I am My Phone & My Phone Is Me

Kids are swimming in screens—and they need caring adults who can turn “just one more video” into two minutes of movement, focus, and joy. Our Unplug & Play: Blackout Sale makes it easy to get certified from home and start leading playful screen-breaks kids actually love. To help you right now, here’s a gadget-themed mini class plan—“Phone Pause Flow”—that turns phone time into breath, balance, and connection.

You know how when we drop our phone (or it might have happened to you bumping your car or with another object) we scream ouch! and feel the pain in our bodies?

Our tools and devices, especially if we use them excessively become an extension of us. Unknowingly we identify with them.

Teens spend an average of seven hours and 22 minutes on their phones a day, and tweens -- ages 8 to 12 -- are not far behind, at four hours and 44 minutes daily not including

computer time for schoolwork, according to a new report. When figuring in activities such as reading books and listening to music, the numbers jumped to nine hours and 49 minutes for teens.

If we add to this school time and sleeping and eating, not much time is left for living…

I calculated for you here how many years of your life you may never get back:

Phone usage hours of use to years of your life calculator:

 

The majority of young people seem to be getting smartphones much earlier as well. By age 11, 53% of kids have their own smartphone, and by age 12, 69% of them do -- an increase from 41% in 2015.

And in the general spirit of consumerism, despite the capabilities of today's digital devices, young people are spending little time creating their own content such as making digital art and graphics, creating digital music, coding or designing or modifying their own video games.

. Their screen use tends to be dominated by consuming materials such as watching videos and television shows, playing games and using social media.

I get it, the world is different now than what it was when I was a kid. I also use a phone now and I wish I didn’t have to…

Studies show that too much screen time can affect you in many ways. Teens may be especially at risk, since adolescence is a critical time in the development of the brain. So as much as you might enjoy watching funny videos or texting with your best friend, it’s crucial to create habits that will give you a break from screen time.

Here’s why & how:

Trouble Sleeping

Excessive screen time can disrupt the amount and quality of sleep you’re getting. You may stay up later because you’re so involved with what’s happening on your device. 

The light from screens can also reduce the amount of melatonin your body produces. This chemical helps your body fall asleep, and stay asleep. Normally, your body releases

melatonin at night in response to darkness. Lights reduce melatonin production, keeping you awake.

Sleep is especially important for teens. Getting too little of it can weaken your immune system, making you more likely to get sick.

Sleep deprivation can also affect your ability to learn. You probably know that it’s hard to concentrate if you didn’t get enough sleep the night before. But it can also affect your memory. 

Sleep is the time when your brain stores what it’s learned during the day—making it possible for you to recall the information come test time.

Mood Changes

There is some evidence that too much scrolling and texting may also affect your emotional health.

Some studies suggest a link between higher levels of screen time and an increase in symptoms of depression. 

Many other factors also play a role in depression, and scientists are still investigating the relationship between screen time and mood.

Other studies have revealed that some kids who engage in excessive screen time experience changes in their mood and behaviour: They neglect responsibilities, turn to screens to deal with stress, and feel anxious when cut off from their devices.

Altering Your Brain

Too many hours on your phone may even cause physical changes to your brain. The cortex, the outer layer of the brain that processes information, undergoes critical development during adolescence, and research show that screen time may affect its growth. 

In a study called Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD), scientists discovered that some kids who use screens more than seven hours a day had a thinner cortex than those who use screens less. 

Tune Out

What scientists already know for sure is that everything you experience as a teen can affect your brain development. During your teens, the brain undergoes major changes. It’s essential to

challenge your brain in a variety of ways so that it can make connections to help you process information and solve problems in the future. That’s why it’s important to take time away from screens. 

The more you try new things, like sports, music, and cooking, the more skilled your brain will become. Screens may always be a part of your life, but they don’t have to be the main part

What about life, real life?

The screen world is not exactly real. At least not as real as the air you can breathe and the people and objects you can feel with your skin.

There are so many reasons why putting down your phone will make your life and the world a better place.

If you put down your phone you can stop filling your brain with images of politicians doing stupid things, of violent happenings worldwide and people writing nasty things about each other. This will make you happier and more inclined to get up and make a difference.

If you put down your phone you might look up and see the moon or an act of kindness or the person you love. You might even see an opportunity that could change your life or make the world a better place.

