Post 3: Digital Wellness

What is Digital Wellness?


In short, one's digital wellness or wellbeing relates to the relationship between someone and the digital world. Mariek Vanden Abeele (2020) defines digital wellness as: 
"A subjective individual experience of optimal balance between the benefits and drawbacks of mobile connectivity. People achieve digital wellbeing when experiencing maximal controlled pleasure and functional support, together with minimal loss of control and functional impairment".  


Screen time and digital wellness


In an article published in 2015, Houghton states, "Approximately 45% of the youngest participants (i.e., Year 3, age eight years) exceeded the <2 hours recommendation, rising to 80% by Year 9 (15–16 years of age)." (2015). This blog post was made about ten years after the publication of this article, and I believe this number has increased even more, especially in light of the pandemic. 


A screen time survey is one of the first activities I do in my junior high technology classes each year. This year, I received many comments from my students saying things like, "I don't even want to know how many hours I spend on my phone." After having my students track screen time for a week, it was found that some students were spending between 12 and 16 hours a day looking at some screen. This led to several great discussions with our class about the side effects of large amounts of screen time. Such as the impacts screen time can have on both your physical health (affects sleep and puts you at risk for numerous diseases) and mental health (increased risk of depression, feeling of isolation and aniline). While most students' screen time was related to apps like TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram, there was one other major contributor. And that Chromebooks are used in school and for homework. One student noticed this and questioned how I could spend so much time teaching the adverse effects of screen time and then turn around and give them an assignment on their Chromebooks like every other teacher, which I needed a solid answer to. And even after reading some of the material from our course this week, I still think I need more time to develop a completely satisfactory answer. At this point, the best I could say is that in the school setting, we are teaching the proper use of technology, which is being used in a safe environment. 


What Makes Teens Obsessed with Social Media?


As explained in the video Being Thirteen: Inside The Secret World of Teens (2015), Houghton suggests that males tend to be more involved in online games, and females tend to use more social media(2015). Based on my interactions and conversations with the students in my school, this trend still holds. Being Thirteen aired in 2015 when I was around 18 or 19 years old, so the video was one I could relate to personally. I can remember how my peers and sometimes even myself acted online. There was a time in all our lives when the number of lives you received on an Instagram post made or broke your Day….Week… Maybe even longer. Reflecting, most of what we said or did was embarrassing and out of character for me and my friends now. But I see the same trends continuing with the students in my classes today. They are always searching for the next way to get that dopamine hit from people on the internet double-tapping their posts. 



References: 


Houghton, S., Hunter, S. C., Rosenberg, M., Wood, L., Zadow, C., Martin, K., & Shilton, T. (2015). Virtually impossible: limiting Australian children and adolescents daily screen based media use. BMC public health, 15, 5. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-15-5


Vanden Abeele, M. M. P. (2021). Digital Wellbeing as a Dynamic Construct. Communication Theory, 31(4), 932–955. https://doi.org/10.1093/ct/qtaa024

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