
I'll admit… I'm addicted to my phone.
And while my average screen time isn't atrociously high, hovering around 3.5 hours per day on average (the average Australian who spends an average of 5.67 hours per day), it's not great.
I'm a slave to fleeting dopamine hits that come from mindlessly scrolling through Instagram, often leading me onto random profiles of old high school acquaintances whom I haven't spoken to in over a decade. And even when I consciously make an effort to limit my time on Insta, a reply to a group chat or a message from my mum has the ability to send me back into the app's vortex of endless scrolling, leaving me wondering how the hell I ended up wasting yet another 10 minutes of my day.
My dependence on dopamine from my phone goes beyond social media. Even the simplest tasks, like unloading the dishwasher, feel excruciating without the soothing distraction of a podcast. Apparently, my own thoughts and experiencing any sort of boredom are so unbearable that I must constantly fill the silence with background noise? (Wot!).
And, so I realised it was time for a dopamine detox.
Watch: Life with or without your mobile phone. Post continues below.