Author: It’s Time to Log Off

Try a Digital-Free Day Trip and Escape to the Outdoors

If we were to find ourselves without our phones unexpectedly most of us would feel very vulnerable and lost. It’s become all too easy to become over-reliant on the tools on our smartphones, leaving us seriously doubting our ability to cope without them.

But combatting digital dependence is easy and can be fun, educational, and offer a great opportunity to get outside and enjoy the outdoors. Have you ever tried a digital free day trip without your smartphone to navigate?

A digital detox day trip

A great way to enjoy a digital detox is to plan and go out for a digital free day on a pre-planned route using a traditional map or rough location guides – and without relying on your smartphone*.

Within the Scouting movement and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme this skill is specifically taught to the children I lead in expeditions. They typically venture to areas with little or no phone signal, so being reliant on their smartphones as a means of navigation is simply impossible – not to mention the inevitable problems around battery life. Most of them find themselves enjoying the lack of phones and engage more in conversations, singing and having fun with each other exploring.

Having your own digital detox trip doesn’t have to involve going to the same lengths as a DofE expedition, just getting off the grid for one day or even a morning can improve your wellbeing and improve health and it’s simpler than it sounds.

Setting out on your digital free day

Find an area you wish to explore or visit, for example a popular national nature spot, or alternatively choose something closer to home like a local canal route to cycle or walk along.

Plan the route to get to the destination and set off and enjoy your day just using physical maps. The challenge is to not use your smartphone at all throughout the day. This is a great challenge to get the whole family involved in too, teaching your kids about nature, navigation and time together away from screens and game consoles.

Set yourself a creative challenge

Why not turn your digital free day into a creative challenge too? Bring a camera and photograph the trip. Not only are you learning to navigate the old fashioned way, but you’re relaxing by doing something creative at the same time. Or you could just bring a picnic, football or frisbee to enjoy. Anything that keeps you busy and not thinking about your phone is the trick.

Recent excursions I’ve enjoyed in this fashion were my trips to Durdle Door, the Reading to Newbury canal path, Oxford, Longleat Zoo and even to London. Most were well signed and marked out, making it easy to navigate without the use of maps at all.

Canal routes are a great choice as they are safe and popular and often have cafes or picnic spots to enjoy en route. The larger tourist hot spots are the easiest destinations for digital free day trips as you always can rely on crowds to lead the way if you’re not that confident about your map reading.

If you want to photograph the memories of visiting a location, why not try using a film camera or small compact camera and print them and create a digital free scrap book?

Learning to read a traditional paper map is a great skill to learn and a very good way to get you off grid. To greater advance your navigation skills try using a compass or time cards which describe your route and how long each leg or distance is. Each variation can help develop and strengthen time management skills and organisation.

*For safety always pack your phone or a sat nav as a means of communication or for emergencies.  A great alternative to OS maps is ViewRanger or Google Maps which both can run with just location data and require no internet to track you. You can pre-plan routes and download to your phone. Both are available to download on Android and Apple OS so you can still enjoy a digital free day and build up your confidence in navigation if you lack experience with map reading. 

View the original article at itstimetologoff.com

Get Off Screens and Get Outside for #MentalHealthMonth

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, also known as #MentalHealthMonth. At Time To Log Off we’re going to be focusing on two aspects of mental health affected by our 24:7 screen habits: social media and mental health, and the benefits of getting outside and connecting with nature.

Human beings have only been around for the last 200,000 years and most of that time we’ve been outside roaming in nature, living in caves, making fires and hunting. But in just a blink of an eye, over the last fifty years, we’ve transformed into almost entirely sedentary and indoor creatures.

We hardly go outside. We sit at desks for hours at a time, doing very little but staring at our devices. We eat lunch at the desk where we work, we drive or sit on a bus or train home, we watch TV or sit on another computer and we repeat this cycle week after week, after week.

Is it any wonder mental health issues are soaring? We’re simply not wired to live this way and our aches and pains and low mood after our week’s work are our brain and body telling us “Get off screens and get outside!”

