Hey you,
I hope you’re taking care of yourself as we head into the busy second quarter of the year. Whether you are navigating exam season, midterm season, or the beginning of Q2 at work, know that I believe you can get through it and do a great job 🙂
Before we get into today’s post, I want to share two significant developments happening in digital media policy that you should know about. It’ll really set the stage for what I want to share with you through this post.
In the United States, the Kids Online Safety Act – which outlines a set of obligations that digital companies must keep in order to mitigate the potential that children may be victimized or otherwise harmed online – gained bipartisan support in the senate. You can read the full act here. If passed, the act would require social media sites like Instagram, TikTok, and X to implement specific safeguards to keep kids safe online. The act has over 60 supporters including senators, social media companies, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Nintendo of America, and many parents. However, some parties are concerned that passing the act may result in the censorship of information and prevent youth from minoritized communities (specifically youth who are members of LGBTQ+ communities) from accessing supportive resources, health-promoting information, and opportunities for self-expression.
In Canada, Bill C-63 (also known as the Online Harms Act) – a bill that would require online platforms to outline and implement clear strategies for preventing the sharing and distribution of content that could harm users, especially minors – is being considered. You can read more about the bill here. A few parties are concerned that the bill could stifle free speech, that the bill’s definition of hate speech is not well-defined, and that this ambiguity could prevent users from using online platforms in ways that support their well-being.
I share this policy-related news with you because I know that a lot of us aren’t accessing policy-related news on a regular basis and I believe in the value of making policy more accessible AND because the two digital media policies I summarized illustrate just how complex it is to develop a set of practices and policies that will keep everyone safe and healthy online. Developing policies that protect the well-being of large populations as they use digital media takes a great deal of thought, planning, revisions, and consulting. Guess what? It can be just as challenging to develop strategies for supporting our individual well-being as we engage with digital media.
Photograph by Steinar-Engeland via Unsplash: In technology-rich societies and settings – where we feel pressured to be connected to many devices at once – it can be challenging for us to develop plans for using technology and media in ways that support our well-being.
Why Care about our Relationship with Media?
Even if you aren’t closely following the policy side of digital media, your life has probably given you some indicators that it’s time to reflect on how digital media is impacting how you feel, think, and behave. Maybe you’re starting to feel fatigued and overwhelmed after spending hours on screens for schoolwork and entertainment without taking a break. Maybe you fell asleep with a pit of anxiety and loneliness in your stomach last night after viewing a friend’s Instagram feed and seeing all the events and achievements you missed out on. Maybe you find yourself REALLY having to restrain yourself from opening a new Reddit tab during tasks that require steady, focused work. These are all hints that we should take a step back, re-evaluate our tech and media use habits, and begin to incorporate digital media use habits that make us feel energized and inspired. No compromising.
When we cultivate technology and media use habits that support our well-being, it becomes so much easier to build community with others, cultivate positive self-esteem and self-acceptance, learn new things, and get inspired by the world. We begin to live in three dimensions, and we gradually gain the power to inspire others to do the same.
In recent years, completely logging off of social media has become a popular strategy for reducing media use habits that compromise our well-being (social media detoxes and dopamine fasts are examples of this – you may have watched videos about these or even practiced them). There are many benefits associated with logging off for an extended period of time, but this strategy doesn’t consider the positive opportunities we lose when we log off. Or for the fact that some of us have our jobs, livelihoods, and communities anchored to digital platforms, which can make a complete divestment from social media impractical, isolating, and even harmful. For some, a more sustainable, practical, and balanced way to experience wellness in the digital age is by pursuing digital wellness.
The term digital wellness describes the positive outcomes of using media and technology in ways that support our mental, physical, social, and productivity-based well-being. If this is your first time hearing about digital wellness, you’re not alone 🙂 I only discovered digital wellness two years ago despite working in media industry positions for over three years. Right away, I realized that there are quite a few misconceptions and prominent areas of misinformation surrounding the concept. My own misunderstanding of digital wellness made me reluctant to pursue it. I thought that incorporating digital wellness into my life would require me to give up the screen-based habits that brought me joy and fulfillment. Now that I know better, I want to set the record straight and clarify the 10 most pervasive misconceptions about digital wellness so that you have the credible information needed to get started on your own digital wellness journey.
