According to a study by the American Psychological Association, 57% of adults report feeling exhausted due to excessive use of digital devices. This is something we have all experienced at some point, perhaps after a busy day of reports where you may have felt overwhelmed from working for hours on end with figures and felt the need to rest your eyes. Well, this is a clear example of why you need to follow some guidelines to help you disconnect.
More and more companies are seeking a better balance between work culture and hyperconnectivity. That is why this term is on the rise.
Benefits of digital mindfulness
Digital mindfulness offers a wide range of benefits that can be felt in both the short and long term, making it a powerful and indispensable tool in today’s workplace. It helps us to:
- Reduce stress and anxiety: limiting the impulsive use of screens and apps such as TikTok reduces mental overstimulation.
- Increase concentration: it promotes the ability to focus on one thing instead of multitasking.
- Improve sleep quality: by reducing excessive screen use, especially before bedtime, we avoid exposure to blue light and improve our rest.
Given the reality that surrounds us, mindfulness not only offers a preventive approach, but also activates a way to restore balance. And recent data confirms this, according to the BePresent 2024 Digital Wellness Report, which indicates that 76% of people feel they spend ‘too much time’ on their phones, with a daily average of five hours in front of a screen. The situation is even worse among Generation Z, where 83% admit to having an ‘unhealthy relationship’ with their devices.
Tools
This practice is not limited to individuals; organisations are also seeking to implement it to improve productivity and employee satisfaction. As a result, tools and techniques supported by human resources teams are becoming increasingly popular.
In my opinion, one of the easiest to implement and most useful in everyday life is the ‘30/30’ technique, which consists of spending 30 minutes on a screen-free activity, followed by another 30 minutes of controlled use. It is similar to the Pomodoro Timer (25 minutes of work and 5 minutes of rest). Ultimately, it is about tackling digital overload and taking the first steps towards a healthy balance in our digital lives.
Another interesting habit to implement quickly is ‘do not disturb’ mode. This is so simple that it is available on any device with a native function that prevents unnecessary notifications.
But there are also some very interesting apps that promote digital wellbeing and even combine sustainability, such as Forest, which allows you to concentrate while virtual trees are planted when you are not using your mobile phone. And extensions such as StayFocused for Chrome, which limits the time you can spend on specific websites.
Last but not least, if we are looking for that real world, we can use analogue or physical tools for this purpose, such as notebooks where we can write down how we feel after reducing our digital use, thereby promoting awareness, or even traditional clocks or physical alarm clocks to avoid constantly checking our mobile phones just to see what time it is or to wake up without having to check the first WhatsApp message we have received.
Limits on screen use
Nowadays, setting limits on screen use is essential for cultivating a healthy relationship with technology and improving our mental well-being. Furthermore, this philosophy is taking hold in all the major technology companies, such as Apple, which have implemented features on their devices that allow users to set time limits for screen use.
One of the fundamental steps to take is to define screen-free times, especially at the beginning and end of the day, and even to identify technology-free zones such as the bedroom or the dining table. This helps us to form a habit and encourages real connection with our surroundings and the people around us.
This, combined with the tools and techniques seen in the previous point, helps us to set those limits, but it is important that this limitation becomes a collective agreement with the people we live with or who surround us, such as family and friends, in order to strengthen bonds and improve the quality of time spent together.
Therefore, setting limits on screens does not mean giving them up, but learning to use them consciously. The key is that we have control over them and decide how we want to invest our time and attention, so that technology is at our service and not the other way around.
Digital mindfulness proposes a conscious approach to how, when and why we use our devices. It is not about rejecting technology, but about using it in a more balanced and healthy way so that it does not absorb all our time.
It is not just a fad, but a powerful tool that has come to remind us how we can regain control over our time, attention and well-being in a hyperconnected world. Ultimately, it invites us to live more consciously in the here and now, giving us more balance and a healthier life.