The truth is that we’re all addicted to our phones in one way or another, but we can beat those bad habits if we really want to. You might be surprised at how much more free time you have on your hands when you’re not constantly spending all of it on your phone. 

Go ahead, try it. You won’t be sorry that you did.

To Bring: Costumes and 2 phone booths (see below), paper and pens and envelopes if you can.

Intro

Who loves their phone?

How many hours a day do you think you use your phone?

(Teens spend an average of seven hours and 22 minutes on their phones a day according to statistics)

How would your world look different without your phone?

Is reducing screen time and enjoying real life more something you would like to do? Why?

Discuss these questions with your group and you can also refer to some of what I’ve written above if you need to.

5 Minutes

Taking A Selfie Sun Dance

Move through a fun Sun Salutation with a variety of poses, but in all of them lift one hand up and take an imaginary selfie smiling at the camera or making a sexy face.

Lifting one arm up will challenge you into some cool balancing poses too!

5-10 Minutes

Poses Holding An Imaginary Phone

Where do you use your phone?

Well, where not, right?

Together make up poses, all with holding an imagery phone, to suit different situations where you use your phone… Even inappropriate places such as while you are on the toilet or at dinner :-)

5 Minutes

Death By Instagram Challenging Poses

Do you know how people pose for an Instagram photo?

Well, it is very common in yoga that people will push themselves beyond their limits to get a good photo doing a fantastic yoga pose… Let’s do some Insta-worthy yoga now - Are you with me?

Standing In The Air - A really cool pose requiring quite a lot of skill… And it can also help you go high enough to find a good signal if your 5G connection is too weak ;-)

Let’s start with a preparation exercise called “Tada!”

Divide the group into pairs of similar sizes and have them stand facing each other holding each others’ wrists.

Keep your body strong and straight (straight back, straight legs, straight arms, shoulders pulled back), look into each other's eyes and lean away from each other to come to “Tada!”.

The feeling should be like you are going to fall back if you let go… But of course, you don’t let go :-)

Communicate with your weight until you find a good balance here, and actually, the more you lean away/fall away from each other the more steady it will feel.

If it feels steady enough, let go of one hand and stretch your arms away from you and say “Tada!”! AWESOME!

Now for Standing In The Air…

Divide into groups of 4 of similar size bodies.

One person will start in a flat Cat Pose, another will be the base and will sit on the table, a 3rd will be the flyer and start holding wrists with the base and placing one foot at 45 degrees on the base’s thigh, a 4th will stand behind the flyer to make sure that they NEVER fall back (stay SUPER ALERT please).

From here, the flyer steps up with their 2nd foot on the base’s thigh to come and stands up straight. And please FLYERS, stand STRAIGHT! If your bum sticks out you will be pulled back to the floor behind you… The Mini Teacher is there but we don’t want to test it, ok?

Once the flyer is standing up we go through the same process as in “Taada!”. The base has the control as both flyer and base lean away. Again keep everything straight (straight back, straight legs, straight arms, shoulders pulled back)!

 

Once the base finds their balance here, they can shake their bum a bit to signal the person in Cat Pose to move away (that person can become a 2nd mini teacher now standing behind the base) and then the flyer and the base are in Standing In The Air independently - Yay!

If you feel steady here you can follow again the same steps as we did in “Tada!”, let go of one hand and stretch your arms away from you and say “Tada!” forming the letter “Y” with your bodies together.

Hold your imaginary phone up in the air and take that imaginary Insa-worthy picture - Smile!

If doing it with young kids, you can be the base for all of them, one after the other. Here’s a little video for that too: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Qb1vfq5bTh_KK3V2KEtWFlwpdE7egd8E/view?usp=sharing

To come out, the flyer SLOWLY steps down.

Have the mini teachers there all the time to keep everyone safe.

10 Minutes

 

What Would You Do Without It?

You know, people somehow survived without smartphones… I was in my mid 20’s when I got my first Nokia (not a smartphone) cell.

And you know what? We did just fine without them.

In fact, we had more time on our hands to hang around and enjoy life.

Our work and our social life didn’t invade with beeps and flashes and vibrations our chill out time. I think it was great.

So let’s imagine that our phones are all broken:

Broken Phone (Chinese Whispers) - Everyone sits in a circle or a line.

