Digital Wellbeing: The Complete Guide

What is digital wellbeing?

Digital well-being refers to an individual's subjective well-being in an environment which is social, in the presence of media.^[1] The media being referred to in this context are smartphones, social media, gaming, and streaming platforms.

Why is it important to look after your digital wellbeing?

We all know that digital media is essentially mandatory for living our day to day lives now, but digital media also plays a role on influencing how we act and what we believe in our day to lives as well, going so far as to influence our political participation.^[2]

Keeping this in mind, we've gathered research backed information on how you can assess your own digital well-being.

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How to assess your digital well being:

1. Measure time spent

A study done on 143 undergraduate students had them limit their social media usage to a maximum of 10 minutes a day, and found that they had significant reductions in loneliness and depression. The results indicated that limiting social media usage to a maximum of 30 minutes a day can lead to significant improvements in well-being.^[4] Any amount of screen time over 2 hours a day has been associated with short sleep durations and unhealthy eating habits due to mindless eating while using electronic devices.^[7]

Now, with the pandemic having significantly increased our screen time,^[6] we understand that cutting a daily usage of 3 to 4 hours down to 30 minutes could sound easier said than done. Here's a couple of tips to help out, based on a study that analysed 204 different research articles on interventions for reducing screen time for people aged 0 to 18:^[8]

• edit_calendar Setting goals and planning Make sure to note down your current amount of time spent currently and your ideal amount of time you want to cut down on. This will help you set benchmarks and give you a physical form to refer to when checking on your progress.
• fact_check Reviewing goals Regularly check in on the benchmarks you've set to evaluate your progress and adjust your habits as needed.

2. Having difficulty putting the phone away^[9]

Having a difficult time putting away your phone could be an indicator of behaviour addiction. This is similar to drug addiction, except that with behaviour addiction, the subject is addicted to the feeling brought about by doing the action.

Signs to look out for in behaviour addiction:^[10]

• schedule Constant Preoccupation Engaging in the behaviour a majority of the time, along with thinking about or making arrangements to engage in the behaviour.
• mood Coping Mechanism Using the behaviour as a method of coping with emotions, or to 'feel normal'.
• warning Ignoring Harm Continuously engaging in the behaviour despite having physical or mental harm on oneself.
• back_hand Loss of Control Having difficulty with cutting down the amount of the engaged behaviour, despite wanting to stop.
• mood_bad Withdrawal Symptoms Experiencing signs of withdrawal such as irritability or depression when trying to stop the usage.
• visibility_off Hiding the Behaviour Hiding or trying to minimise the extent of how bad the problem is.

References & Citations

1. Digital well-being: A scoping review (SagePub)
2. Social Media Use and Political Participation (SagePub)
3. The impact of social media on psychological well-being (Frontiers in Psychology)
4. No More FOMO: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression (Guilford Journals)
5. Negative effects of social media (Frontiers in Human Dynamics)
6. Effect of increased screen time on eyes during pandemic (JFMPC)
7. Screen time and eating habits (NCBI / PMC)
8. Interventions for reducing screen time (BioMed Central)
9. Difficulty separating from smartphone (PubMed)
10. Behavioral addiction indicators (NCBI / PMC)