From Zoom and Slack to Netflix and YouTube, most of our lives have been spent in front of a screen during the pandemic. The number of social media users in Egypt increased 7% in 2020 to 42 mn people, while we clocked in an average of 7 hours, 21 minutes on the internet every day and around 3 hours for each of social media and watching TV. Meanwhile, in the US, people now spend more time on their screens than they sleep on average, with adults adding one hour of digital time in 2020 for an average of 7 hours, 50 minutes per person.

So how do you disconnect?

Monitoring your screen time: If you actually tracked how much time you spend in front of a screen it will probably surprise you. You can do this — and measure how your time is being spent — by using in-built screen time functions in smartphones, or download apps to help you focus on productive tasks such as Forest or Moment.

Kill those push notifications: Let’s face it. It’s not strictly necessary that you need to know your like count in real time, or to be told constantly about new Reddit posts. Preventing some of these apps from distracting you with constant notifications will go a long way to helping you reduce your screen time.

The phone ban. Taking the drastic step of banning phone use at the dinner table, for example, is likely to prove controversial with other members of the family. But you can set for yourself phone-free spaces or even days of the week. Try leaving your phone on the kitchen table while you sleep. Or think about allocating phone-free times of the day.

Don’t be too hard on yourself though: Being in front of a screen has become a “survival tool” in the covid era — as the Washington Post puts it. Screens have become our portals to employment, education, and community during the pandemic, and even the World Health Organization (WHO) encouraged people to play video games to stay at home. Isolated seniors used family video calls to avoid loneliness, depressed individuals participated in group yoga sessions, and many people used their laptops to upskill themselves. So perhaps it’s not about the time spent on screens, but about what you’re doing when you’re using them.