When asked by Brendan O’Connor about ‘Nokia Sundays’, Niall Breslin joked that it’s “the new Mass”, but it certainly does sound like it’s been a transformative practice for the musician and mental health advocate.
The podcaster joined O’Connor on his radio show last weekend to share how ditching his smartphone for one day a week has helped him become more present, grounded and in touch with his community, and how he balances time off with the parts of using smartphones that he actually enjoys.
He explained that the digital detox happened “more out of necessity”, as he’s at the “business end” of a PhD and was working toward book deadlines. “I kind of just got that wake up call that most of us were getting that I was being completely and utterly swallowed by my phone. It wasn’t normal.”
He recalled the moment that wake up call came in the form of a notification about his screen time while struggling to find time to work on his deadlines.
“I got this text that said I’d used my phone 11 hours a day on average, and I felt physically sick. I thought, there’s something wrong here because I was fighting for hours, I’d been looking for an hour in the day to get the writing done and I was spending 11 hours on my phone. That’s not normal.”
Breslin compares the feeling of being attached to his smart phone as to being “suffocated by it”. “I was going to the toilet and checking for my phone, when did that happen? It became so automatic and so ingrained in me that … for my own personal perspective, this wasn’t normal. I didn’t like this.”
It wasn’t until he was in a hardware store one day and spotted a Nokia phone for sale for €20 that he thought of a way out of the behaviour.
“My biggest anxiety is, if somebody I love needs me and they can’t get hold of me, that freaks me out.” So he gave his loved ones the number to the new phone and said, “don’t ring me unless you need me”, he explained. And so Nokia Sundays was born.
But it wasn’t a sudden transition, either. He developed his own personal four-week plan to shift his phone use, while also stressing to O’Connor that there were a lot of benefits to his phone, too.
“Some of the funniest things I’ve ever seen in my life have been on my phone. I’ve learned to do things”, je said, adding that he’s not in favour of cutting out smartphones entirely. “Like everything in the world, it requires balance.”
He started by taking one app off his phone a day, so that by the end of the week seven apps were gone. “If we could get rid of WhatsApp my life would be a hell of a lot easier. I find that the worst because there’s an entitlement to your attention”, he said, adding that he’s not immune to feeling that sense of entitlement when he’s left on read!
For the second week, he did “7-7-7”: “The phone goes off at 7pm, doesn’t go on until 7am for seven days.”
Week three involved limiting his screen time to just three hours a day. Breslin stressed he still wants to be engaged with the world and keep updated on world events. “I don’t want to just pretend the world doesn’t exist outside my four walls, but three hours is enough to do that.”
For the final week, he came off his smartphone completely.
He said he felt physical benefits of coming off the phone, and it helped him be more present and turn toward his community more: “You can’t be in your community if you’re not there.”
Listen back to the full interview here or by clicking above.
