drugs.

When I got addicted to the phone, there were some changes in me. They were first noticed by my mother. These changes included my casual behaviour, a deteriorating attention span. I was no longer as attentive or focused on my studies. I began withdrawing from others, and my once extrovert self became a shadow of the person I used to be. When my mom expressed her concerns, I ignored her. That went on for about a year until I had enough. I thought about what to do. Everything good about my personality was gone; all I wanted to do all day was scroll through my phone all day. But then I remembered one little thing our principal, Mrs Manju Sharma, told us in an assembly when I first came to this school: mobile fasting one day of the week. I tried it but failed, as one day does not comprehend when six are lost.

So I made an impetuous decision to just quit altogether.

It was hard. The first day I could not get any school work done; I couldn’t collect my thoughts. My mother helped me to stay motivated. The second day went surprisingly smoothly, but as soon as the clock struck eight, I started to feel the urge inside me to just take my phone, sneak somewhere, and just watch one little short or listen to one little song or watch one little meme. But instead, my mother told me to write my feelings down, which helped a lot. From then on, whenever I felt the urge to pick up my phone, I just wrote my heart away, and that’s how I completed 21 days of no phone. Since then, I have used it only when necessary, like to complete my school work when I am absent. And now, the secret to leaving behind an addiction is to do it all at once—don't cut down, just stop. Once you are motivated to stop, just remember motivation is like a fire that will help start the engine, but that will not last you forever. After that fire is out, discipline is what keeps that car running, and luckily, I never gave up on that discipline.

But a year later, I have become just as addicted, but my mother broke my phone, so it's cool now.