With life being as busy as it is, we are all looking for simple and effective ways to reduce stress, sharpen our focus, and improve our well-being. A simple, life-enhancing change that you can implement right away is using media and technology in ways that are intentional, balanced, and health-promoting. When we do this, we achieve digital wellness, which the Boston Children’s Digital Wellness Lab defines as: “the positive state of mental, physical, and social-emotional health pursued through intentional, authentic, and balanced engagement with technology and interactive media.”
Photo by Andrea-Piacquadio via Pexels: Using digital media and technologies in balanced and intentional ways can yield HUGE boosts for our well-being.
Digital wellness is a relatively new term; it was first used in 2012 by professionals in the technology industry who wanted to create technological tools that could support human flourishing. In the last few years, with tweens, teens, and adults spending more time on screen-based devices, digital wellness and other topics related to health-promoting technology use (such as digital detoxes, social media detoxes, and dopamine fasts) have become mainstream concepts. Although more of us are aware of digital wellness today than in past years, many misconceptions remain about what it is and how we can incorporate it into our lives. Believing these misconceptions can make us feel discouraged and prevent us from taking crucial steps to improve our relationship with media and technology.
Digital Wellness, Simplified
Digital wellness (otherwise known as digital well-being or digital health) describes a way of living in which one achieves optimal health and well-being across multiple health-related domains (such as physical health, mental health, and social health, among others) while continuing to use digital content and digital technology. While the concept of digital wellness has existed since 2012, a few major societal shifts have made digital wellness particularly relevant in the 2020’s:
1. Increased Engagement with Technology and Media during the Lockdown:
During the lockdown, all of us stayed home and used technology to access entertainment, learn about the world beyond our households, and connect with each other. As you can imagine, this led to a surge in the amount of time we spent on our screen-based devices (such as phones, tablets, and laptops).
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- Evidence suggests that daily screen time (the amount of time spent using a screen-based device) increased by 49 minutes for preteens, 77 minutes for teenagers, and 1 hour for adults during the first full year of the lockdown.
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- A meta-analysis of studies published between 2020 and 2022 found that during this two-year window of time, screen time for children and adolescents increased by an average of 84 minutes per day for recreational screentime, and 68 minutes per day for recreational and educational screen time combined.
As we spent more time in front of our screens, many of us personally experienced the benefits and costs associated with excessively using media and technology. How many of the following did you experience during the lockdown?:
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- FOMO: the discomfort that comes from the feeling that we’re missing out on important or fulfilling experiences that others are engaged in without us (e.g, milestones [marriage, graduation], events).
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- Online fatigue: feelings of exhaustion after spending a long time in front of screens.
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- Eye strain: ocular (eye-related) discomfort that comes from prolonged screen use. Symptoms include: blurry vision, headaches, and watery eyes.
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- Activity displacement: instances in which screen-based activities replace the time we would normally spend engaging in health-promoting activities like sleeping, eating, and moving our bodies.
Many of us emerged from the lockdown with a new understanding of the costs of intensive media and technology use, and with a new desire to cultivate health-promoting media and technology use habits.
2. Developments in Media Effects Research:
Today, we know so much more about how technology and media affect our health and well-being than we did even 5 years ago.
Media researchers in both academia (academic institutions [such as universities] where professors and students run studies and teach) and industry contexts (businesses and companies that deliver products and services) have invested resources into experiments to investigate an ever-growing list of media effects.
