Digital wellness is about keeping technology in its place. It means paying attention to whether your screens, messages, social media, and online work are helping you feel connected and productive, or leaving you distracted, stressed, or unable to switch off.
What Is Digital Wellness?
Digital wellness and wellbeing are the ability to ensure that your use of digital technologies has a positive impact on your own well-being.
You might, for example, find that you get anxious if you miss out on social media updates on your smartphone. Likewise, you may be so addicted to playing online games that you neglect social interactions to the point where it is unhealthy.
It is worth pointing out that, when we talk of digital wellness, it is not to suggest that using digital technologies (DTs) is necessarily bad! In fact, there are so many benefits to using DTs.
As we use digital technologies more and more, we are starting to see the impact that these technologies can have on our well-being, our general happiness, and health.
So the idea of digital wellness is about managing how you use digital technologies intentionally and not about avoiding them!
If you are a trainer, HR professional, or L&D manager planning a workplace session, see our editable digital wellbeing training materials for PowerPoint slides, trainer notes, activities, and a self-assessment exercise.
What Digital Technologies Affect Wellbeing?
By digital technologies, we mean anything that works digitally, including desktop computers, laptops, tablets, e-readers, smartphones, smart TVs and radios, and wearable devices such as smartwatches and fitness trackers.
We also include digital programs and applications that we can use either over the internet or offline, and any content that we can access using these programs and devices.
How Can You Assess Your Digital Habits?
In research for an academic paper on digital wellness, Dr Valeria Lo Iacono suggests asking these questions about your digital habits to get an initial picture of your digital habits.
Ask yourself, for example, about digital technologies:
- Do I spend more time on them than I intended?
- Do they distract me from focusing on the tasks that matter or leave me feeling digitally overloaded?
- Do I feel insecure after seeing other people’s posts on social media?
- Do I feel anxious if I am not up to date with everything that my contacts post on social media?
- Do I find it hard to disconnect from checking my digital devices outside office hours?
- Do I feel that I lose out on real-life (as opposed to digital) social interactions because I spend so much time using digital technologies?
These questions can be used for personal reflection or adapted by trainers and HR teams as a discussion activity in a workplace wellbeing session.
If you find yourself answering yes to several of the questions above, then you might benefit from some digital detox or from a digital diet!
If you are also interested in evaluating the positives you are gaining from digital technologies (as balancing the positives is, of course, equally important), then consider these questions also, which Dr Valeria Lo Iacono asks:
The Positives: Do Digital Technologies (DTs):
- Often give me useful and interesting opportunities (for work, friendships)?
- Help me to work in such a way that I am geographically independent. (i.e., work from any location)?
- Help me to learn many new things?
- Help me to achieve my goals and ambitions.
- Help me to meet new people and redevelop old friendships.
So with Digital well-being, the emphasis is really all about balance rather than ignoring digital technologies altogether.
How Can the PERMA Model Support Digital Wellbeing?
Although originally designed to assess one’s happiness, the PERMA model (created by Dr Seligman) is very useful in understanding digital well-being, and we, in fact, use it in our digital well-being training course materials (see banner above).
The model has five elements, and these are shown in the diagram below.
So let me explain each part and how you can use it to better understand your own digital habits.
1. Positive Emotions
When you think about your own relationship, as it were, with digital technologies, are they positive or negative?
Are you experiencing stress and anxiety because of digital technologies? Do you also experience screen fatigue after long periods of online work, meetings, or social media use?
If so, what can you do to reduce the negative emotions?
2. Engagement (and Flow)
By engagement and digital wellness, when using these technologies, are you getting into the flow?
Are you, for example, letting yourself drift mentally as you absorb yourself in a digital eBook?
Or are the technologies giving you the chance to chat on a video call with your mother who lives afar, and these conversations give you the chance to go with the flow, to relax, and find some quality time?
3. Positive Relationships
The PERMA model points do sometimes bisect in that, for example, your positive engagement can also impact the ‘Positive relationships’.
Have you used social media to reconnect with old friends or to make new friends? Or to make new business connections?
The opposite is using platforms such as Facebook to argue over political matters or to do things that can cause us to become agitated. So what you want to avoid are negative relationships and interactions via these technologies.
4. Meaning
Does your use of these digital technologies help you achieve greater meaning? Quite often, I am sure they will for you, such as if you build a connection with old school friends through social media.
Perhaps these technologies help you to connect with causes that are close to your heart, such as being part of an online charity tackling mental health awareness, for example.
5. Accomplishment
Quite simply, is the time you spend with digital technologies time that leads you towards accomplishing something worthwhile?
ACTION: When you have a chance (such as when you are sitting on a train or bus), spend 5 minutes thinking about both the negative and positive emotions that you experience regularly from using DTs.
How can you remove or reduce those negative digital technology experiences?
Also, think about what positive engagements you get from your digital usage. Reflect on the other times you use these technologies and do not get this level of positive engagement. Think about how you can reduce the negative engagements in favor of the positive engagements.
Do you spend time on pointless discussions on Facebook trying to influence other people’s views? Do you get caught in meaningless debates on social media? Can you use the time for much more positive relationships online, or even reduce your time on these technologies in favor of offline relationships?
How Can You Improve Your Digital Wellbeing?
We’ve talked about what digital wellness is, and so now let’s look at some changes you can immediately make.
These changes can help you build healthy technology habits and protect clearer work-life boundaries, whether you work in an office, remotely, or in a hybrid role.
1. Use Time Management Techniques
Why not begin to use some Time Management Techniques to improve your Digital Wellness?
Could you start by checking your email at set times rather than continuously throughout the day?
I have to admit that I don’t! Such a technique, though, is a very easy example of how you can very quickly begin to improve your digital wellness.
Likewise, try to allocate one time of the day ONLY for using social media and learn to be comfortable with that time.
ACTION: Set a specific time of the day to check emails or social media and other digital tasks.
2. Turn off Notifications and Clean Accounts
Reducing constant notifications can help prevent distraction and information overload, making it easier to focus on what matters.
It is becoming a popular trend for online companies to try to give you what is known as ‘push’ messages (notifications). These are messages that are automatically sent to your message box on your computer or on your phone.
Do you really need these companies to send you texts or messages every 5 minutes? It is very unlikely you do.
ACTION: Turn off notifications that you do not need (almost all of them). If you are ever asked if you want auto-notifications, just say no! Also, consider removing any friends you do not need on social media accounts to reduce unnecessary digital clutter.
If notifications and constant task switching are affecting concentration, see our guide to avoiding workplace distractions.
3. Use Non-Digital Techniques
Let me ask you some simple questions, and you can answer them, and I am sure that you can work out what you need to do. So here we go:
- Do you really need digital devices by your bed? Have you considered a tech-free room?
- Are you mentally strong enough to allocate yourself tech-free hours?
- Can you dine with family and friends and put away or even turn off your phone, and maybe even persuade others to copy you?
- Can you learn to be a better active listener and refocus on interpersonal relationships (turn off your phone or ignore calls whilst engaging others)?
- Do you spend enough time being creative in non-digital ways? When was the last time you danced, sat, and wrote something using a pen and paper, or went to a dance or fitness class? Isn’t it time?
Further Resources
- Find all employee wellness training content to download
- This guide is part of our Workplace Wellness Guides for trainers and HR professionals.
- Or take a look at the Digital wellness materials below:
See the Digital Wellness & Wellbeing Training Materials
