In this day & age, how can I disconnect for mental health?

I don’t know…I guess there is a period of adjustment when you get used to not replying instantly, people get used to you not being online 24/7, you start not to worry about what you’ll wake up to etc etc.

The world revolved for decades and decades before mobile phone/internet etc and plenty of people still function without it. I don’t imagine it’ll be that easy initially but I think it would settle into a new normal after a little while. Good luck!

I was having anxiety this summer and discovered my phone use was contributing. I set FIRM boundaries regarding work check ins. I check my work email once after 6 pm and respond only to true emergencies. I respect my coworkers and keep business to business hours unless it’s an emergency. For the phone use in general it’s hard to be your own police officer at least for me because I can convince myself it’s ok this one time and it gets out of control so I started only using my phone while standing up. Apple sends a report each week and I cut my usage by 60% using this trick. Try it for a week.

I don’t have a child in school where I have to be connected to teacher email and school platforms. I imagine that, in itself, is challenging to keep up with. But the rest just needs boundaries. And, like gar posted, takes an adjustment period to get used to the reduced amount of checking for updates and being connected.

And not all of it is bad. I am in a Pickleball league and am part of a group text with 14 other players. We generally text for pick up games and to see who will be at the courts in the evenings. That thread pings my phone all day long. I am not as well known as some of the girls in the league because I don’t chat all day long in the thread. I’ve missed out on getting together because I didn’t check the thread. But that’s okay. I can’t be connected everywhere all the time.

I backed out of Facebook and just never looked back. It felt weird to be without it initially. But I don’t miss it at all.

I don't watch the news as much either. I read more than watch these days. That was a habit to break. It was just something routine I did in the evenings. Finding other activities to replace that helped.  

I do not ever check my work email or respond to anything from work that comes to my private email. Ever.

As Julee mentioned "I backed out of FB and never looked back" - I am working on this. And Instagram too.

Change your settings so no one can see you read or didn’t read, any texts.
I don’t watch the news very much at all. I turn on other channels. HGTV, QVC are high on the list. Sometimes I will go online to my local news website, to see if anything big is happening.
I went off Facebook. At first I had a little fear of missing out. But honestly, it has helped a LOT. People at work now know I’m not on so if anything interesting or important is on there, they tell me or show me at work. No close family was on, so nothing missing there.
I am on instagram but only follow inspirational people/groups so it’s always uplifting messages.
And if you find it being difficult, just remind yourself we all survived before we became so accessible. And you will really feel after a short time, that the world is still spinning-even though you’re not doing all the things. And if it feels like a lot, start with not watching the news. Do that for a few days/week. Listen to podcasts instead.
Then go into the next….

Let them know that are available between the hours and A and B.

If needed remove yourself from the group texts or whatever.

Do you have to use Class DOJO?

You need to set some healthy boundaries.

If you have an iPhone, in addition to turning off Read Receipts in Messages, you might want to check out the new feature called Focus that was just introduced in the iOS 15 update. Basically it allows you to set up multiple profiles for your phone based on which apps and notifications you want to receive. Once a specific Focus is turned on, it changes the notifications, and your Home Screen, to only allow apps that you want to use during that specific part of your day. It’s highly customizable and you can set up multiple profiles. Here are a couple of videos that walk you through how it works and how to set it up.

IOS 15 Focus Mode — Zollotech

iOS 15 Focus Mode — Lyric Walker

My kids aren't in school anymore, so I can't say what I would do with that aspect of being connected.

But as for work, I am an officer of our medium sized family business, and I set that boundary years ago. I will admit to checking my email frequently, but I do not respond. I don't talk about it outside of work, and keep MY time as my time. Turn your read receipt off, so they don't know you see them.

Facebook has been limited to close friends and family. It's not enough anymore that our kids went to school together, or we went to high school together. And most of my feed is interest groups like books, cooking, or scrapbooking.

I only watch the news about once a day. I try to get both world news and local news in the evening.

I'm sorry you are getting stressed by all the demands and pulls on your time. It is up to you to set some boundaries with your time and let everyone else deal with it. Here are some things to try.

Phone - utilize all the settings available to stop notifications and read receipts.  Set your phone so that only extremely important calls can get through after a certain hour each night.  9 pm is a good time I find.  Growing up the rule was no calls before 9 am and none after 9 pm.  As an adult I understand and appreciate that rule.  Set your phone to do not disturb at your cut-off time.  Utilize Voicemail by letting calls roll over.  If someone doesn't leave a message, it probably wasn't that important.

Computer - again, use the settings available to you.  Set timers to limit use.  Delete bookmarks for all those sites that are causing stress.  
  
Classroom DOJO - no clue what this is (no young kids), but again, stop notifications at a certain point in the evening.  

Ask yourself what can you do about anything that comes up during the night.  For the vast majority of it the answer is nothing.  For the very few things that you might be able to do something, then allow those numbers to come through the do not disturb setting.   I learned a good lesson about being disconnected years ago when we lived in Africa.  There was no internet, no cell phones, no satellite tv, etc.  I had no clue what was going on 24/7 and guess what.  The world went on.  What happened was going to happen regardless if I knew about it or not.   I had/have no control over anything outside of my realm - and neither does anyone else.  Letting go of that sense of having to know immediately is linked to control.   As much as we want, we simply cannot control that much.

Cutting off the tv news becomes much easier when you realize that IMO.   Pick your favorite 2-3 news sources and allow yourself to check those once or twice a day.  Anything more than 2-3 and it becomes repetition of the same stuff.  Rarely do you pick up additional information.  

Good luck with finding your boundaries and enforcing them.  Others may be put out at first, but that's on them.  Your mental health is your priority to deal with - not their feelings!

I would set that chat to silent on iPhone it’s under the i info at the top and hide alerts.

Turn it off. Don't watch, listen or search for the news. Just turn it off. When I pay attention to so much news I just get angry and sad and feel hopeless so I just don't watch/listen/see it any more. I see (inadvertantly mostly) enough to keep up with the big things but paying attention to the details of it all is just madness and I'm not inviting that into my life any more. It does affect my life in the big sense- taxes, health, etc, but on an actual day to day basis,, no it doesn't, and I'm not better off for adding all of that news crap to my life.

Set firm boundaries with work and tell every one what they are. Turn off 'read receipts' on your phone and then do not check it unless it's during your specified 'work hours'. The world will not stop or fall apart if you set these boundaries for yourself. Do it- it sounds like you need it!

News - Lot of it is just a rehash. I don’t have any news notifications on my phone.

DOJO - I don’t know what this is, but could the teacher be posting messages at night because that is the only time they have and they are not expecting an immediate response?

Text - I check the previews and don’t open the message until I plan to respond.

Start small. Put down the phone and ignore it for 15 minutes, then work up to an hour or more. The phone makes everything seem urgent, but in reality i don’t believe it is.

I work an air headed job for all those reasons.

I disconnect from work at the end of the day. I don’t read emails and I don’t have Teams on my phone. My other notification app (Telemediq), I make myself unavailable unless I am on call. 

Sure I have been caught off guard in the morning, but then I think about all the sleep I would have lost if I had known about it the night before. There is very little that can be done after hours anyway. 

If it is a true emergency, people can get ahold of me.