Some media effects research topics you may have discussed in school or at work, seen on the news, or listened to online content creators discuss include:
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- The effects of media stereotypes on self-esteem (especially for historically minoritized groups)
Research on these topics has inspired HUGE changes, including changes in: how devices are manufactured and programmed, how social media platforms are designed, how your favourite film and TV characters are written, and policy recommendations for the creation of digital products and services. Along with these macro-level (that is, large scale or societal) changes, media effects research has also encouraged many of us to make micro-level (that is, individual-level or lifestyle) changes to cultivate more health-promoting media use habits.
Some changes that many of us make to practice a more purposeful relationship with media and technology include:
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- Taking digital detoxes
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- Scheduling technology-free days or weekends
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- Setting boundaries for our screen time (like agreeing not to use it within the last hour before going to sleep)
Along with this, many of us have access to educational resources that teach us about media effects (documentaries like The Social Dilemma (2020) – which covers the effects of social networking from a harm approach – are enlightening). Engaging with informative content like this has encouraged us to think critically about our media and technology use habits, and about how our use of media and technology influences other areas of our lives.
3. We have more experience living with technology:
Can you remember what life was like before Instagram (2010), the iPhone (2007), or widespread internet access (1990s)? Although I experienced a few years of childhood before use of the internet really exploded as a population-wide phenomenon, I find it hard to remember my pre-social media life.
While the digital divide (or, the gap between individuals with consistent, reliable internet access and individuals who are excluded from internet services) is something that limits access to telecommunications resources for many of us, a lot of us have incorporated digital technologies and media into every hour of our daily lives. In our information society, technology and media have become essential parts of the systems of actions and decisions we manage everyday. These decisions and actions impact everything including our mental health. our social relationships, our levels of productivity, and more.
Just as with other actions we take each day (like deciding how many hours to study and flossing), our media use habits need to be scrutinized so that we can identify whether our habits are health-promoting or health-compromising
The Digital Divide
According the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s vocational education arm (known as UNESCO – UNEVOC), the digital divide is the gap between individuals who have internet access (and are therefore able to fully use all services and opportunities offered by the internet) and those who do not have internet access.
Individuals who lack information and communication technology (ICT), or who lack the skills needed to effectively use these technologies, are considered as being excluded from internet-based services.
Our digital worlds – and the policies, norms, and infrastructures that support them – are constantly shifting in ways that impact our lives. When we practice digital wellness, we make intentional media use choices that help us to flourish in the digital age no matter what shifts occur.
10 Digital Wellness Myths and Misconceptions
- Only individuals who have “bad” media use habits should pursue digital wellness.
Screenspire’s approach is to avoid labeling certain media use habits as “bad” or “good.” This is to avoid pathologizing certain media use habits and the individuals who derive fulfillment from them, and to stay grounded in science.
Avoiding the use of absolute terms such as “bad” and “good” to describe our media use habits also absolves us of the guilt we feel when we judge ourselves for engaging in certain media habits. It allows us to adopt a holistic view of well-being, evaluate our personal screen habits without shame, and critically assess how specific media habits are working for us as individuals instead of following trends.
To directly address this first misconception: digital wellness is for everyone, regardless of the digital media habits we practice. All of us will spend our lifetimes adjusting and reflecting on our media habits as we continue to pursue living intentionally and healthfully with media. As media and technologies evolve, we will all need to learn new ways to safely and intentionally include them in our lives, regardless of how “well” we are currently engaging with today’s technologies. Additionally, as we age our goals, abilities, and relationships with the world change. This means that our relationship with media and technology changes, requiring us to adopt new behaviours and attitudes towards evolving media.
Digital wellness is not about “curing” today’s unhelpful media use habits; it’s about adopting long-term lifestyle practices that enable all of us to flourish in the digital age.
Therefore, digital wellness is not reserved for those who are trying to stop using media and technologies in ways that cause distress. It is for anyone who wishes to use media in more intentional, health-promoting ways.
Photograph by Kampus-Production via Pexels: Our relationships with media change over the lifespan, requiring us to learn new things and update our media use habits in order to ensure that we’re using media in ways that support our well-being.
