Diving into Digital Detox:
The changing lifestyle is going entirely digital. The realistic aspects are also turning virtual that is good to a certain extent, but if surrendered completely, it can badly affect lifestyle and health.
In today’s times when technology is on a booming stage, and the lockdown has turned majority businesses into virtual working, it is extremely difficult to cut off from the internet and practise digital detox. However, also seeing the current times that people are facing virtual world anxiety and forgetting the importance of personal touch and real connections, it is also important to create a balance and take care of our mental health.
What issues can you face over-adapting a digital lifestyle?
Mental imbalances
This happens mostly in kids and youth. When you use digital media continuously for a longer time, you might experience a change in your behavior too. Kids become more irritable when they are exposed to the virtual world. Young people are often so influenced by the virtual world that they no longer feel belonged to the real world. Of course, there is a positive side too that helps them grow and gain knowledge, but when we are talking about the issues, this comes as very common.
Disruptive time distribution
We are so much dependent on the internet for everything that we can’t even imagine a life without it. Imagine you are in that era where work is papers and communication is just face to face or letters. That’s crazy, right?
We’ve adopted the internet in almost everything that we do. From me, writing this blog to you reading this, we’re all connected with technology. While we are busy making the maximum use of technology, almost all of us are overusing it. What happens as a result that we lack time for other things that might be more important than welcoming radiations.
Physical health issues
Back-pain and eyesight issues are something that comes along with a digital lifestyle. Your backbone probably hates your love for using technology for long and eyes are also not loving the radiations. This can be controlled to a certain extent if you’re carrying a proper posture for working and use antiglare while being exposed to screens.
Being in a single position for long can also make you feel lazy and turn you obese.
Affecting relationships
The ever engrossed digital world has probably forgotten that there is a universe beyond the digital world too. The intimacy in relationships, connection with family members, and everlasting bonds with your closed ones are being affected because of your constant attention towards the virtual world more. Visiting places becomes difficult due to lack of time, face to face communication becomes difficult because your phone is acting a communication barrier. You are not all ears to them because you probably have your earphones on it throughout the day.
Some of us realize there are other humans on this planet only when their eyes are exhausted or when their phone’s battery is dead.
Negative Influence
More exposure to the changing reality can make us believe facts that aren’t true or are sensitive and controversial. There is a world on the internet that is speaking their own perceptions about anything and everything. More chances are there that you will perceive a reality that is probably far from the truth and might influence your habits and decisions. So it is extremely important to understand what we are feeding our eyes and mind.
How could you do a digital detox?
Complete digital detoxification is impossible for many of us since our lives are rolling around the internet. Still, to a certain extent, we can practice certain things to limit ourselves and practice partial detoxification.
Fix your time
Make a rough daily schedule and allot a time you’ll spend over the internet for your personal and professional reasons. Fixing a time would help you from overusing technology and spending hours on unproductive stuff that is just killing your time and puffing your eyes.
Things your gadgets can help with:
- The recent versions of iOS and Android have inbuilt features that let you monitor your daily usage and sometimes even control your usage. These features can be enabled/disabled at your choice.
- A series of Digital Wellbeing Experiments has been released by Google that let you do stuff like see how often you unlock your phone and minimize distractions.
Custom notifications
Many people have told me that they feel anxiety when they have a lot of notifications on their drop-down menu. The anxiety doubles when you have to entertain that. As soon as they hear the notification bell, they tend to skip their current task and have the instant stimuli to check their phone.
Identify an offline hobby
This is the best way to stay away from the internet by keeping your mind busy in other productive activities that not only help you avoid your digital needs but also keep your mind healthy and happy. It is a tautology that whenever you practice your hobby, you make your cells feel happy. Doing nothing would have the instinct to grab your phone again, so it’s best to keep your mind into things you love and make a balance.
Hide your phone
We all would feel relatable of mindlessly checking our phone for continuous hours just because it’s close to us. We might not feel like doing some online engagements, and then find that it’s in our hand and we’ve spent 30 minutes scrolling through people’s posts and watching dog videos. Putting your phone somewhere away, taking it out from your pockets and handbags, and off the coffee table then hiding it in our room, or even in a drawer, can stop us from reaching for our phones repeatedly.
The digital lifestyle is the new normal, and there’s nothing with it until we fail to create a balance. Our priorities, energies, and time have drastically changed with adapting to this new lifestyle into our schedules. Your devices will be recharged, but if you lose the precious things and relationships, it won’t be back, atleast not be easy to be back. So, identify every action that you do.
After you complete reading this, don’t forget to take a moment and be thankful to the people around you, ensure that you have good food, and give your eyes some rest before you reach the next virtual destination.