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"Technology that crowds out our real-life interaction with others will lower our well-being and thus must be managed with great care in our lives." - Arthur C. Brooks in The Atlantic magazine
"You don't fix your problems by quitting social media; you quit social media by fixing your problems." - Sven Schnieders
Digital wellness has different meanings for different people as we live and adapt to so much technology in our lives. From a critical perspective, we read and hear stories about how social networking, always being connected to work, and the unhealthiness of sitting at a computer for long periods of time impact many aspects of our wellness. Then there is the more positive take on how technology in the form of fitness bands, health-related apps (e.g., meditation), and the power of how communication with friends and family supports our wellness.
The question can arise of what is the difference between digital citizenship and digital wellness. One way to understand the difference between (digital) citizenship and digital wellness, is that most citizenship curricula teach students to think about how their actions affect others. Digital wellness looks inward to help us think about how our use of technology affects our wellbeing.
Remember that a guiding principle of digital wellness is to engage the Character Strength of proactivity to help us take charge of how we use technology to support our interests, values, and wellness. :)
In reading the resources listed below, I came away with a question, especially regarding the growth and development of our children and, yes, of adults as well. I am seeing a lot written from the angle of how technology and social networks currently affect us. My question is, what do our children (and ourselves) miss out on when they (we) are on their (our) screens? In other words, what is the opportunity cost?
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Adult Support
Adult Support
Center for Humane Technology - Tips to improve digital wellness and to take back control over your tech use. Their Take Control toolkit provides a few steps to take to improve your digital wellbeing. They also provide a Youth Toolkit that offers a series of lessons for students.
Configure Your Devices - Use the article How to Configure Your iPhone to Work for You, Not Against You to think about how you use your devices to support your personal and work wellbeing needs. Search for similar articles if you have an Android device(s). Also, look to search for and review meditation, fitness, diet, and other wellness apps that you want to access on your devices.
Digital Health and Wellness - The College Libraries of Ontario share a learning module and wellness check-up.
E-Self-Care Practices - Provided by ReachOut.
Everything You Need to Break Up With Your Phone - This article from the Wirecutter consumer information section of the New York Times partially draws on the book How to Break Up With Your Phone to offer strategies, apps, and gear to help you be more in control of your phone. It is a consumer product site, so be ready for product endorsements. ;)
Gen Z Mental Health: The Impact of Tech and Social Media - Research report from the McKinsey Health Institute.
Google Wellbeing - The site provides insights and tools to help you think about and see how you are using tools from Google.
How Social-Media Can Add to Your Wellbeing (Not Detract From It) - Greater Good Magazine reports on how our agency can put us more in charge of using the technology for our benefit.
How to Survive in a World of Information Overload - Nir Eyal offers tips to connect your values to how you use your time to take in information.
NPR Life Kit - NPR offers a series of articles and podcasts focusing on many aspects of wellness. Their reporting includes life choices about digital wellness. Here is an example of their offerings.
Questions to Ask When Using Technology - L.M. Sacasas offers an extensive list of questions to ask oneself before using a specific technology. You can listen to the audio reading of the article and/or scroll down the page for the questions. | NY Times podcaster and journalist Ezra Klein dives deep with L.M. Sacasas to unpack several of the questions with exemplars. It is an episode really worth listening to.
Social Media Use and Poor Wellbeing Feed Into Each Other in a Vicious Cycle - Mental health researcher Dr. Hannah Jarman's research findings.
Taking Control of Technology -
The folks at Six Seconds share ideas and tips drawing from Stanford professor Nir Eyal's book Indistractable to help people take charge of how they use technology. Learn more about Dr. Eyal's approach that puts the responsibility of what tech is doing to us in our hands.
Do a digital detox for your wellbeing and go deep to better understand how your brain operates in a tech-filled world by reading Distracted: Ancient Brains in A High-Tech World.
Instead of doing a full digital detox look to reimagine triggers and form pacts.
Take control of your privacy, security and wellbeing.
Timeboxing and Time Blocking - User your calendar to limit activities you feel might take up too much of your time. Time blocking is to calendar events to target tasks on your agenda.
TrackYourHappiness.org - Go to this website to download their app (IOS only). You set up an account to start receiving periodic check-in questions. This research-supported app is a case of using technology to grow your self-awareness using cause-and-effect reasoning.
Trends in Digital Wellness - The Global Wellness Initiative lists several trends in this new field of study.
Children and Family Support
Children and Family Support
Family Digital Wellness> Schedule a family meeting to discuss the article Help Kids Balance Their Media Lives. You also can review the 3 Things Parents Need to Know article. The Mozilla Foundation that puts out the Firefox browser has a family tech talk guide. Go big and create a Family Mission Statement based on the values of your family.
Tech and media use can be an important part of your mission statement. You can also design and create a separate Tech/Media Use Guide using my Parenting in The Digital Age Workshop while drawing on the Family Digital Wellness Guide from Boston Children's Hospital Digital Wellness Lab which includes parenting guides, a blog and other resources.