- I shouldn’t pursue digital wellness if I need my screen time to be high.
Digital wellness is not just for individuals who are trying to cut down their screen time! It is for anyone who wants to pursue a more intentional and health-promoting relationship with technology and media.
This includes individuals who need to spend a lot of time using screen technologies for work, school, or even entertainment. It’s open to anyone who wants to support their health as they use media. As of right now, I engage in over 10 hours of screen time per day and (as strange as this might sound) I’m fine with this. I understand that this number has a story: most of the work I do as a children’s media researcher, digital wellness educator, and doctoral student requires me to use digital devices throughout the day, and I must stay on the pulse of digital platforms in order to intimately understand youth digital media trends and contribute to children’s media and digital wellness projects (including Screenspire). For me, digital wellness means becoming more intentional about how I engage with media, rather than reducing my screentime. This could mean less doom scrolling, leveraging media to deepen relationships, and emphasizing creativity over consumption.
Remember: digital wellness is not necessarily about minimizing screen time. It’s about minimizing the harmful effects that certain media use habits, spaces, and technologies have on us. Maybe for you that means reducing screen time, maybe it doesn’t.
With that in mind, you don’t need to do a digital detox in order to reap the long-term benefits of digital wellness.
- In order to begin my digital wellness journey, I need to delete my social media accounts, stay away from technology, journal on a daily basis, have a perfect morning routine, and…
There’s absolutely no need to “do it all.”
When we think about incorporating new lifestyle changes, we often feel urged to incorporate multiple, big changes at once instead of taking it step by step. For some of us, “ticking all of the boxes” related to a lifestyle shift can be a way of proving to ourselves how serious we are about making changes. Or, it can be a way of identifying with communities of other individuals who are making the same lifestyle shift.
There’s a very specific image that comes to mind when many of us think about wellness. It’s the image of a young, able-bodied person with time, resources, spaces, and supportive networks that enable them to completely plug out, and maintain a sense of strict order and consistency in their lives. For some of us, this may be exactly what we need in order to operate at our best. But for some of us, it may not be the best fit for our lifestyles, wellness, or personal goals. And that’s OK.
While digital wellness may inspire you to engage in many behaviours to improve your life, you’ll get the most out of it if you move at your own pace and are intentional about incorporating new behaviours and habits into your life, one step at a time. As you learn more about digital wellness, you can reflect on how each digital wellness-related change you implement makes you feel, and then add additional changes (either incorporating more media and tech into your life, or spending more time away from screens) that truly resonate with you and your values. Digital wellness is all about being intentional. Just as we should be intentional with our media use habits and pursue habits that align with our values and needs, we should be intentional about making lifestyle shifts.
Having an “all or nothing” approach causes more stress than peace, and leads to feelings of discouragement if you find that one adopted habit doesn’t work for you. Remember that what works for one person (based on their unique needs and lifestyle) may not work for you. This is normal and expected
Photograph by Marcus-Aurelius via Pexels: Even a small change like making the commitment to put our devices away at least 30 minutes before we go to sleep is an amazing digital wellness win.
- Technology and media (especially social media) are bad .
As I hope you can tell, I certainly don’t hold an anti-media stance! I don’t believe that media, when taken as a whole, is firmly bad or good. Instead, I view media as an entity that has many affordances (advantages) and costs (disadvantages or risks) packed together. The key to optimizing our relationship with media is assessing our values, needs, and preferences and curating our media use habits to support that. This is exactly what digital wellness sets out to do.
Of course, although digital wellness is about making personal, individual-level changes, it’s important to acknowledge that there are many system-level changes pertaining to media, technology, and entertainment industries that need to take place to ensure that media and technology optimally support the well-being of all users. Identifying and advocating for these changes is a crucial step to improving the state of contemporary media and technology.
When it comes to our individual lifestyle habits, though, we can learn how idenitfy the risks and benefits of our personal media use habits and learn to interact with current media and technology in ways that support our health.