We know so much now about how getting outside and connecting with nature can restore our mood and make us feel better. From forest bathing to the restorative power of the sea, to simply sitting in a green space. Getting outside in our busy lives can be easier said than done, but for #MentalHealthMonth here are a few ideas on how you can get off screens and get outside to boost mental health and wellbeing:

#1 Take a 15-minute fresh air break for every hour working on a screen. If you can’t actually get outside then look out the window and refresh your eyes with some natural light.

#2 At lunch don’t sit at your desk and continue to work and eat. Get away from the desk and find a green space to sit in – you’ll feel better for doing so and probably improve thinking and creativity for the afternoon.

#3 When you get in after work, avoid TV and screens for the hour before bed. How about quick walk outside in the evening to reconnect with nature instead of slumping at the TV? You might even find you sleep better at night.

#4 Follow the 5:2 Digital Diet and have weekends completely free of tech, go on a digital-free day trip, get outside do something different in the fresh air and restore your body and mind.

 

View the original article at itstimetologoff.com

6 ways to apply mindfulness to your digital habits

The average person checks their smartphone 150 times a day and our smartphone habits increasingly remove us from the present moment and leave us hopelessly distracted. Here are six ways you can apply more mindfulness to your digital habits, starting from now.

#1 Limit your source consumption

With the vast amount of information that is available on our smartphones, tablets and computers it’s certainly difficult to keep up with it all. You’re in effect consuming a huge amount of data, information, news, messages and entertainment all in very short periods of time.

This proliferation of sources is what’s causing you to stay online for a longer amount of time than you need to. By reducing the amount of time you spend on specific sources and then moving on to something else once your mind begins to tire, you’re relieving yourself from the overload of information that you’ve been trying to keep up with.

#2 Find the time to unplug

We all get caught up with the continuous checking and responding to emails – that’s a given. The flooding of incoming phone calls and text messages on top don’t help and don’t give us the chance to make time for ourselves.

Finding the time to unplug and stay in the present moment is essential because it will allow you to do one thing at a time and acknowledge the reasons why you’re doing it. Planning and sticking to schedules will also help you not wander around online aimlessly.

#3 Decrease your social media usage

Using social media with limitations is definitely a good idea. However with the increase in connections, followers and friends lists, you may begin to feel left out if you aren’t always connected and engaged with what’s happening around the world.

Simply not giving in to social media, and being mindful of the amount of time it is consuming each day, can help you stay connected to the real world, giving you the space in your life to develop real relationships not virtual ones.

#4 Take a moment

Whilst you are browsing the internet on your smartphone, tablet or computer and end up waiting for a page to load, instead of opening up a new tab, just take a minute to relax in the moment. You can use the time that you find yourself waiting to meditate for a few minutes and observe the flow of your breath. Start to notice your breathing and the things you don’t always acknowledge by staying rooted in the present.

#5 Develop a sense of digital awareness

Become aware of your relationship with your digital devices and your state of mind when you are interacting with them. When you receive messages, texts, tweets and Facebook notifications, stay aware of how you feel when you have read them. What kind of feelings arise when you browse the internet? Or when you are multitasking online? Or when someone ‘likes’ or comments on one of your posts?

Becoming non-judgmental and an objective observer of your emotions when you’re using technology will help you stay mindful, giving you choices in your relationship with technology rather than becoming a reactor to everything you see.

#6 Utilise those mindfulness triggers

Each time your digital devices ring or beep, they’re trying to distract you. But instead of seeing these alerts as a distraction, you can use them as an aid to become mindful of the present moment. So whenever you hear your phone bleep or ring from incoming messages, emails and calls, use them as mindfulness triggers to stay in the present moment. Realise the simplicity of the now and get out of your thinking mind for that brief moment.

Coming back to your natural state of being when you are using technology is possible with mindfulness. Don’t just let your digital devices distract you from life but instead allow them to become gentle guides that direct you towards a life where you can live in the present moment.

View the original article at itstimetologoff.com

The Social Media Paradox: It Sells us Connection but Sucks Our Attention

Social media networks say they are all about connecting people. But they have warped into distraction engines which suck our attention – taking us away from those we could be connecting with – and spawning the logging-off, or digital detox, movement.

