What Is Digital Wellness?

Digital wellness is defined as an intentional state of physical, mental, and social health that occurs while mindfully engaging with the digital and natural environment.

The way we use digital gadgets and consume digital products significantly affects various aspects of our lives. 

Experts have linked the use of digital technology with a number of mental health issues, particularly in young people. Our digital well-being should be kept in check in order to maintain overall health and wellness.

Technology is meant to be used to improve lives. However, the way we use (or abuse) technology leads to serious issues. Most of these issues have to do with how we interact with each other, react to what happens around us, and do our everyday mundane tasks. 

These are causes of concern especially since the younger generation is seen to be the most affected. This puts the world in danger of having a future population of tech addicts.

There are many ways to practice digital health and wellness. Some include:

• Try to remain stress free while using technology
• Protect your eyes and ears while using electronics by wearing blue-light-blocking glasses and keeping the volume down
• Have someone help to keep track of how much time you spend online
• Don’t let electronics get in the way of your normal schedule
• Mute notifications to prevent interruptions
• Get plenty of sleep instead of using digital devices
• Don’t let things online affect your life

A New Innovative Trend

In a high-tech world, it’s not unusual for us to be surrounded by multiple screens. 

The understanding of the negative effects of digital technology on human beings has brought us the concept of digital wellness and an acknowledgement that we need to improve our digital health.

What are the risks of the digital world?

• Poor sleep: our minds might get too wired, nighttime notifications can interrupt our sleep cycle and blue light stimulates the brain during rest time, throwing off our circadian rhythm.
• Reducing concentration.
• Stunted imagination: the constant stimulation provided by the digital world can be damaging. People no longer need to use their own imaginations to amuse themselves. 
• Preventing us from developing social connections: Our digital obsession can hurt our personal relationships and keep us from developing deeper real-life connections.
• Eyestrain: symptoms can include blurred vision, dry eyes, headaches…
• Poor posture and neck and spine pressure and pain.
• Sedentary lifestyles which may lead to obesity, cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes…
• Effect on children: low academic performance, lack of attention and creativity, addiction tendencies, social issues…

Digital healthcare is a broad, multidisciplinary concept that includes concepts from an intersection between technology and healthcare. It applies digital transformation to the healthcare field, incorporating software, hardware, and services. Examples: mobile health (mHealth) apps, electronic health records (EHRs), electronic medical records (EMRs), wearable devices, telemedicine…

Digital healthcare has a long history of development and is particularly resonant in the last two years, due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, it showed a lot of benefits:

• Reducing inefficiencies
• Improving access to information
• Reducing costs
• Managing and monitoring our health and wellness-related activities
• Making medicine more personalized for patients.