Digital detox – Release your hijacked mind from the digital demon

The ‘Digi demon’:  defeat with ‘Digital detox’

Mr. and Mrs. Mukherjee are very much worried about their 13-year-old son, who never detaches his phone from himself, immersing himself deeply in it, and not even bothering about his surroundings or social attachments. ‘Digital detox’ comes in this context.

This is a very common scenario in most of our homes, especially with teens. Whenever we travel by bus, train, or metro, we see most of us sitting with our heads down, concentrating and scrolling on the smartphones in our hands. Even older persons are not exceptional in this. Either TV or smartphones are very common companies for those people in their solitary lifestyle. 

If we get hooked into the scroll…

This addiction to digital screens or specifically to say heavy use of smartphones accumulate a number of toxicity silently and can cause changes in our brains. Physical, psychological, and social problems are much more now a days because of the excessive use of these gadgets.

Every time we scroll or swipe mindlessly, it sends a hit of dopamine to some areas of our brain that respond to addiction and results in the followings:

• We suffer from insomnia, anxiety, and short sleep duration because of the blue lights emission. This in turn lessens melatonin production in our brain and helps us to stay alert. 
• We become much affected by cyberbullying and our self-esteem drops continuously.
• We become more depressed and feel isolated.
• Restricted physical activities lead us to put on weight.
• We depend much more on unhealthy eating,
• We also face a lack of time management and work ethic problems in our professional world.

How do you know if you need a ‘digital detox’?

• If you cannot stay a few minutes keeping your phone aside and become anxious or stressed about not getting it in hand.
• If you cannot resist to check your phone every few minutes.
• If you become more conscious, anxious, angry, depressed, or moved by the likes, comments and share counts of your posts on social media.
• If you feel insecure without checking your device.
• If you cannot able to concentrate on one thing without checking your phone.

Then you are trapped in digital addiction – the ‘demon’ is ready to engulf your mind.

How to get rid of this ‘Digi demon’?

The answer is ‘digital detox’. It is not any medicine or health drink, it is just our approach to maintaining a healthy life by spending some quality time with our dear and near ones. Digital detoxifiers can help us enjoy ourselves without the interference of modern digital technologies and relieve us from the above-mentioned problems.

How can you do it?

Does it seem absurd?

You need not do this lifelong but just for a period of time and you can decide how long you want to control your tech habit.

If you have a workload and cannot able to completely detach yourself from the digital world, you can try a mini-detox at the end of your workday.

How to limit your digital usage?

Studies showed that if we try to reduce our social media usage to approximately 30 minutes per day, it markedly improves our well-being. The level of depression or loneliness can also be lower as well.

We can start slowly to reduce our dependency on phones before setting any higher limits. Sudden and whole detachment from technology may cause craving and irritability.

• We can set our phones aside –
• During spending time with our family or friends or having meals together,
• During waking up in the morning or before going to sleep at night.
• During our involvement in any project or hobby.
• We can remove irrelevant apps from our mobile or keep the phone in charge outside of our bedroom.
• Yogic postures are found to be an effective part of digital detox, especially in adolescent school-going children. Some of these include asanas like Makrasana, Setu-Bandhasana, Padahastasana, Marjariasana, Adhoukh-Shavasana, Balasana, Paschimottanasana, Padmasana, Sookshma-Vyayama, Suryanamaskar, Ardha-Chandrasana, Trikonasana, Bhujangasana, Vakrasana, Ustrasana and Yoga-Nidra etc.

What are the benefits of this digital detox for us? 

• Improve our mental health: Restraining social networking sites for a week was reported to lower our stress levels.
• Banning digital devices in our beds may gift us better sleep.
• Reduce our digital eye strain syndromes: a digital detox helps us to get relief from excessive eye strain.
• Prevent the text-neck syndrome:  digital detox rescue us from the text-neck pain caused by hunching over and looking down continuously at a smartphone for a long time.
• Increase the quality-time in our real relationship: the digital world makes us aloof from our real world. A digital detox endorses strong bonding between our family and friends to whom otherwise we were disconnected even staying together. Thus improves our relationships

Therefore, to improve our mental health, improve our family bonding, make ourselves more creative, and maintain a healthy lifestyle, especially to live life lively a digital detox is needed for all of us. So we can follow the words of Helen Keller, “Never bend your head. Always hold it high. Look the world straight in the eye” (not through the digital screen).