Why did we join Facebook in the first place? It almost certainly wasn’t to watch, like and share streams of viral videos, which the newsfeed has overwhelmingly evolved into. Why did we join Twitter? It wasn’t to have circular arguments, in a medium stripped of nuance of expression. We didn’t join Instagram to get more anxious about our body image either.

These are the downsides of social media that were unexpected. Yet these downsides have clearly existed for some time, and only until very recently have they been in any way acknowledged by the infant, but giant, companies.

The social media message sold is connectivity but, rather than meaningfully enhancing this, platforms absorb our attention while pursuing an approach of growth at any cost. It’s claimed that users will benefit because they will be able to become closer to those that matter in their lives. But that connectivity is of little commercial value to platforms who rely on advertising revenue. User data is what is essentially sold to advertisers, who in turn want consumers to look at their products – ultimately this data and the subsequent consumption of our attention is the real value.

“The ugly truth is that we believe in connecting people so deeply that anything that allows us to connect more people more often is *de facto* good. It is perhaps the only area where the metrics do tell the true story as far as we are concerned.”

Facebook VP Andrew Bosworth in memo to Facebook staff

Likes don’t equal connection

This inconvenient truth has run rampant in recent years. The first major departure from enhanced connectivity was Facebook’s introduction of the Like button in 2009. This opened the door for viral publishers to enter that platform, and subsequently grow incredible amounts of traffic quickly – even at the expense of truth and credibility.

A market of hyperbole and fake news became inflated, but Facebook offered little meaningful resistance. Rather than making meaningful connections and having conversations, users were now increasingly distracted by publishers that were focused on attention absorption, often with a single-minded focus on stirring prospective audience’s emotions. Since its inception until only January this year, the cluttering of the newsfeed with everything but updates from close friends has generally increased.

Second social media revolution

Meanwhile, around 2012, there was a second social media revolution – a proliferation in usage of social apps specifically designed for mobile devices with no desktop version. Instagram, which had existed since 2010, released its Android version in 2012 and rapidly grew its user base. Snapchat and Tinder were also released around this time. It’s no coincidence that the stirrings of the first digital detox movement began around this time too.

The paradox of connectivity vs. attention is perhaps best illustrated by Tinder. This is an application that is supposed to enhance people’s likelihood of getting into a relationship. While there are many interpretations of what it can deliver, Tinder runs on a ‘freemium’ model of people either paying for a subscription or being served advertising as they swipe through potential matches.

But given Tinder will make more money via showing users more advertising, it means holding user attention on the platform for longer on the platform is the best option. Therefore, though connecting to a potential soulmate is what’s offered, it’s actually our attention that’s being sold.

We must think to ourselves – is social media really helping us make deeper and more meaningful connections in contrast to our time and attention spent on the platform? If it isn’t, then perhaps it really is time to quit social media and take a digital detox.

View the original article at itstimetologoff.com

Think Our Technology Addiction Isn’t Bad For Our Mental Health? The Evidence is Overwhelming

A common accusation directed at selfie-crazed youngsters is that they are a generation of narcissists. It’s true that social media did appear to have been emphasising the ‘individualism’ that has been a feature of Western culture since the 1960s. But this was only the case until around 2008 – since then the trend has actually been going down.

Young people, it would seem, are struggling more than ever with a crisis of confidence and anxiety. Why? Firstly, the 2008-2009 Financial Crisis delivered a reality check to young people’s prospects, knocking their belief that getting a good career was easy and their future guaranteed. The second factor is linked to our increasing use of technology.

The ‘Selfie Generation’

It’s not surprising that there are increasing worries about body image and anxiety with the proliferation of ‘the perfect self.’ For every pristine looking prom queen and football captain out there, there are scores of young people who don’t feel quite as confident about their looks. Instead, they’ll be watching, ‘lurking’ as it is often labelled, as their good looking and popular peers gather hundreds of likes and comments of ‘SO HOT!’ for beach photos, selfies or them on nights out.

