Why you shouldn’t look at your phone in the morning!

Wake up! 

Imagine this scenario: it’s morning, your alarm has gone off (or one of your children has wondered into your room to wake you up), you slowly begin to open your eyes, and you blink a few times as your eyes adjust to the light in the room. You sit up on the edge of your bed and the first thing you reach for is your phone. Maybe to turn the alarm off, or to check the time. Several minutes later you realise you’ve gone down a rabbit hole of Instagram reels or reading some catastrophic story on the news. You feel a sense of unease about the day ahead. I bet most of you can relate to this, right? If you’re anything like me, this is the routine most mornings.

But we can do something about it. 

Quick fixes don’t work 

There is no question that our phones are addictive. Maybe not clinically addictive (addiction in the clinical sense is a chronic, relapsing disorder characterised by compulsive use despite adverse consequences) but there is no doubt that many of us feel lost without our phones in our hands. One of the reasons phones are so appealing to us is that neuroscientists have found they release dopamine quickly.

Why is this a problem?  

Dopamine is a hormone that can make us feel good and it activates the reward centre in our brain. That is, when we do a behaviour that leads to a dopamine release, the feel-good reward centre lights up and our brains learn to repeat that behaviour. This is why dopamine is often referred to as the learning hormone – we release it when we learn new things, achieve something or are productive.  

The problem with quick dopamine from phone usage is that it’s easy and requires no effort. Turn on your phone, watch a funny meme – bang! Dopamine. It’s like a sugar-hit – you get it, you feel good, it disappears quickly, you want more. In her book Rewire, neuroscientist, Nicole Vinola, explains that “doom-scrolling first thing promotes reward-seeking behaviour early on... you’ll be chasing quick rewards for the rest of the day.” Our brains get used to this quick, easy dopamine and the slow, effortful dopamine we get from say reading a book, meditating or tidying our rooms feels far less appealing.  

The first 30 minutes 

Another reason reaching for our phones first thing in the morning is problematic is because of another hormone, cortisol – the stress hormone. When we wake in the morning, our cortisol levels naturally spike. That gives us energy to get up and do all of the things we need to do that day. The first 30 minutes after waking is a very sensitive period for cortisol and if we experience a stressful event in this period, our cortisol levels spike even higher and they can then remain high for the rest of the day making us feel stressed out for longer. Therefore, stress scientist Dr Elissa Epel recommends not looking at your phone for the first 30mins after waking. The last thing you want to do is read an email that will stress you out or read a depressing news story in that first 30mins after waking. Dr Epel says, “How we wake up, those first few precious minutes after our eyes fly open...has a huge influence over the rest of our day – and, in fact, over our stress resilience and our physiology.”  

Start full, end full 

So, what could you do instead? In The Stress Prescription, Dr Epel recommends that we ‘start full and end full’, meaning that we start our days as positively as we can and we end them in the same way. Starting full might look like: 

• Opening your curtains wide and soaking up the early morning light is one of the best things you can do as it resets your circadian rhythms and will help you sleep better that night.  

• Gentle stretching to unfurl your body after being sedentary for several hours of sleep. 

• Drink a glass of water before your first tea or coffee would help too – we actually sweat a lot in bed (especially in the warmer weather) and dehydration is your brain’s enemy, so rehydrate instead!  

• Retrain your brain to enjoy the satisfaction of slower-release, more effortful dopamine – read a chapter of a book, tidy a room in your house, or meditate. 

• In the evening, journal and write down three things from your day that went well for you. 

• Have a warm bath, dim the lights, put on some chill-out music and relaaaaaaaax! 

• Do whatever brings you joy and enjoy small daily pleasures.  

The challenge 

I am certainly guilty of being on my phone too much and I have been experimenting with leaving my phone in another room after I wake up and it really does make a difference. I feel less stressed. I connect more with my wife and my two boys. And I generally feel better about myself!  

So, give it ago. For one week, I challenge you to not look at your phone for the first 30 minutes after you wake up, choose to do something more joyful, productive and effortful and see if it works for you.