- Digital wellness is just about reducing screen time
Many of us focus on the amount of screen time we’re getting, which is a great start for tracking intentional media use. But it offers an incomplete picture of how digital media is impacting our health and well-being. Digital wellness recognizes that the quality of our screen time is more impactful than the quantity of hours we spend using screens.
For example, 2 hours spent scrolling through Tik Tok may not make us feel as energized, informed, and satisfied with our lives as spending 2 hours taking a course on Skillshare will. Same amount of time, different activities, vastly different outcomes.
Soo, rather than just tracking our screentime, we should also prioritize learning how to make intentional, health-promoting media use choices.
- Digital wellness’ effects are limited to mental health
Digital wellness practices improve our mental health by encouraging us to use media intentionally and stay away from habits that hurt our self-esteem, relationships, emotional health, and life satisfaction. However, practicing digital wellness influences SO MUCH MORE than just mental health! It also supports our:
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- Physical Health: by encouraging us to implement good habits like setting regular sleep times, taking breaks, and protecting our eyes from eye strain while using devices.
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- Relationships: by showing us how to build genuine connections with other individuals, finding communities that support our values and interests, and express ourselves in pro-social ways.
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- Communication Skills: by encouraging us to engage in positive interactions with others.
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- Digital and Physical Environment: by showing us how to make our digital and physical work spaces less cluttered and more conducive to physical health and focus.
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- Productivity: by showing us how to stay focused, manage distractions, and become proficient users of new and existing technological tools and resources.
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- Digital citizenship: by showing us how to protect our privacy, be conscious about the content we choose to watch, and interact with others in civil ways.
- I need to buy new things (like “dumb devices”) in order to participate in digital wellness
Dumb devices (devices that have limited or no internet access or computing capacities) are cool, and are what many people think of when the topic of practicing digital wellness comes to mind. However, you don’t need to buy one to practice digital wellness. You can achieve digital wellness without buying anything new. There are easy strategies you can implement right now that will improve your well-being at no cost.
For example, “Dumb phones” have become a fairly popular way to help users disconnect from the internet and use technology more intentionally. While this is a great way to avoid the notifications, buzzes, and other distractions that come from smart phones, you do not need to purchase any devices to begin using media more intentionally. Instead of purchasing a dumb device, you could reduce distractions from your current phone by turning off notifications or using “Do Not Disturb” mode, using your phone in grayscale (to make it less visually distracting), and removing apps that are not supporting your health.
The absence of a blatant purchasing imperative makes digital wellness accessible.
Photograph by Docusign via Unsplash: Our smartphones can serve as tools that support our digital wellness journeys if we make use of features like the grayscale feature (which removes the colours on our phone screens to make them less distracting) and Do Not Disturb (which temporarily silences all notifications)
- Digital wellness is just a wellness fad, with no science-backed health effects.
Media effects research supports the positive effects of engaging in digital wellness practices. It should be noted that a lot of this research is correlational, which means that we can’t link cause to effect. With that in mind though, evolving research seems promising:
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- A neuroimaging study, conducted with 149 teens and young adults aged 13 to 24 years old, found that individuals who engaged in daily media multitasking performed worse on a challenging reading task in the presence of a distractor, than individuals who engaged in less daily media multitasking.
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- A recent experimental study found that avoiding the use of our mobile phones 30 minutes before bed is correlated with the ability to fall asleep more easily, higher quality sleep, longer sleep, and better working memory.
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- Another experimental study found that individuals who stopped using phones when interacting with friends and family members reported greater enjoyment of their social interactions than individuals who used their phones in these social contexts.
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- There is some evidence that putting our phones away when we’re completing tasks that do not involve our phones can increase our cognitive capacity: the amount of information we can keep track of at any given moment.
- Adopting digital wellness means sacrificing productivity.