How can this scenario be beneficial for these social media lurkers? Heavy smartphone and social media usage have links to depression, and Instagram has been highlighted as the worst of the major social networks for teen’s mental health.

#StatusOfMind, a study by The Royal Society for Public Health, surveyed nearly 1,500 14-24 year old’s opinions on various social media applications, asking them to what extent each of the social media platforms they use made certain health-related factors better or worse.

YouTube did rather well, scoring positively in helping the group with issues like anxiety, depression and self-expression, although like all the apps it was seen as detrimental to sleep. However, YouTube was the only network from five with a positive weighted score. Twitter was neutral, while Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram – notably all networks for which photos are a core component – all scored negatively. Instagram scored very negatively for FoMo, bullying, body image, anxiety and loneliness. As one respondent summed it up: “Instagram easily makes girls and women feel as if their bodies aren’t good enough as people add filters and edit their pictures in order for them to look ‘perfect’.”

The Empirical Evidence

This is far from a one-off UK study either. An article in Depression and Anxiety Journal called Association between Social Media use and depression among US young adults, concluded:

“…social media use was significantly associated with increased depression. Given the proliferation of social media, identifying the mechanisms and direction of this association is critical for informing interventions that address social media use and depression.”

The paper cites numerous other papers including “They Are Happier and Having Better Lives than I Am”: The Impact of Using Facebook on Perceptions of Others’ Lives, Facebook Use Predicts Declines in Subjective Well-Being in Young Adults and Facebook’s emotional consequences: Why Facebook causes a decrease in mood and why people still use it. What’s striking about these particular citations is that the titles already make conclusions; there is no ambiguity about the findings.

Psychologist Jean M. Twenge makes a similar statement in the title of her book iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood. ‘iGen’ is defined by Twenge as a generation that was born between 1995-2012. While the millenials had a lot of digital access, iGen are the first generation that has grown up with the almost ubiquitous availability of Internet use.

Young Women Are The Most Prone

Young women and teenage girls are the most likely to suffer from anxieties around body image, and they are also the group with the highest smartphone and social media use. On average, 18-24 year old women in the United Kingdom are now spending 85+ hours a month with their screens – a significant increase on men at the same age and any other age group. Meanwhile, more than a third of 14-15 year old girls are reporting to feel psychologically distressed and are far more likely to do so than boys of the same age.

But where is the greatest source of this anxiety? YouTube star Zoe ‘Zoella’ Sugg sums it up rather well in her introduction to her bestselling novel Girl Online. She lists her Top Ten Reasons for Teenage Girls Getting Anxious, the second half of which are all focused on body image and exacerbated by social media:

#1 You’re supposed to look perfect all of the time

#2 This coincides with your hormones deciding to go bonkers.

#3 Which leads to the spottiest time of your entire life (making number 1 totally impossible)

#4 Which also coincides with the first time you’ve had the freedom to buy chocolate whenever you like (making number 3 even worse!)

#5 Suddenly everyone cares about what you wear

#6 And what you wear has to look perfect too

#7 Then you’re supposed to know how to pose like a supermodel

#8 So you can take a selfie in your outfit of the day

#9 Which you then have to post on social media for all your friends to see

#10 You’re supposed to be wildly attractive to the opposite sex (while dealing with all of the above!)

These rises in depression and anxiety amongst young people are often said to be caused by alternative factors: more intense exam pressures, an unreliable job market, and risk of sizeable debt. Perhaps also an increased awareness and an acceptance that mental health is as important as physical health has enabled a greater reporting of it too.

But while these all sound credible, they do not correlate like the sudden burst of these feelings and the rise of smartphone usage with social media’s second wave. This new epidemic is not a scare story invented by the media. It’s being featured the world over in empirical studies that consistently make the same conclusions: high social media usage is bad for mental health.

View the original article at itstimetologoff.com

Parenting With Screens: Making Tech Invisible at Home

My wife and I have a new rule in our household: we don’t look at our devices in front of our kids. This wasn’t always the case. Although we have always kept technology out of the hands of our kids (the only time they get an iPad is on an airplane) we always felt free to use our devices ourselves, even when the kids were around.

