Hey you,
Welcome back to the Screenspire blog.
I’ve tried to be direct and straightforward in my posts, providing you with actionable tips that you can implement right away to improve your relationship with digital media. But in doing so, I’ve overlooked an important fact: implementing all of the digital wellness tips in the world will be futile if we don’t abandon the mindsets that make it easy for us to engage in health-compromising media use habits.
If we don’t change our problematic beliefs and attitudes, we’ll go right back to the digital media use habits that keep us stuck in emotions, thoughts, and experiences that actively harm us and prevent us from reaching our goals.
Often when I see conversations and articles about digital wellness, I see an emphasis on making changes that are tangible (like deleting apps) and grounded in quantifiable results (like reducing screentime or going to bed earlier). While these changes are nice, pursuing them alone results in an incomplete digital wellness that looks good on paper but does nothing for our actual lives.
Mindset: An attitude or way of thinking that influences how we understand and act on our goals, and other activities that matter to us. Our mindsets influence how well we function in all aspects of life.
I spoke about the difference between digital detoxing and digital minimalism in the post I wrote two weeks ago. In researching for that post, I began to get the sense that many people who practice digital minimalism and digital detoxing don’t actually improve their lives over the long term. This is because they give up halfway through, or because another health-compromising media use habit takes the place of those they gave up.
This happens because although our behaviours have shifted (e.g, deleting certain apps from our phone, spending less time on screens overall), our beliefs about media, tech, health, and life overall have stayed the same.
The best way to understand this phenomenon is to compare it to the experience of running your cell phone on a poor wifi network: you keep trying to load up a site on your phone, you see the loading bar inching along, but the site never loads no matter how many times you try. You think that your phone is the problem, so you’ll upgrade it to the newest model only to find that your problems persist. You’ll waste time and money investing in new phones when it was the wifi network that needed to be changed all along.
Think of your mindset as if it were your own internal wi-fi network. If you have a mindset that does not support your health, then no matter what outward changes you make, you will experience chronic, health-compromising issues that prevent you from living in full digital wellness, and experiencing the joy that comes from digital wellness practices.
Flawed mindsets prevent us from thriving in the digital age, and limit our life outcomes. They can weaken our connections with others, prevent us from pursuing hobbies that energize us and add purpose to our lives, and keep us in habits that actively compromise our wellbeing. Shifting our mindsets is one of the most important changes we’ll ever make, but it’s also one of the most challenging.
So I’m starting a new, 7-part blog series where we’ll discuss seven mindset shifts we all must make in order to truly experience digital wellness. If you’re a student in high school or college, making these shifts now will not only make digital wellness easier for you, but it also will amplify your ability to deftly manage and invest in everything else in your life that matters to you (e.g, relationships, planning for your future, managing stress, dealing with failure).
Today’s post covers zero-sum thinking (otherwise known as the zero-sum bias).
Image courtesy of Castorly Stock via Pexels.
The Zero-Sum Mindset, Simplified
“She’s already the ‘successful one’ in our friend group, so I can’t be.”
“If he’s trying to get the same internship I’m applying for, I won’t get it. I’d better look for another one.”
Zero-sum thinking is the tendency to understand life as a series of zero-sum games: when one person wins, the other person must fail. When we engage in zero-sum thinking, we believe that someone else’s success is detrimental to our own. This form of thinking is centered on the belief that we are all competing for a limited number of resources, and that if someone wins, there are fewer resources for everyone else.
Zero-Sum Thinking in the Digital Age
Competition is an ever-present force in today’s world — particularly in individualistic cultures (where independence, grit, and personal achievement are celebrated). At school, the emphasis on test-taking and other grade-based assessments can make us feel like getting the highest grade in our class is all that matters; if we’re not the best, then we’re failures. In college and scholarship applications, we are made hyper-aware of the fact that we are competing with other students for a limited number of spots at universities, trade schools, apprenticeships, and colleges. In the dating world, dating apps are designed to make users feel like they have a limited amount of time to find and respond to the “perfect partner” (whatever that is), and that if they take too long to swipe, or respond to a text in the wrong way, or don’t follow the “unspoken rules of dating,” they’ll miss out on their “soulmate.” When we move through life with the perception that all of life is a competition with limited resources to be won, we pressure ourselves to be THE best at all times. We begin to believe that if we fail, the failure serves as a reflection of our worth.
Engaging in zero-sum thinking can cause us to live in a very rigid and intense manner, which may lead to burnout. Photo courtesy of Alex Green via Pexels.
Because we are wired to compare ourselves to others, we also start to see other people — especially people who are similar to us in age, identity, and goals — as opponents instead of possible friends or allies. This creates resentment instead of appreciation for others’ efforts to reach their goals, and their resulting wins.
Competition is dehumanizing, and forces us to live life in survival mode.