Spend time at the Anxious Generation website published by Dr. Jonathan Haidt and his team. Look to read his book The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. There are several podcast interviews of Dr. Haidt that you can listen to. Here is one from Frontline.
Three other thought leaders in the field of adolescents and technology are researcher Dr. Jean Twenge, Melanie Hemp who writes the Be ScreenStrong Substack and a newcomer to the field Freda India who writes Girls on Substack and who also writes periodically with Dr. Haidt on his After Babel Substack.
Another strategy to support digital wellness is to provide your children with unstructured, free play opportunities for life learning. Here are a few resources to help you learn about what we now call "free range parenting," which means giving your children opportunities like you probably had growing up to explore their neighborhood while playing with friends. :)
"Play Deficit as Cause of Decline in Children's Mental Health" - A summary by Dr. Peter Gray of an article he co-authored in the Journal of Pediatrics.
Use the resources at Let Grow to give your children more opportunities to experience life while taking on responsibilities and growing their ability to make decisions on their own. Review a parent presentation on this topic.
Yes, creating your Family Mission Statement, Tech/Media Use Guide and giving your children more independence will take commitment and time to implement as they help your family members build new healthier habits. Timebox in dates and times into your calendar for family meetings to get started on the process!
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The following links to help in your efforts. Many are provided by international educator and instructional technologist John Mikton along with a few additional ones that I found.
Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) - Resources including strategies and tips plus a parenting guide to protect children when online.
Create Health Screen Habits - Resources including strategies and tips and a podcast.
Guidelines for Screen Time for Your Children - Clear parameters provided by the Mayo Clinic.
How Much Screen Time Is OK for My Kid(s)? - Time limits from health organizations. How Can I Help My Kids Develop Good Screen Time Habits? - Strategies for the whole family. Provided by Common Sense Media.
In-Depth Review of History and Research on Screen Time - Helpful long read for parents provided by Lucie's List.
Raising Children With Healthy Social Media & Digital Media Habits - An interview with technology thought leader Jeff Utecht in which he outlines a framework to support digital wellness for children.
Screen Time and Healthy Balance Quick Activities - Strategies for 7-11 year olds provided by Childnet.
Screen Time Parameters for Older Children - Three guiding principles provided by Data Detox Kit.
Set Digital Boundaries for Screentime - Find tools and resources available to help you and your family set digital boundaries for screen times and manage what children see online. Provided by Internet Matters.
Students Need to Learn to Manage Their Own Screen Time - The article also takes on the topic of distractability. Improving the Quality of Screen Time. Provided by Edutopia.
Teaching Children How to Focus - Growing the ability to focus in our children helps them not only in using technology but also in other aspects of their lives. Provided by FirstFive Years.
What Do We Really Know About Kids and Screens? - Research by psychologists and others is giving us a better understanding of the risks and potential benefits of children’s and teens’ use of digital devices. Provided by the American Psychological Association.
Common Sense Media - The leaders in digital citizenship do have resources that focus on personal social and emotional wellness while also offering their usual citizenship resources. Their main resource is the SEL in Digital Life Resources Center. It contains support strategies like Young Kids & Screens toolkit, SEL in Digital Grades K-2 Family Conversations packet and Tweens, Teens, and Their Always-On Digital Lives toolkit are loaded with helpful tips for parents to use. | They also offer a digital wellness listing of lessons for teachers entitled Back-to-School With Healthy Young Minds.
Digital Wellness for Your Children - Provided by the Family Online Safety Institute.
Is Tech Destroying Kids' Social Skills? Here's How Social-Emotional Learning Can Help - Education Week special report.
Online Safety Resources - Provided by the Australian eSafety Commissioner
Surgeon General's (US) Advisory - Social Media and Youth Mental Health 2023 Report
Teen Mental Health Crisis - NYT columnist and podcaster Ezra Klein dedicated two episodes to this topic. Part 1 with Dr. Jean Twenge | Part 2 with Dr. Lisa Damour
Tips for Digital Wellness - ISTE provides three helpful tips for the healthy use of technology.
Books
Books
Behind Their Screens - Book and website. Harvard Project Zero researchers Emily Weinstein and Carrie James bring stories and data together for a powerful reframe of what teens are up against – and what teens need adults to understand.
Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World - Cal Newport provides a framework for lessening the influence of technology and media upon our lives.
iGen: Why Today's Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy--and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood--and What That Means for the Rest of Us - Dr. Jean Twenge provides research to support her findings.
Indistractible: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life - Nir Eyal puts the responsibility of how one uses technology into the hands of the reader. His guidelines for managing time in using technology applications in all aspects of our lives.
Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy - James Williams shares this book as a free download in which he offers his insights on the deep dangers of tech companies and their apps/software effects upon our attention.
Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention - and How to Think Deeply Again - Johann Hari explains the effects of technology on our ability to focus. Note: The audiobook read by the author really communicates his passion and personal insights.
The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness - Jonathan Haidt who includes four proposals for changing parenting and schooling norms.
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