For most of our children’s early childhood, I would be regularly staring down at a screen. Maybe I was reading a book on my kindle app, or downloading music to practice on my guitar, reading the news, catching up on social media, or staying connected to the office. This is the great (and terrible) thing about mobile technology, there is always something to be done.

We did have a “no devices at the table” rule. But there always seemed to be exceptions to the rule. After all, it is hard to have a dinner conversation nowadays that doesn’t relate to something online. Maybe it was a funny story or video that we saw, a question that we needed to google the answer to, or a schedule or weather forecast that needed to be consulted. There is always a good reason for the phones to find their way into our hands, even when we’re at the dinner table.

Smartphone addiction

I was motivated to make a change when my 7-year-old son expressed an interest in a little game called Rider. He had played it on a friend’s device and he asked me if I would download it. I did download it, not so my son could play it, but so I could see what kinds of games my son was getting into when I wasn’t around. The game is pretty harmless and fun, but very addictive.

One day, my son was looking over my shoulder while I was looking at my phone and he saw that I had Rider on the phone. His eyes lit up with excitement. From that day forward, my son’s relationship with my phone changed dramatically. Every time I pulled out my phone, he wanted to be near it. And he was constantly begging and pleading to be allowed to play Rider. The breaking point was one day when we were at the beach. This is a normal weekend activity for us. But this time it was different. My son refused to play in the sand or the sea and couldn’t enjoy the beach, he could only point at the bag where my phone was and plead with me to be given access.

Of course I said no. “We will never play video games when we are out at the beach,” I explained. But I knew this wasn’t enough. The phone had to disappear. So I went home and discussed with my wife who, being far less addicted to technology than I am, was only too happy that I had seen the light. So we set course on a new path: we would keep our devices hidden from our kids.

Analogue Alternatives

As a result we have to use all kinds of ancient ‘single-function’ artefacts to get things done in front of the kids, analogue cameras, wristwatches, alarm clocks – books! To be clear, it’s not that we don’t use mobile technology . . . we do. We just try to hide it as much as possible in the house. If we need to look something up, or send a text or an email, or anything else on a device, we have to slip away into another room. My kids might wonder why their parents are spending a lot more time in the bathroom now! But we get done what we need to get done and when we come out we are more present. It seems to work for us.

View the original article at itstimetologoff.com

We’re Misusing Technology in the Workplace – and It’s Stressing Us Out

Email, web chat, social media, smartphones. The modern workplace can’t do without these things. Just imagine a working environment where all of them were suddenly banned. Employees would be shocked. Some might even take to Twitter to complain about their backward looking employer. 

But it might actually be better for our productivity. Many workplace practitioners are expressing doubts on the unrestricted nature of technology in the workplace – and the myriad of distractions that it brings. 

Unrestricted Email

Let’s take email as an example. Information workers are, on average in 2018, receiving well over 100 emails a day and sending 40.  Assuming that it takes two minutes to compose and send an email, then the average information worker is already spending at least 20% of their working life simply tending to email.

Two minutes is of course a very conservative estimate. Very few people would spend so little time on a message if it was going up their chain. Additionally, it takes fairly strong discipline to tend to email in blocks of time – most people respond throughout the day. 

Now, to get into a high state of productivity (often referred to as deep work or flow) a person needs about twenty minutes to focus. But if you spread the forty distractions of email responses throughout the day, then a state of flow is very unlikely to be achieved. 

What a bizarre state of affairs! Why does everyone in a company need an email address? Why do they need to send and receive messages at such a pace that simply no one can keep up? For the most part, they don’t. Email responses are all too often a waste of time. Hours can be spent fuming over a misread line and stewing up a response, which could have easily been resolved with a simple chat. 

Living out of your work inbox provides the same sort of intermittent variable reward that we see with social media, and even slot machines. You check it, just to see what’s come in. If the incoming email is good, we may well respond and be satisfied. If it isn’t, it’s likely to lead to more stress. Of course, many people don’t turn their notifications off either, so these will flash up onscreen or rumble in our pocket, demanding to be attended to.  This, ultimately, can change our working habits into becoming hooked on email.

