4 months ago
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Last week, we talked about how Lily Allen and David Harbour are handling phone addiction. Their solution is to put a parental app on their phones and each make the other person the “parent” who controls what apps get downloaded. County music singer Morgan Wade, who you may remember as a possible third party during the Kyle Richards/Mauricio Umansky split, handled that issue in a completely different way. She did something that I’ve thought about but could never actually do: a 30-day “digital detox.” Morgan is now a brand ambassador for Brooks Running, and did an interview with People about taking a phone and social media break for the good of her mental health, as well as what she’s doing instead and how much taking a screen break has helped with her creativity.
Reading, not scrolling: “I look at this as a digital detox because it’s like, I’m not sitting there playing on my phone. I’m not scrolling, I’m not doing all that,” Wade says. “I put my phone on Do Not Disturb. I try to not be on social media very much. I haven’t logged into anything in a month. I’ve just been reading. I’ve read so much in this last month that I’ve not been picking up my phone every two seconds to just mindlessly scroll.”
Big results: “I’ve seen a big change in the last 30 days by getting rid of distractions.”
Forming a new routine: “I like to read and I journal. I just try to write down a few things that I’m grateful for and start my day off right. Then, I go into the gym. … I’m in there for a couple of hours, and I’m trying to make sure I get my vitamins in and do all this stuff.”
She looks at life differently now: “I have to sit back and be like, ‘Hey, are you doing the things that actually [matter]? Because I know the things that make me feel better, so it’s pushing myself to do those and just trying … to set the tone for my day.”
Running plays a big part on her mental and physical health: “It’s good for me to have that to focus on, outside of the music and everything else,” details the star, who recently ran an ultramarathon and plans to take part in more. She notes that running also inspires her creatively as an artist.
Her creativity is soaring: “I come up with all kinds of ideas,” Wade explains. “Sometimes I’ll stop and be like, ‘All right. You definitely have to put this in your phone. You have to make a voice note or something, so you remember this.’ “
Like I said, this is awesome. I (shamefully) still scroll Twitter when I am bored in the car or waiting in line at a store, but I find myself checking social media less and less these days. It started with me cutting down my Facebook usage during the sh-tshow that was 2020, which made me realize that I wasn’t missing out on anything by only checking it once or twice a day, tops. It also helps that I don’t really like watching videos on my phone, so I never got into watching TikTok or Instagram Reels. My husband often sets his phone on DND and we’ve both gotten good at not checking our phones constantly, which feels like another small step in the right direction. Our golden handcuffs lie in that we get our news digitally, through online newspaper subscriptions, websites, and blogs.
I love that Morgan mentions how much her creativity has prospered since her digital detox. I try to walk or hike three or four days a week (I live next to a state park and can walk there from my house) but even then, I’m not fully unplugged because I listen to podcasts. I find that when I go for walks or runs and manage to unplug, I fill that head space with ideas of my own. It’s tough to completely shut off because so much of what we do to unwind is tied to a screen of some sort. What does everyone else do when they want to cut down on screens? IDK, whenever I hear someone talking about how great it is to cut the cord, it makes me want to really make an effort to loosen the cord just a little bit further.
