ExplORe Series – Looking After Your Digital Wellbeing – 23rd May 2023

once again thank you for joining me this morning uh what we're going to be looking at look is looking after your digital well-being uh so what I thought it'd be useful um just as a starting point is if we actually thought as a group what do we mean by digital well-being so I thought we could use the chat just now so that you could share what do you think when you think of the term digital well-being you know what is that that's coming up what do you you think we mean by that oh flicking forward on that slide so if you want to use the chat and put things in there just to share your Reflections on that maybe why you've attended today so limiting information overload we've got our safety yes online that might be what we're thinking about in terms of when we're using online Technologies uh what that can mean for people um I can see lots of people typing in there and what I think is in terms of yes having a secure digital Network being able to keep you a lot here in terms of that Safety and Security that data protection uh thinking about how we use digital well-being and how enhancers are our well-being or maybe how it can be harmful we'll be touching on some of that throughout the presentation today um up overload by information I can completely understand that and how we may feel that um you know in this digital world how there's so much information out there and how we feel that we might need to um take that on board for our research take that on board for our work take that on board for our studies uh take that on board for our social life as well the the overuse of Technologies we've got here the limiting interruptions so lots of things that are coming through here today and that's very much what I'm thinking about as well when I think about digital well-being it's like how can we protect our ourselves when we're online how can we make the best use of these Technologies how can we you know manage that pressure of being online and get a good balance of on and offline so hopefully this today we can explore some I'll share some of my approaches to improving digital well-being and hopefully we can share some of those together as well as we explore that so let's have a little bit more of a think about well-being and can I just check is my screen still sharing I don't yet it seems to be doing so um hopefully you can see that so I thought first off let's think about digital ubiquity so one of the reasons we need to think about our digital well-being and how we manage our use of digital Technologies is digital technologies have now become ubiquitous with everything that we do you know we're looking at our smartphone pretty much all the time it's with us we can connect to everything online we can connect to the office we can connect to our friends and with that there's great benefits to this digital connect connectivity but also it can feel like we're always online as well we've always got to be on we've always got to be engaged and that can feel quite stressful at times I know myself I felt very stressed when I've had to be feeling like I'm at work all the time feeling like I've got to engage so let's have a look at this digital world that we're living in and let's have a look at some of the stats of why we might feel sometime is a little overwhelmed with the information that's out there so first off let's think about how much time do you spend online um now when I look at these stats on my screen I think that looks actually quite low uh when I reflect on this I bet if you were to think about how much time you spent online when you think about your research your studies your work I'm here I come into work I'm going to be sat at a computer I think of it more as being screen time most of the time we're connected to Technologies but the stats that I've got up here are from the ofcom online nation which is a useful survey that tells us about our habits of what we're using uh on on the internet and that kind of thing across the UK so they say that we're spending about four hours online and the most of the time that we're spending online is we're spending nearly three hours on our smartphones so this isn't really accounting for the working day this is accounted for what we're doing outside that working day so on top of what we're doing through the day the work the research that you might be doing we're spending an additional you know four hours online um actually hearing I've got a stat on the screen here that you can see in Scotland we're spending a little bit more time uh four hours and 18 minutes up in uh this nation that we're online and actually if you're falling into one of the younger age categories here so maybe you're 18 to 24 you're spending a bit more time than myself is spending online I'm not gonna reveal my age category to this group but you can you can all have a think about where you're sitting in that and does that actually resonate with you in terms of this another thing that we can look at when we're thinking about digital well-being and our habits is what is it that we're doing when we're online and I've just provided some stats here and there's some quite concerning ones I'd say here in terms of 62 percent of us I think are encountering encountering harmful content uh in on a monthly basis you know so we're engaging with some of the content not everyone on the Internet is nice as we know uh we can try and curate our communities but we're not always going to be having the best of time when we're online and engaging in that way um we can feel that we've talked about people have shared about keeping themselves safe online so some of this might be encountering scams and