Technology Use and Your Wellbeing
Use the toggles below to explore strategies for addressing answers to the statement, “I want to…”
Reduce My Technology Use
- Becoming a Digital Minimalist – this podcast interview with Cal Newport (author of “Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World”) will help you learn “about being intentional about technology, how cleaning up your digital life is like de-cluttering your house, and why he recommends a 30-day tech fast to evaluate what tech you want to let back into your life.
- What Makes Your Phone So Addictive & How to Take Back Your Life – this podcast interview with Adam Alter (author of “Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked”) explores the ways in which technology is designed to be addictive, the negative impact heavy tech use has on your social skills, and how to “get a hold of a behavior you can’t seem to shake.”
- Reclaim Your Attention: How to Keep Your Phone from Distracting You – this article explores 3 critical steps you can take to prevent your phone from distracting you so you can reclaim time in your life.
- How to Quit Mindlessly Surfing the Internet and Actually Get Stuff Done – this article will help you learn what makes the internet so hard to pull away from and how you can set up boundaries and limits with 3 simple steps to turn the internet back into a useful tool and not a time-suck.
- How to Actually Stop Wasting Time On The Internet – this video provides 6 tips to “to eliminate all those hours we waste online” with a focus on being accountable to your personal goals.
- How to Do a Social Media Detox – this article outlines “the nature of social media addiction, the benefits of a social media detox, and how to do a proper social media detox.”
Understand the Negative Effects of Tech Use
- 6 Major Dangers of Deepfakes and How to Spot Them – this article describes how deepfakes can be used to transmit false information, destroy reputations and provoke violence, as well as explain how to recognize the signs that a video is actually a deepfake and not real.
- 5 Reasons to Start Deleting Your Facebook Friends – this article outlines the ways that a large social network (Facebook or otherwise) can have detrimental effects on your brain, relationships, privacy and more.
- How the Internet Destroys Your Focus (and How to Get It Back) – this video explains how the internet changes neural pathways, making it harder for you to concentrate, and how you can repair the damage to improve your overall ability to focus.
Learn How Tech Can Help Me or Others
- 8 Accessibility Options Making Video Games More Accessible to All – this article highlights 8 ways that technology can be used to help people with disabilities play video games more easily.
- How Learning Programming Can Help Your Mental Health – this article explores how learning to coding languages to program software can improve your mental health by strengthening your problem-solving and creative-thinking skills.
- Stay Positive With Spotify’s Daily Wellness Playlist – this playlist from Spotify filled with podcasts and music is designed help you feel better throughout the day.
Google's Digital Wellbeing Tool
Use Google’s interactive tool to assess your relationship with technology and learn ways to maintain a healthier interaction with technology.
Cybersmile Foundation's Technology Wellbeing Tool
Use the Cybersmile Foundation’s interactive tool to assess your relationship with technology, your understanding of “technology wellbeing” and learn ways to maintain a healthier interaction with technology.
Choosing Well at UD
Click on the images or titles below to explore the "Choosing Well at UD" series which includes information about topics such as substance use, safer sex, healthy relationships, stress management, and more.
