It’s an everyday part of life to be connected digitally at pretty much all times. You likely use the Internet either for work, personal use, but likely both.
People were not designed to spend all of their time online, which is why a lot of people’s digital lives cause them stress and problems. If this sounds like you, then you’ll want to go about making your digital life healthier. That way, you get to participate without any negative effect to you.
1. Set Up Screen Time Trackers
Screen time trackers are very useful because they show you, in crystal-clear terms, how long you’ve spent online each week. These also typically show you how that time is distributed across all of the different apps/programs you use.
You can get automatic ones for your various devices, but you can also use time-tracking apps like Toggl to manually input how much time you’re spending on stuff online.
Knowing how much time you spend on screens is important and helps you know if you’re overdoing it online or not. By seeing numerically how much of your time is being spent, you can make the necessary adjustments to where your time’s going.
2. Separate Work From Personal
Billions of us have a digital life. Millions of us have two – that is work and personal. If you use the Internet both while working and chilling, it’s tidier if you can try to segment these different lives as much as you can.
There’s no point in your prospective customers or recruiters knowing all about your opinions on the latest Star Wars film for instance, so why conflate the two ‘worlds’?
If you have a work laptop/phone then this is even easier You can simply keep all the apps you need for work on your work devices and the same for personal, and make sure that you’re only able to access the accounts relative to your work or personal device.
Not only will separating your work digital presence from personal make you feel much better mentally, but it will lead to more effective use of your time.
3. Take Tech Time Outs
There are plenty of things you can do with technology to make your digital life healthier, but nothing gets any healthier than taking some time out!
Tech time outs are growing in popularity as most people realize they’re spending too much time online. By taking a time out from tech you will give yourself the chance to reflect on your use and get some much needed fresh air!
It’ll surprise you how much motivated and full of ideas you feel when you get back from a tech timeout. You’ll suddenly feel reinvigorated and able to focus for longer in front of the screen; which is great!
4. Curate Your Social Algorithms
At this point, most people know social media platforms depend on algorithms. To make it clear, your experience on a platform is directly related to the algorithm you have on it, which is based on your usage.
By interacting with content you don’t like or find inflammatory, you are actually telling platforms to give you MORE content like that. Social platforms will also drop in controversial content specifically to make you engage on the platform more.
It’s an insidious trick but one you can easily avoid by just refusing to engage with any content that doesn’t make you feel positive.
5. Condense and Remove As Much As You Can
The secret to a healthier life, digital or otherwise, is often about tidiness. If you can remove yourself from certain platforms, stop frequenting certain websites, and condense a lot of the information you seek to one or two platforms, you’ll have much less to ‘keep up with’.
That goes for emails. Take the time to ruthlessly unsubscribe from everyone, leaving only those creators whose emails make you smile when they land in your inbox. If you’re like everyone else there will be very few people you don’t unsubscribe from.
You’re on TikTok/Instagram and Snapchat? Consider moving to just one platform.
You get your latest gaming news from GameRant, TechRadar, and Twitter? Switch to just Twitter if you use it for other stuff, or reading articles and deleting your Twitter account if you don’t use it.
Lead A Healthier Digital Life
The benefits of having a healthier and more organized digital life cannot be ignored. You will feel so much better knowing why you participate on certain platforms/ corners of the Internet, and will find yourself with less to keep up with if you close down old accounts and cut off certain platforms.
Don’t worry about what anyone else is doing. Focus on what’s healthy for you and take the steps to improve your digital life based on that.