How Zero-Sum Thinking Prevents us from Thriving in the Digital Age
When we hold zero-sum biases, we tell ourselves that we must do everything it takes to win. Even if this requires us to put everything else on the line. We build our lives around the achievement of a single outcome (like getting into a certain university, or entering a new romantic relationship), and neglect other things that are life-enhancing and life-sustaining. For example, if your sole focus is to end the year with a 4.0 GPA and you tell yourself that you must do whatever it takes to get the grade, you might sacrifice sleep, nourishing meals, and building a strong community of friends in order to squeeze in more study time.
Things may feel good at first. Our society — through films, series, music, and even news articles — glorifies ambition and the narrative of self-made success, so you may feel proud of yourself for having so much grit and hustle. But as a result of making school the sole focus of your life, you’ll have fewer resources to lean on when your time at school gets rough. You may begin to feel lethargic and lonely, and begin to resent school as a result. That doesn’t sound like a good student experience to me.
We see this journey play out in all aspects of life. In competitive universities, students commiserate around the loneliness and burnout they experience as a result of making their academic achievements their personalities. In the workplace, there’s the question of whether we’re the “type” to prioritize working and career mobility, or the “type” to prioritize our families and hobbies (though I really don’t see us as falling into “types” and I don’t see these priorities as being mutually-exclusive). Things have gotten intense as a result of inflation, job insecurity, and news of mass layoffs in different sectors. When it comes to romantic relationships, some individuals feel the need to express their affection through lavish experiences and gifts, or by modifying their appearances and character traits in order to “win” partners. As users of digital media, we might feel like if we’re not online at all times, we’re missing out on opportunities to show just how devoted we are to our work (by quickly responding to work emails at all hours of the day), our friends (by watching and commenting on all of their Stories), and our romantic relationships (by responding to new matches on dating apps). If you’re thinking that none of this sounds sustainable, then you’re right.
Zero-sum thinking keeps us stuck in loops of behaviours that erode our wellbeing, and prevent us from living lives that energize us. Fortunately, there’s another way to approach life.
What to do instead
Abundance Mindset: the belief that there are enough resources for everyone to succeed. When we have an abundance mindset, our minds embrace gratitude instead of competition. Instead of living life in survival mode (which means that we are hyper-focused on a single outcome and blind to the rest of life), we experience assurance. Overtime, we develop a deep and driving belief that we have enough time, resources, and opportunities for everything to work out one way or another. For example, instead of thinking that we’ll never be “successful” because we weren’t hired for a summer internship, we’ll realize that there are many other opportunities for us to get the growth, work experience, and growth opportunities that the internship provided. We’ll understand that there are many paths in life that will lead us to the eventual long-term career or role that will bring us fulfillment and security.
The abundance mindset sounds easy and flowery, but it takes a great deal of courage, strength and consistent reframing to develop. As someone who has worked hard to graduate from the zero-sum bias into abundance thinking, I consider it to be one of the most challenging personal growth journeys I have taken thus far.
From elementary school to a very recent period in my life, I was someone who loved the idea of “hustling” for my goals and abandoning everything else. I believed that life only offered a few opportunities for massive success, and that I needed to do everything I could to “separate myself from the pack” and access these opportunities. Looking back, I realize that I had romanticized an unhealthy, zero-sum approach to goal-achievement because many of the individuals and media characters I looked up to had also romanticized it. For over a decade, I believed that things like friendship, travel, romantic partnerships, and developing a personal style should come only after I had made something of myself. In order to ensure that I was constantly moving towards my goals, I told myself that there was no room for failure, that I needed to cram as much studying and work as I could into every minute of the day, and that I needed to self-isolate in order to stay focused on my academic goals. When I finally started to envision my ideal life beyond my grades, I discovered that my definition of wealth included community engagement, exploration, physical activity, and being a good example for children and youth. There’s no way I could grow towards any of these things if I only made room in my life for work and studying. The person I was becoming by living a competition-driven life was not aligned with the altruism and light I had an internal hunger for.
In order to change things, I had to shift to an abundance mindset.
Did you relate to any of what I wrote above? If so, here are some things that will help you to begin living in alignment with abundance instead of scarcity:
Give more to the world: Sharing our talents, time, and resources with others is a great way to disrupt the zero-sum bias, because it reminds us that we experience intensely positive emotions when we help others to fulfill their needs. When we give, we remember that we experience vicarious joy and fulfillment when we help others win. This can pull us out of the isolation and resentment that comes from zero-sum thinking, and help us to re-center ourselves in a humanity-focused context.