One player picks a yoga pose and makes a word or a sentence with a positive message relating to that pose.

They whisper the positive message to the person next to them and assume the yoga pose with their body.

The pose and the message are passed from one kid to another around the circle or down the line.  When each kid finishes passing the message, they do the yoga pose and stay in it.

See how much the message changes or “evolves” by the time it returns to you or reaches the end of the line.

 

More fun in this game… Play the same game but replace whispering with drawing a letter, a word or a picture (it will be like texting on a phone) with your finger on the next person’s back.

When you communicate over chat TicToc, Snapchat etc, do you sometimes feels that your message was misunderstood?

Phone Booth Costume Change - So when I was your age and out and about and needed to call home I used a public payphone. Have you ever seen one of those?

To play this game, you will need two phone booths. You can make them from empty refrigerator boxes or some cloth that you hang at the corners of the room or use the closet or the corridor outside the classroom or the bathroom. You can also hang phone booth signs side-by-side on a free-standing room divider or hang a curtain over a corner of the room to create a shared phone booth space.

Divide the students into two teams. Give each team two sets of the following costume items (this is just a Superman-inspired theme, but any costumes will work) :

• A suit jacket

• Tie

• Glasses

• Superhero cape

• Superhero t-shirt

• Superhero mask

Place the superhero costumes inside the phone booth. Place the business suit items in front of the teams. 

On “go!”, the first players in line must put on ordinary clothes, run into the phone booth and change into the superhero costumes, including the cape, T-shirt, and mask. They must then come out of the phone booth, run around a pre-determined course and then back into the booth to change back to the business suit. They have to then return to their teams, take the suit, tie and glasses off, and give them to the next players in line, who have to repeat all of the actions of the first player. 

This continues until all players have done the phone booth costume change. The first team to complete the relay wins.

Yay!

“I Spy (DO POSE)” - So when I was little, instead of the family all being on their phone during a car ride, we used to play I-Spy!

In this yoga version of the game, instead of saying what you spy you will do the pose of it (you can invent new poses too) - You will show with your body what you see and the other people will need to guess what it is.

If anyone thinks they know what you are spying they say it with words and if they got it right they become the next person to say “I Spy (DO POSE)”, 

Write A Letter To A Friend - So before phones people used to write letters to each other. That was so nice. Now I only get bills in the mail… and online shopping of course :-)

Take a moment to think about what you would do if you had more time on your hands (because you stopped using your phone for 7-8 hours a day… WOW! That’s so much time!) and then write a letter to a friend or a family member about that and the quality time and fun things you are inviting them to do with you in this extra time that opened up for you because you decided to finally put your phone down.

Take your time.

If you have time and if people want to share after finishing writing, that’s great too!

And please do give that letter to the person intended and see how much fun and how much connection you can create when phones are absent. Of course, consider not bringing your phone for that special day/afternoon.

15-20 Minutes

Brain Storming - Tips for “Turning Off”

Let’s come up together with some strategies on how to teach ourselves not to be so attached/addicted to our phones and create healthier relationships with our devices.

Here are a few:

1. Use an app to track your screen time and set a limit for it. There are also some cool qestioners to help you figure out what is your relationship with your phone (https://virtual-addiction.com/smartphone-compulsion-test/)

2. Turn off all screens 30 to 60 minutes before you go to sleep. You’ll fall asleep more easily and feel better rested in the morning.

3. Schedule time to do things with your screens turned off: Go outside, try a new hobby, and hang out with friends without your phones.

4. Exercise (or do yoga) - You’ll feel a natural boost of your brain’s feel-good chemicals.

5. Keep a journal of how screen time makes you feel. Anxious or stressed? Talk to your parents, a school counsellor, or your doctor for help.

What else?

5 Minutes

Recharging Relaxation

Lie down and close your eyes.

Breath deeply.

Imagine that you are your phone, but a big full-body version on it.

Imagine that your arms and legs are phone cords and that you are plugging yourself to the electric socket to recharge yourself.

Imagine those green charging lights slowly growing and filling up your body starting from your toes and slowly climbing up through your legs, your torso, your arms, your shoulders and neck and your head until you are fully charged.

It may take 5-10 minutes to fully charge. Take your time.

Now stretch your arms and legs, disconnect your charging cables, yawn a bit if you need too and sit up ready for a wonderful day.

5-10 Minutes