Another strategy Dr. Mark recommended is to increase your self-awareness about your technology use. When you have an urge to open Instagram, for example, ask yourself why: Do you feel exhausted and need a break? Will this help restore you? If so, go for it. After a few minutes, check in again and ask if the app is still giving you value. If not, it’s time to get back to work.
Neither Dr. Mark nor Dr. Rosen are fans of trying to go cold turkey by declaring a phone-free day or using software to block certain websites. People inevitably return to their old habits when they have access again, and they don’t improve their self control.
Try deep reading (on paper).
Tech breaks and self-awareness can help you control the urge to jump from screen to screen, but Maryanne Wolf, a professor-in-residence at the University of California, Los Angeles Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, said that even when we’re reading just one screen, we aren’t engaging with it deeply. That’s because screens are designed to make us read very quickly — to scan, skim and scroll. As a result, we don’t give the text our full attention and are more apt to miss information.
“The nature of a screen, if you just think about it, is to constantly refresh the information,” Dr. Wolf said. “There is a psychological mind-set to go from the start to the finish as quickly as possible.”
Traditionally, our brains tended to read print materials more slowly, in part because we were more likely to go back and double-check what we just read. That extra time lent itself to sophisticated mental processes like critical analysis, inference, deduction and empathy.
Unfortunately, simply printing out an article or opting for a paperback book instead of your Kindle won’t guarantee that you suddenly become a more engaged reader. Our brains adapt to read in the style of the medium we use most often, and chances are you spend a lot more time reading on a screen than you do on paper. As a result, Dr. Wolf said, you likely now read in print the way you read on a screen.
“Many people have lost the ability to really immerse themselves,” she said. “We have developed a cognitive impatience about our reading.”
