Timer Activated

We all need to figure out how to set boundaries in life!

The technology that we are surrounded with and interact with every single day is pretty remarkable. It's so pervasive and complex, that at this point most people don't have a firm grasp of it. We've been using the stuff for long enough that things just run themselves in a lot of ways, and there isn't a lot of foundational knowledge. There are people who run specific elements, and then each element has layers.

With that type of pervasive and encompassing technology, one of the things that is designed into them and into so many other aspects is the ability to suck you in and keep you there as long as possible. There is a lot of addiction science behind this stuff and it's fairly nefarious, to say the least.

A prime example is that in the 1940's and 50's, the desert in Nevada was essentially nothing. Then it started to build and become Las Vegas. There were scientists that were brought in years later and one of the things they studied and were directed to do was figure out how to keep people inside the casinos longer. That would make them spend more money, and the business would win, even if the people had won money overall. They would get a good return on investment if they kept them in there longer, since the odds were in the houses favor.

One of the primary ways they figured out how to manipulate people psychologically was through the use of extremely potent blue-focused light. The light spectrum is quite long and complicated, and blue is one aspect of that spectrum that we get on a daily basis from exposure to the sun. What is NOT natural is focused and refined blue-only light. I don't know the exact science behind the blue light and what it does to your brain, but Dr. Jack Kruse and Dr. Alexis Cowan are incredibly smart on that topic and can explain it much more eloquently than I can.

What is the biggest source of that nefarious blue light in our modern environment today? Phones! What do all of the phones do? Have apps that keep you on there scrolling, and scrolling and scrolling. They suck you in with small, frequent dopamine hits and you are on the dopamine train so long that you get out of it in a daze and sometimes feel sick. It's pretty nasty stuff!

I thankfully haven't been as sucked into that type of environment as others have, but I am vulnerable to it. Thankfully I am well aware of the issue and the potential dangers associated with it so I took steps recently to fix it!

On most of the modern phones, we have various settings that we can now apply. One of those settings is a timeout feature! We can set a timer on specific apps like the social media apps, and have it go off and lock us out of the app. Of course we can override that lock, but at the same time it's a lock for a reason! If you were watching a movie and the main character was staring at their phone for 2 hours, it would be a pretty fucking boring movie, wouldn't it? Well that's what life is!

It's been a few weeks since I've put the timeout lock on the app and I can say that thankfully even though it's a 2 hour lock, I have not hit it once! I don't lock keychain, but I do lock another social media app that I use that is fun and has decent content on it, but it is for sure addicting. Having that time limit set on it has for sure allowed me to focus more on the day to day stuff than it has in a while, so that's good!

What about you, have you taken steps to reduce your app addiction like this? Let me know in the comments!