Spend more time in settings that prioritize community over competition: as teens and young adults, we have spent most of our lives in environments that encourage competition (e.g, school, sports teams, certain organizational environments). To ensure that you are not allowing this competition-centric approach to bleed into other areas of your life, take time each week to spend time in an environment that does not prioritize competition. For example, take a beginner’s cardio class, join an urban walking group, or take up an in-person language class. Being in community with others in a setting that encourages growth over isolated achievement can help you to think more holistically about your life’s journey.
Make time in your life for things that expand your focus away from single goals: I’ve noticed that more of us are engaging in hobbies, and honestly, good for us. When we center our lives around a single goal or achievement (like I used to), the rest of life becomes very dull. We may even start to see things like friendships, romance, or family time as unnecessary distractions. By expanding your focus to include hobbies, activities that are not assessment-driven, and moments of joy, you’ll loosen the general sense of tightness you feel in your life and reduce your chances of experiencing burnout.
Spend more time around people from different age groups, disciplines, and cultures: We live in a society that prioritizes and celebrates being youthful. As someone who has a platform that centers and involves youth, I believe that there are many advantages to this approach. Centering youth in important discussions means that we consider future generations when making decisions. Celebrating youth as future leaders and changemakers empowers kids, teens, and young adults to take on issues that matter to them, without making them feel like they need to grow up in order to make a difference. However, our youth-centered society also glorifies prodigy and early excellence which creates a rush to achieve “important things” before we turn 30. It also vilifies natural and healthy signs of aging (like getting wrinkles, having more candles on our cake, and adopting a life of routine instead of novelty). In a similar way, our society also uplifts certain disciplines and identities as being “better” or more desirable than others. When we believe in these “better than” narratives, we keep ourselves in the zero-sum bias by thinking that success has a very narrow definition, and that success must occur at a certain time, in a very specific manner. To challenge these narratives, build community with people from a broad spectrum of age groups, identity groups, and disciplines. It will make your life feel so rich and hopeful, and will allow you to create a more nuanced and balanced vision of the future.
Ensure that you are experiencing good physical and mental health: when we’re tired, hungry, or chronically anxious, it’s easier for us to feel like the world will implode at any second. Mental health challenges like generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and depression can make us feel like life is dangerous and that we must do everything we can to control the unknown. This can keep us in survival mode, and prevent us from seeing the abundance life offers. If you notice that you’re engaging in lifestyle habits that are compromising your wellbeing (like staying up all night, or eating in a way that does not give you adequate nutrients), try to make small changes so that you can get back on track.
If you are experiencing challenging thoughts, emotions, or behavioural habits that are making it hard to get through the day, I encourage you to seek support from a person or resource you trust.
In Canada, teens can contact:
Kids Help Phone: 1-800-668-6868 / Text CONNECT to 686868
A 24/7 e-mental health service offering free, confidential support to young people in English and French.
young adults in Ontario can contact:
Good2TalkON: 1-866-925-5454 / Text GOOD2TALKON to 686868
A free, confidential support service for post-secondary students in Ontario.
Provides professional counselling, volunteer crisis support and information and referrals about mental health services and supports on and off campus.
and young adults in Nova Scotia can contact:
Good2TalkNS: 1-833-292-3698 / Text GOOD2TALKNS to 686868
A free, confidential support service for post-secondary students in Nova Scotia.
Provides professional counselling, volunteer crisis support and information and referrals about mental health services and supports on and off campus.
I know that a lot of us hold zero-sum biases when we’re in high school and post-secondary institutions, where we’re applying for scholarships, trying to make ourselves competitive for the next step in life. But I’m so curious about something: if you’ve graduated from high school, have you found yourself becoming more abundance-minded?
This is an incredible article and so necessary. I cannot speak from the perspective of teens, however I am 46 and just returned back to college. Upon my return my screen time has diminished significantly. This is because I’ve replaced it with other things that mean more to me and give better outcomes. I am pursuing subjects that I love whereas before when I first attended school I had no personal direction, only what I perceived to be lucrative or would impress others. Along with finding my passions, came the ability to see the world a little more different with each day and getting out in it to enjoy it. This article emphasizes not replacing one bad habit with another and one way I’ve learned to do that is “ follow your bliss!” And 9/10 it’s not on social media. ❤️
Tenesha, it’s great to hear from you 🙂 I’m thrilled to know that this post resonated with you, and I feel so proud of you for replacing your screen time with activities that are more fulfilling and meaningful to you. Replacing our screen time with fulfilling offline activities makes it easier for us to sustain digital wellness practices. I find that a lot of us make well-intentioned plans to reduce our screen time without planning to introduce fulfilling offline activities into our lives. As a result, those of us who are recovering from digital stimulation start to feel bored or otherwise uncomfortable, and return to media use habits that aren’t serving us. I also agree with what you’ve shared regarding following our bliss! Living in a digital conscious way helps us to clarify our passions. Finding and following our bliss can be a great outcome of and antecedent for digital wellness.