3 rock-solid reasons why you need to stop checking your phone first thing in the morning

Morning routine in the 90s: Kick-start the day with a glass of lukewarm lemon water, read the newspaper, offer morning prayers, take a refreshing shower, and enjoy a king-size breakfast before heading out for work.

Present day: Kickstart the day jumping out of bed when the phone’s alarm strikes, drink lemon water while checking your mails, messages, and social-media feed, read news of the news apps, shower while listening to songs playing on the phone, stuff your mouth with whatever food is found in the fridge, and run for work, while answering calls, of course. 

Surely, life has become more hectic than ever before. But have you also noticed how smartphones, which were meant to make our busy lives smoother, have become a huge part of our mornings and are also leading to a complete mad morning rush? 

Surely, smartphone usage is linked to countless health issues like weak eyesight, cervical pain, headaches, stress, anxiety, and depression. But, using them at the very start of your day is even worse and here’s why you should stop doing that:

Because you don’t want to kick-start your day on an anxious note
You must be living on another planet if you’re still unaware of how capable the combined power of social media and smartphones is of causing stress and anxiety in life. 

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Several studies including the one conducted at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden have stated the obvious and well—the worrisome: Smartphone usage is linked with stress, anxiety, and the worst—depression!

After all, all those work messages making you tense or scrolling through social media feeds of people with fit bods or those on fun holidays giving you a major FOMO—all this at the start of your day—can seriously ruin it for you.

Take this quiz to know how addicted are you to your smartphone? 

Neither do you want to waste your morning browsing your phone
If you’ve ever felt anxious about being unable to take your phone to the loo to keep you company during your morning dump, congratulations! You’re a bona fide smartphone addict. 

A study conducted at Harvard University explains how this terrible addiction can lead to you wasting your precious time. 

Basically, our brain releases a chemical called dopamine whenever a rewarding experience comes by. The “rewarding experience” in this case, could be anything from a notification about a like on your picture on social media to a sweet text from a loved one.

In turn, dopamine makes us feel good and happy. However, it also inculcates an addiction, that makes us want to experience another reward, and another one, just one more time, again. And thus, begins the vicious cycle of checking your phone again and again in a bid to feel good. 

No points for guessing, starting your day with a dopamine rush can make you want to keep checking your phone all day, apart from wasting your morning time on social media.

Also, read: Don’t let your smartphone become a pain in your neck and avoid text neck with these tips

Obviously, you don’t wanna become dumber by the day
A research conducted at the University of Waterloo and published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior found smartphone users to be dumber in the sense that they tend to not act on the information or give it the thought it deserves when they come across information through their smartphones as opposed to when they read it off a book. 

Think about it. We all check our smartphones for the latest news in the morning, don’t we? Now, if we were to read the same piece of news in the morning paper, perhaps, we’d be able to judge and soak in the information way better. (Just wondering if that’s part of the reason why so many people are still pro the Citizenship Amendment Act and the proposed National Citizen Register?)

So, stop doing that already!
If these points aren’t enough to rattle you and get you off your phones, at least early in the morning, God help you. 

However, if we were successful in our endeavour, then you can try to form healthy morning habits like meditating, exercising, and having a good breakfast with your family before leaving the house and checking your phones later, okay?