we've got 27 of people who are doing that um actually in terms of female versus male population online we can feel that you know maybe our views and opinions haven't got that voice we can't amplify and we can't share in the same way so it's useful to have a look at this maybe some of this resonates with you maybe it doesn't maybe you don't feel like that maybe you haven't encountered things and you know hopefully you've got some strategies for managing some of this but it's useful to have that kind of reflection and see that we're not alone in our interactions online so maybe when it's going good there's other things people who are enjoying that time but also maybe when we're struggling with some of our online interactions we're not alone and that's as a community maybe we can improve that online environment by reflecting on how we are using uh these Technologies in another off comes in there then there's one which is about media attitudes I like reading these kind of things I'm very interested on are um uses of digital Technologies and what that means for us as individuals but also what it means for society uh and in the recent media attitudes survey which was just come out in 2023 it's very recently off hot off the press this um they actually asked about mental health and well-being and what that meant to people when they were using online technology so it was very divided as we can see from this infographic that I've got on the screen of whether using online apps made people feel better they help their well-being or whether they felt it had a negative impact on their well-being so this was about using online communication platforms so it's quite divided there in terms of um positive and negative maybe people more people agreeing that online uh apps can help with their their well-being their sense of self um and then the other time though people reflecting that just about half of people were saying that they spent too much time online and that is that younger age category that I've put on there that 16 to 24 who were maybe online a little bit more but across the different age groups you've got a tendency for people maybe reflecting and feeling they felt that they spent too much online so maybe that's worthwhile for us to have a bit of a threat reflect do you feel that your use of technology is about right do you feel that you want to use more technology do you want to feel do you feel like you want to switch off a bit more because it's all about understanding your habit bits and what works for you I might like to spend lots of Time online and that might really help my well-being but if you feel that it's not doing that's probably when you need to reflect and think about oh you know do I need to change my Approach here are the different things that I can do another Trend that we've seen as well is um a whole raft of things that maybe say that they help with your well-being in terms of this so when I first started working and looking into digital well-being it was back in 2018 uh and there wasn't as much data and research on it at the time but since then we have had a lot more introduction of applications to help us switch off uh to record our well-being maybe track different things so we are seeing that growth in this and from the ofcom survey when they're asking that they were seeing we've got a whole wealth of activities that people are using Technologies now to help with their well-being whether it's being to relax improve their moods maybe have an app on your phone that helps you sleep that plays some music or a meditation app there's quite a lot of things out there but we all needs need to be quite cautious in terms of what we're signing up to with these what they're recording what they're doing with the data because obviously a lot of free but it is worth having a look what is out there what is helping you what you might use and there's quite a lot more information in the ofcom survey if you want to have a look at that in the media attitudes one so with digital well-being a lot of it is about understanding our habits if we think about a lot of people who have reflected here in terms of the ofcom survey the the stats that I've just given you there um people were feeling that maybe some of the time they agree that it's helping their mental health with it or maybe it's not helping theirs and one of the most important things that we can do when we start thinking about how we can put in place strategies for improving our digital well-being is understanding what we're currently doing so in the the online course that I write in digital well-being which I can't cram all of that into a 45 minute session today one of the first activities we get people to do is to record what they're doing online how much time they spend online but also reflect on whether that had a positive or A negative impact on their their well-being so what I want us to do now is just do a little bit of an exercise on this to reflect on this to think about what what's helping us and maybe what's not helping us with our online interactions so I'm just going to come out of the presentation just now and I've got a jamboard here and I'm just going to share the link in the chat so that you can all access this uh sorry um if I just copy that and paste that in there so hopefully you can get access to this so this should be shared so anyone can edit so what I'd like us to do you'll be anonymous it's fine you're not signed in is just at the side here there's this little sticky note here and you can add something like maybe for me email I I have a problem with email so I'm going to save that and I'm going to put that kind of negative here I get overload of that so if you want to add