This is one I hear a lot, and one of the misconceptions I had a hard time letting go of. As I mentioned before, I spend a lot of time in front of different screens for work and school. Most of the tools I use to complete work and school tasks live on my devices. For this reason, when I first heard about digital wellness and read articles that equated digital wellness with reducing media use, I figured it wasn’t for me.
Now I understand that digital wellness centers being intentional about how we use media instead of just reducing screentime. And being intentional about how we use our devices and content can boost our productivity:
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- When we incorporate boundaries on our device use, and give ourselves enough time without screens before bed, we avoid exposing ourselves to blue light that could hamper the secretion of melatonin (a hormone crucial for regulating our sleep and wake cycles) and interrupt our sleep. Getting restorative sleep makes us more energized, responsive, and focused during the day.
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- When we focus on individual tasks instead of multitasking while using devices, we strengthen our sustained attention (our ability to maintain focus for a long period of time…an ability that is crucial for deep work).
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- When we identify apps, programs, and other media-based resources that can help us to organize digital files, we avoid creating clutter on our devices and create digital spaces that we can navigate with greater ease and efficiency.
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- The increased sleep, attention, and organization we achieve through digital wellness allows us to stay on our game in the classroom, at work, and in all domains of life.
- Digital wellness looks the same for everyone
We all have unique needs, interests, goals, and challenges. For this reason, when we begin our digital wellness journeys, the practices and habits we adopt will be different from the practices of another individual in their digital wellness journey.
For example:
Patricia is a busy ninth grade student who enjoys cycling through her Spotify playlist and watching Netflix series on the weekends, but she finds it hard to avoid using social media platforms in ways that make her anxious and overwhelmed. She has plenty of non-digital ways to connect with her friends (like seeing them daily at lunchtime, after school track practice, and dance classes), so interacting with them on social media is nice but it isn’t her favourite way to do so. To support a lifestyle that makes her feel energized and productive, she may choose to delete her social media apps during the school year (so she doesn’t encounter any distressing content), but keep texting her friends.
Faizan is a 3rd year economics major student whose program requires him to do a significant amount of group work outside of class, do all of his readings online, and study for multiple hours each day. To keep himself focused and motivated, Faizan listens to motivational videos and podcasts throughout the day. Faizan is so busy with school work, working at the Economics’ Students Association, and doing extracurriculars that he rarely gets to see his friends in person (they all have different schedules) so he interacts with them by liking and commenting on their posts. However during midterm season, Faizan found himself getting distracted by other recommended videos in his YouTube feed and spending hours scrolling on Instagram and TikTok whenever he logged on to keep up with his friends. In order to stay focused, motivated, and connected, Faizan downloaded a tool that blocks out distracting sites and apps during his study periods. That way, he can stay focused when he needs to be, and have dedicated time for “fun” media use when he’s not too busy.
These are both perfectly valid and effective, health-promoting ways to engage with media.
Key Takeaways
1. Due to many societal shifts (including a greater use of technology during the lockdown, more media effects research becoming accessible, and greater public awareness of how media affects our lives), more individuals are interested in incorporating digital wellness practices into their lives.
2. Digital wellness is about learning how to use media and technology in ways that are more intentional and health-promoting. Because we all have unique needs, goals, and lifestyles, there’s no “one size fits all” approach.
3. Digital wellness is for everyone, including those of us who are “heavy” users of media and technology. It’s not about eliminating content, devices, and platforms that bring us joy. It’s about identifying how different media and technology use habits make us feel, and changing our media use habits to get more of the uplifting stuff while eliminating the stuff that drags us down.
4. As our lives change, our media and technology use habits change as well. Digital wellness helps us to stay on top of our needs and get the most out of media.
5. Digital wellness practices have positive effects on many aspects of our health, beyond mental health.
There are things we can all do to reinvigorate and improve our digital media use habits, no matter what stage of our digital wellness journeys we’re in. If I inspired you to take action today, I’d love to hear about it 🙂 Also, what do you think makes it so darn hard to stick to health-promoting digital media use habits? I’ve been struggling with this lately, so I’d love to hear from you.