A blog dedicated to digital wellbeing and digital wellness
When news' cycles are stressful or intense, you may feel tempted to check the news or social media platforms every few seconds for more information. You may even feel addicted to the emotional rush that comes from panic-inducing headlines. As you spend more time in front of a screen during isolation and social distancing, here… Continue reading 5 Ways to Beat Media Overwhelm
I was watching Professor Laurie Santos as part of her Science of Well-Being course on Coursera, where she talks about how to deal with social comparison. She takes a dim view of social media, encouraging students to delete social media apps from their phones, or at least give it up for a week to see… Continue reading How to avoid social comparison on social media
It’s the New Year. That means fresh starts, resetting your life and coming up with new goals, right? But this year (decade!) I won’t be looking for a fresh start. Instead, I will continue building on what I've learned about myself over the past decade and build on growing my strengths and managing negative behaviours.… Continue reading Why I won’t be after a fresh start in 2020
In late 2016, I gave up the internet for two months. In 2017, I vowed to find a “digital-life balance” as my New Year’s Resolution. But it takes longer than a year to reform entrenched habits and expectations. Since then, I’ve been focusing on changing my habits in a sustainable way. It is an ongoing… Continue reading My digital wellness journey – a personal review of 2019
1. Avoid competitive and comparative spaces in your leisure time Social media is built on social comparison: lifestyle, looks, number of followers, number of likes, professional accomplishments. You may always feel the desire to compete. We can often forget that features such as likes and followers are artificial and deliberate design choices to get us… Continue reading 6 simple ways to reduce stress in your digital life
Whether it's side hustle culture, a high pressure job that makes it difficult for you to boundaries or the pressure to perform for other people on social media, you may feel you're at risk of burnout. It doesn't help that burnout as a lifestyle is romanticised by entrepreneurial Instagram memes, co-working spaces and the obsession… Continue reading How to resist millennial burnout in a 24/7 culture
Self-expression has always been one of the joys of the internet. But as social media has evolved to centre around likes, views, followers and stats, you may find it difficult to express yourself without feeling crushed every time a post does not do as well as you want. But over the past couple of years,… Continue reading Recovering your sense of creativity in an age of metrics
If you are working on a side hustle that you’re passionate about, it can be difficult to separate your self-esteem from your project when you use social media. You may find yourself obsessed with checking your stats for new followers, likes and web traffic. You may hurt like hell whenever you put hours into something… Continue reading How to use social media for your side hustle without demolishing your self-esteem
There was this hedgehog I used to watch on Instagram. It was so fat, it couldn’t curl into a ball. Occasionally, a slender human hand would rub its pink belly, which looked bloated and raw. There was no discomfort in the pink eyes of the hedgehog. But then again, it was so obese, it looked… Continue reading The thin line between cuteness and cruelty on Instagram
Last month I went to School21 to hear what a dozen 16 year olds had to say about technology and addiction. And they had a lot to say. The conversation spanned identity, public spaces, social pressure, distraction, and memes — lots about memes. But what became clear early on was that the relationship between the internet and… Continue reading What I learned from talking to students about technology and mental health
DIGITAL COOLDOWN BLOG 