some of the things on there that you feel that when you're engaging maybe it's with social media maybe it's a particular platform that you like whether that has a positive or A negative impact you know you enjoy doing that or you know and I've got two lines here so maybe the Top Line we can think about our habits in terms of our work in Life or our research side of our our work off studies and maybe some of that in the kind of personal because sometimes it might be different my email usage for personal if I use that at the bottom line maybe different oh thank you someone said it's view only thank you that you should now be able to edit you might need to just click up here to refresh your screen uh so if you've got a little circle there if you refresh it you should have that access now apologies for that I'm not not tech savvy so yeah you can put on different sticky notes by doing this and adding them on here and just click save and drag them about the screen um to be able to add to that now so I'll just give it a little bit so that people can put some stuff on there or social media I'm not on any social media so I can't have that on there they do all overlap so if you just drag yours you will be able to kind of move them about uh sorry I've just moved someone's there I'm taking it that's probably a negative yeah sorry um so let's have a look at some of the things that are coming up here oh daily word or I know that's very popular um got some more social media things that we've got here looking at the news well that could be baby positive or negative oh we've got things like Echo chamber yeah so actually it can feel that we may be getting the same views we've curated our social media so much that it can end up being an echo chamber that everyone's saying the same thing and that can be maybe positive if it's reinforcing some of your opinions but it can be very negative as well if there's lots of negative opinions there and it is actually resulting in a very polarized online environment that doesn't seem to be any Middle Ground any gray now does there it's either this opinion that opinion and there's no kind of maybe meeting of that so it does have quite an impact on our society and overall democracy actually some of that side of things uh yeah someone's put something about LinkedIn in there I always feel quite confused by LinkedIn I think it's the one social media I'm on there but um I feel I need to share but um I'm not sure I'm using it in the right way so that can be thing learning new skills I think that's a kind of useful thing that we can do um so let's put Fitness and diet information actually we can get a lot we were saying in the initial thing about how we can get a lot of information people were searching for Fitness information for health and well-being information online we've got things like misinformation and dealing with notifications yeah um so lots on there so do keep putting things on there and having a reflect and I do recommend that maybe taking some time after this um this session as well to take a bit more time on this exercise and reflect on your daily week what you're doing those interactions and how that's making you feel in terms of your well-being do you have a positive response to it do you have a negative response to it because that's the first point that we need to do before we can make any positive changes we have to understand what our current habits are so let me just go back to my slideshow and just present from here so we've got we made our first step to improving our digital well-being by understanding uh what that is but what do we mean by digital well-being I know at the beginning I asked you to uh share your thoughts on what we meant by digital well-being so there was a lot about safety there was a lot about uh kind of information overload and some of those impacts that technologies have I thought it'd be useful to share some Reflections from my um my exploration into this topic of what we mean by digital well-being so what do we mean first by well-being I don't think you can really separate the two out when we're thinking about digital well-being we're thinking about that broader sense of well-being and by well-being that refers to our sense of self our ability to live to live our lives as closely as possible to the way we want uh it encapsulates the ability to have positive relationships promote healthy living and feel life satisfaction so in the online course that I deliver an academic from the University of York Lena Giga uh talks about what well-being means in terms of well-being and mental health and this is the definition that she provides for us within that so it's not the kind of fleeting movements of Happiness if we look at Vanessa's King's example as well this is about overall life satisfaction um and a lot of the my understanding of well-being comes from an area of psychology called positive psychology which Martin segman writes a lot on and it's a growing body of research it's the study of happiness I think that's a fantastic thing to think about and in terms of that they're looking at what makes life well worth within what makes us feel positive what has a positive impact in our well-being and segment in his Perma model which I've got up here on the screen talks about this in terms of positive emotion so that's what we were just reflecting on in terms of when we feel do we get a positive reaction to that use of digital technology do we get a negative reaction how we engage with others how we feel engaged in the activities that we're doing the relationships that we might build so we can think about these in terms of how they connect with our online interactions because relationships we might be