Log Off

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“[A] workbook to reset your relationship with your phone.”
—NPR, Life Kit

Join the Digital Detox movement and and spend more of your free time on the things you love!

Whether you’re trying Flip Phone February or just want to explore how to break-up with your smartphone, this fun book is full of quizzes, tips, tricks, and guided journaling space to help you learn digital minimalism and its mental health benefits.

Studies show that a life spent offline is a happier and healthier one but we know that breaking up with your phone is hard to do. Enter Sammy Nickalls and her life-affirming digital minimalism workbook. You’ll find the pathway to creating a healthy relationship with your phone with fun features including,

* Quizzes – figure out if you’re too online and what kind of digital minimalist you are 
* Tips & Tricks – ways to cut down on screen time, how to get started, how to use social media without the #FOMO, and how to stop interrupting your sleep 
* Guided Journaling Prompts – identify your top internet stressors and figure out ways to spend your time IRL 
* Challenges – a guided 14-day digital detox 
* Daily Trackers – mindfulness exercises and reflection prompts 
* App Recommendations – declutter your home screen and build your logging-off toolbox! 

When you Log Off, you’ll reconnect with yourself, focus on your in-person connections, gain a happier outlook, and transform your life!”A realistic guide to digital detoxing that gives readers tools to help them put down their devices and improve their mental health, all while recognizing that social media isn’t an all-or-nothing game.”
—Teen Vogue

“[A] workbook to reset your relationship with your phone.”
—NPR, Life KitSAMMY NICKALLS has been an editor at Adweek and Esquire, and is currently a freelance writer for Teen Vogue. You can find her work at outlets including Observer, SELF, To Write Love on Her Arms, VICE, Vulture, and the Wall Street Journal. Sammy is a graduate student pursuing her master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling at Lebanon Valley College in Pennsylvania. In 2015, she created the hashtag #TalkingAboutIt, which invites social media users to share about their mental health openly and honestly. The hashtag has been mentioned in outlets including Cosmopolitan, The Mary Sue, The New Republic, and New York Times. In 2020, Sammy Nickalls spoke to experts about therapy and other mental health options in the age of social distancing for the Teen Vogue article “How to Get Mental Health Help During the Pandemic.” She is the author of Log Off: Self-Help for the Extremely Online, a digital minimalist workbook, and currently resides in Pennsylvania.Introduction: Logging Off Is Hard to Do
Isn’t it obnoxious when someone goes on and on about “digital detoxing”? Like, we get it, you think you’re “evolved” or whatever.
 
Besides, I’d say that by now, most of us have grasped the concept that being on your phone too much is Bad. It’s been shoved in our faces by the news with clickbait and shocking chyrons; preached to us by older generations who jump at the chance to talk about how social media wasn’t around when they were growing up; and detailed in (admittedly terrifying) documentaries like The Social Dilemma.
 
So what’s the problem? In a nutshell, studies show that in 2020, American teens spent an average of seven and a half hours on their phone daily–and that we should be spending less than two hours a day on screen time if we want to, ya know, not be miserable.
 
Let’s be real, though: it’s just not that easy! Within our screens are also our friends, our connections, our networks, and–particularly during the pandemic–our strongest link to the world at large. Like, try detoxing from that, buddy.
 
But after years of rolling my eyes at what then felt like a stuffy holier-than-thou platitude, I was forced to reconsider when I hit ultimate burnout. For the majority of my twenties, I had spent my life online and depended on it for my career, but I had started to let it control me. Not comprehending that it was an impossible feat, I tried to structure my life at the pace of the internet, packing my schedule with Twitter friend meet-ups and news events and work obligations and lord knows what else. It didn’t even occur to me until it was too late that I didn’t really want to be doing any of it, because I was just so tired. And all the while, I was refreshing my feeds, trying to figure out how I could be more, more, more, not realizing I already was enough, just how I was.
 
Eventually, I ended up in the hospital with a neurological condition, and I shut down all my social media for six months.
 
I’ve since come back online, but as I’ve worked to improve my self-esteem and adopt a healthier way of living, I’ve had to learn how to manage my boundaries with social media and my phone so I can use it in a way that doesn’t make me want to launch myself into a volcano. And here’s a shocker for you: it’s helped me love myself so, so much more.
 
If you’ve picked up this book, you probably already feel like you should use your phone a little less. But I promise that if you stay with me (and don’t abandon the book for your phone, as tempting as it may be!), you won’t just learn how to decrease your screen time–you will stop wanting to use your phone, because life around you will seem so much sweeter by comparison.CN

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