Then there’s the seeming necessity of people to take their mobile phones into meetings. Largely done to either continue to receive and reply to email, or just surf the web during the meeting if the employee simply gets bored. Well, unsurprisingly, this is devastating for employee attention and engagement. 

Rising Stress in the Workplace

In a high paced, high tech work environment, everyone wants a response RIGHT NOW. But it is impossible for everything to move at that speed, particularly when so many requests are unnecessary in the first place. It’s having quite the toll on employee productivity, and, worse still, their stress levels and their mental health.

What’s the consequence of all this pushing around of shallow information? Psychologists have warned that email notifications are a toxic source of stress – with people in jobs such as marketing and media finding themselves under the most pressure. Unwritten organisational etiquette, such as rapid and out of hours responses are contributing to the problem.

Meanwhile, it has been found that simply having a smartphone nearby can reduce cognitive ability. It’s informational lure is clearly having an effect on our ability to think clearly in the moment.

These are not good trends. It’s time employers took proper heed of the onslaught; a rethinking of the barrage of unrestricted email, and a reduction of smartphone usage when employee attention should be focused on the task at hand.

View the original article at itstimetologoff.com

Is Our Internet Addiction Wrecking Family Life?

Our children’s relationship with tech is an uncomfortable subject. With the huge opportunity for learning and connectivity comes a multitude of concerns for parents. Kids can become so absorbed in their mobile phones and devices that it can affect their relationships, make them more distracted and impact their mental health.

Why is this? Well, much of today’s technology is addictive by design. Mobile phone applications send notifications, offer intermittent variable rewards and have a particualr incentive to get users to spend more time on them. When teen girls reach 18, they’re apparently spending upwards of 85 hours a month on their smartphones.

Perhaps the most troubling effect on younger people’s technology use is the correlation between it and the rise in mental health problems. It may be that opening up about mental health has less of a stigma attached to it, but the empirical evidence that too much tech – particularly social media – can lead to mental health issues appears very clear. Instagram in particular, can create problems around body image and cyber bullying.

But this problem isn’t just about young people. The average time spent for all UK adults on smartphone screens is about 65 hours a month – more than two hours a day. While the kids are busy on messaging apps, games and social media, their parents have the same level of access – and indeed appetite – for these things. But they also have the additional burden of unrestricted work email, which can be sent to them at any time – even when they’re on holiday.

Parents are no less susceptible to the addictive qualities of their technology and the effect of this is that relationships with their children can really suffer. A recent BBC article ‘I wish my mum’s phone was never invented‘ featured a Louisana class where children were asked about an invention that they didn’t like. 4 out of the 21 students wrote about mobile phones. One wrote:

“If I had to tell you what invention I don’t like, I would say that I don’t like the phone. I don’t like the phone because my parents are using their phones every day. A phone is sometimes a really bad habit. I hate my mom’s phone and I wish she never had one. That is a invention that I don’t like”.

Furthermore, a study published in May 2017 found that many parent-child relationships were impacted by ‘technoference.’ Family relationships were found to be suffering when adults were prioritising interacting with their phones at a time when they should have had their attention focused on their children.

In her book Reclaiming Conversation, Sherry Turkle documents a father-daughter relationship spending time together at a camp. The father can’t fathom the notion of not taking his phone on the trip, and while he is there spends large amounts of time documenting it and sharing it on social media. While much of the posting is indeed about his relationship with his daughter, and they look like they’re having a lovely time, he is actually spending the majority of his time on his phone doing the uploading and interacting. His daughter sits next to him, silently. The act of sharing his time spent with his daughter on social media is distracting him from spending quality time with her.

Constant checking of email, social media and the other apps that chime and buzz away on our phones is for most of us a familiar feature of life at home. But for the sake of our relationships, maybe it’s time we weaned ourselves off more at home and back into a more analogue world?

View the original article at itstimetologoff.com