building that in terms of social media how we're building our community how we're interacting with people the other thing that it covers then is meaning as well do we get a sense of uh purpose through engaging in that activity because it gives us a sense of achievement as well as link to that do we feel that we've succeeded by engaging with that activity how this all works together to give us that real sense of self that sense of happiness that sense of achievement in our lives so it's a useful models to be thinking about if you do reflect on your habits looking at those in terms of the engagement were you feeling engaged at that time where you're feeling disengaged did you feel that that helped you build positive relationships with others did it give you a sense of meaning to the other activities that you're doing in your life and how that works in that digital field that's what we ask people to do as I say on the online course and it can be a useful exercise for us to undertake to really understand um our digital habits and what is improving our well-being and I will say it is unique to you so we can share our ideas about what helps with digital well-being and we'll move on to that uh in the next part of the presentation but don't feel pressured to do what others are doing you know because I think that's one of the things that's caused me in my time the most amount of stress is feeling like I said I'm not on social media there's been times that I felt that is going to be detrimental to my career to being able to engage with the Library community but I made that decision for me because it's you know I felt I was already quite overwhelmed with the amount of information that came into my inbox having another Channel that I needed to engage with wasn't going to work for me now I'm not saying that you should do the same as me because you need to build your networks you need to work with people you need to do those things that are going to work best for you but do have that reflection and do you feel that you can take some control over your use of digital Technologies and that kind of thing so you know it is going to be unique what works in terms of helping your digital well-being but do feel as well that you can take take control as part of that because it is we're all unique we're all individual so what's going to work is going to be different for each and every one of us um so um just going back to the permanent model and that activities um I've just shared on this slide uh just a little bit more of those kind of indicators that you can look at if you are doing that reflection if you are thinking about what works and what doesn't for you so I can make sure that the slides are shared after this so you can have a look at that and then maybe go through your positive negative um activity again to see you know um what you might do a bit more of what you might do a bit less of and that kind of thing because it's all about managing and dealing with our digital destructions because I felt it was important within this presentation I talk a lot about it in the courses that I deliver in going some of this is not our fault a lot of this is not our fault uh in the digital technologies have been designed to keep you online uh famous quote from the CEO of Netflix back in 2016 was their biggest competitor uh was sleep you know I think now probably the biggest competitors probably Disney plus but you know we're in a different landscape but they are designing these Technologies with that infinite scroll with those likes with the notifications to keep you on the platform because their funding model for a lot of the free social media platforms as we know is advertising so you're going to view more advertising and click on more links the longer that you are on there so they want to keep you on that platform so actually we need to find ways that we can mitigate and manage those kind of distractions that we might have in there that we're trying to contend with so I think we always need to be quite kind to ourselves when we're thinking about anything with a positive psychology or well-being that you know if we are feeling that we're spending too much time online it's not just us it's how it's been designed it's how we're all trying to deal with those challenges of you know digital technology has been ubiquitous with what we do so we've talked a lot about Samantha positives and negatives what digital well-being is but I did want us to actually think about some of those strategies that we might have in place for improving our digital well-being I've mentioned that it's Unique to us you know so everyone's going to be different um but let's think about some of those strategies for improving so I'm just going to share some of mine so um I did go for a phase where I had a really negative um relationship with Technologies mainly with my working Technologies because that ability Now isn't it the office isn't just here the office is in your phone so I wanted to you know I needed to take some time to think about how I could improve that I was I would be looking at my phone when I was out at gigs and answering emails I was more present online than what I was present in the world I wasn't really enjoying some of those fun activities because I was distracted by work I had that digital distraction so here's some of the things that I put in place and these some of these might help you some of them you might think no that's a terrible idea so one of the first things that I did is I read a lot of books on my phone but I also had alerts my emails turned on so they'd pop up in the evening when I was reading and it then it would cause me stress because I'd be like I've got more work that I need to do so I turned off my alerts I don't have alerts on any of my apps now at all and it's a lot clever now what you can do with technology in terms of you can set timings for alerts to be on you can switch those in between so if you don't want them at the weekend what you want them in the day so do have a look at that kind of thing that really helped for me because it meant that I didn't get that stress trigger of something coming through another thing that I did is I use technology to actually help me with my well-being in terms of making a quick note so I was Finding oh things have come to me oh I didn't do that action at work oh I need to remember to do this oh that's a good idea so what are you have on my phone is I have an app I have Google keep which is just a Post-It note thing so I can take a quick note and I take it really quickly I can talk to it as well so it falls records and turns to text so then that's out of my mind so I'm using technology there in a way to help me with my well-being I think that's a positive use of it I've said email and I'm not necessarily a massive fan of email so if we could all just send a little less email in the working day I think we'd all feel a little bit like our well-being was improved um I have a no phones rule I found that really helpful just to get away from that so um also for my husband he sits like this uh with this phone all the time is completely addicted to technology of just not having any phones when we sit down to have our evening meal I don't have my phone even if I'm on that sitting to eat my own that's my break from that just to time to rear out like to not have it there's a lot of research in terms of maybe not having using a phone in the evening because that can help with sleep and that kind of thing so that might be something that you think to yourself is that something that you can put in place and I also have a 15 minute rule which comes from uh some of the action happiness stuff which I've got a tag on there they provide loads of useful things that can help in terms of positive psychology and improving your well-being but mine is I have my 15 minute rule where every day I have 15 minutes where I just do something which completely cheers me up and my thing is I love dinosaurs uh I any presentation that I do I've either got a quote from Jurassic Park or some dinosaurs why have I got dinosaurs on the screen here well my 15 minute rule is I have an app on my phone for Jurassic world I've built my own Jurassic Park in there and I like to spend my 15 minutes to chill out relax actually even though this is digital well-being I use a digital technology at that time it's not about switching off just to have that escape um and sort of have that little bit of fun every day and there is some research on this I had you know in terms of gaming well and how that can actually help you with this in terms of well-being I'm not advocating that everyone uh downloads Jurassic Park although it is Ace uh I will say on their phone but actually finding something that gives you that space that sense of you know A Room of One's Own that 15 minutes that half an hour whatever that is that helps you relax maybe helps you switch off that then just helps you recharge your batteries and you know maybe improves your overwhelm or well-being so that might be in meditation it might be going out for a walk it might be you know reading reading a novel whatever that is there's that real sense of having that that Solitude that time that's just for you that enables you to do something that's not the pressures of work that's not your research that enables you to then go back revived and maybe get over that writer's block that you might have and that kind of thing so I've shared my strategies for improving there uh so I thought it'd be really useful as a community today if we shared some of our strategies for improving what helps you in terms of like that sense of Happiness maybe online or maybe it's taking that break that does that so I'm going to go back to oh uh back to our jamboard then and if I just click to the next screen you can do this along the top um we can put in terms of what of our our strategies for improving so if you're happy to once again uh share a Post-It note and save it on there um so that we've got that because I have said it is unique to us in terms of that digital well-being but I'm sure there's things that you know people will will gain from sharing um well that works for me that doesn't work for me and that kind of thing so that we can all improve as a community so if you can get to the bit it's from there oh I can see in lots of things appear now once again if you just drag them they'll be um they all appear in the same place which I find is a design of this so that focusing on one thing you know that is a really key thing isn't it you know we do use lots of multiple platforms so it can feel like we're never switching off actually crocheting knitting some of my previous college from York they were actually doing digital unplugged and we're actually doing some knitting as part of that connecting with nature yet going out for a walk doing that logging up completely uh once in a while actually yeah how often do we close all the windows on our computer and that kind of thing um switching iPad off in the early evening yeah there's a lot about the light on phones that can you know have an impact um oh sorry I just shared this link again I've just seen that in chat so um pets you know yeah that links with the kind of nature thing doesn't it having a schedule in the morning for responding to emails that's that can be really key you can put things in your internet in your signature like I only respond to emails in the morning you know or I don't respond to emails out of hours you know things like that or if you do need to respond to emails out of hours maybe put in a polite note saying I respond to email out of hours but I don't expect a response out of hours because that can help with other people's um and that kind of thing so taking some breaks you know yeah that's that's similar to my 15-minute rule of just being able to do yes not looking at teams um during holidays having that I actually delete my apps when I go on holiday uh just to go because I'm too tempted to look at work uh I think if I've deleted Outlook and I've deleted teams I'm less likely to uh end up getting sucked into looking at that um yeah engaging with people family and friends neighbors you know yeah who not everyone is on social media and I think most of the recent reports show over you know 96 of people are online but that's not everyone is it so being able to exercise being able to meet with people in different ways going for a walk lots of good ones here um so P do add to that and I'll you know you've got that I like that dancing you know certainly and I think maybe with lockdown where we you know we were really grateful of online Technologies then that we were able to connect that enables us to socialize but actually once again maybe moving away from that being able to do things being able to meet friends is something that can really help with that kind of Perma model in that sense of relationships that sense of achievement that we might get and that positive uh psychology so thank you for sharing in there um they're there for you to have a look at have a read maybe take some ideas from that when you're reflecting on your positives and negatives of what were the things that are going to work for you so um just going to go back to my presentation then uh so yeah I think putting some strategies in place trying things reflecting once again on what works and what doesn't is really positive there's a lot in terms of it doesn't have to be a big change you don't have to think I'm going to delete all my social media or I'm gonna you know not use my uh I'm gonna really reduce my time on my phone to just 30 minutes or something like that actually there's a lot of research that says in terms of atomic habits habits small changes can make a really big impact over time so if you make a small change and you stick to that each day maybe it's saying I'm not going to look at I'm going to turn off my alerts and I'm not going to have to look at work email outside or maybe it's I am going to have you know 15 minutes which is to myself where I can do my mindfulness or where I can go out for a walk they make a really big difference and you can build on that success of a small change that can lead to much bigger change in terms of how you're connecting with technology and how you're feeling about this and don't put pressure on yourself to us to say it is individual do what works for you it really is making those decisions that what works what feels right what doesn't um what is helping and what isn't now we're not on our own when we're online so there's a lot of things that we need to take a collective responsibility so I think it's also was to in terms of reflecting about our engagement online and with apps and that kind of side of things we also need to think about you know how does our Behavior affect others I touched on this in terms of um maybe reflecting if you send email outside of ours maybe having a little note on there that says to people you don't expect others to respond uh maybe it's just thinking about oh you know I've got this uh meme on here that um saying on the internet someone's wrong maybe sometimes just taking a pause not getting involved in that that fight you know switching that channel just blocking that or maybe there is you know at the beginning of the presentation I said about harmful content that is on the internet maybe it's reporting that to the platform taking that responsibility to say no actually this should be removed this shouldn't be there because that's helping it's only collectively really that we can make the internet and the online world a better place again you know it started off as being this kind of idea of this great democratizer and it's ended up being something that maybe challenges democracy so actually if we can think positively about how we're using Technologies what we're doing to engage with others on there maybe we can make that a bit of a better environment to be in uh by just making that kind of reflection and the way I like to think of it is um you know finding that Common Ground you know having honest conversations sharing with people what's working and what isn't working in a nice way and maybe just taking a bit of Bill and Ted's um ethos of you know being excellent to each other when we are on the online world and maybe being excellent to ourselves as well which always means that you can have a little bit of fun along the way as part of that so that is what I was going to cover in terms of digital well-being I've put some links to some guidance from my previous institution where I've shared things about digital well-being there's a video online of me talking about my experiences if you want to see me again and there's a link there to an online course which is a three-week course which is free on future learn that's looking at this topic of digital well-being and what that might mean so um with that that's the end of the presentation but I think we have got I've left a few minutes for questions I am going to at this point then just um stop the recording

2023-06-04 01:28

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