Technology and Your Mental Health

I have a love/hate relationship with technology at this point. It can be helpful for so many reasons, including allowing me to write this and for you to read it. It helps us connect with our friends and family that we don’t always have the time to go see. It keeps us informed on what’s going on in the world. It gives us unlimited access to knowledge to help us constantly grow and learn new things. 

All of this sounds great, so who wouldn’t want to connect, learn, and understand without having to leave the comfort of their own house? At this point… me. And let me tell you why.

Forewarning, this is not a post with scientific research behind what I’m saying like in my other blog posts. This is lived experience either from me personally or from other people I have come into contact with. 

Technology has begun to run our lives. We are either working on our computers, scrolling on social media, or playing games in our free time. But it feels like, for a majority of us, we are using some sort of technology for more hours of the day than we aren’t using it. I get it though. I’m a victim of this too. My algorithm knows exactly what cute dog videos and amazing nature photos to show me to keep me engaged.

It seems that our phones are an extension of ourselves at this point. I have heard many people say they grab their phone just out of habit at this point. They end up scrolling for hours all because they picked up their phone. All it takes is one click on an app and people are hooked for longer periods of time than they ever intended to be.

The reason I have found that this is a problem for a lot of people is because of the amount of information they are consuming during this doom scrolling time. From what I have seen and heard from other people is that we are at a place of information overload. Our brains are consuming so much information that it doesn’t have a place to store it all. It also doesn’t have the time to process emotions before moving on to the next. You can watch a sad video and be tearing up, and the next video you can be laughing. You might not even be thinking about that sad video anymore, but your body and brain remembers and stores those emotions since they weren’t properly processed. 

It appears that these two things are contributing to people experiencing an increase in spiraling thoughts, emotional dysregulation, and overall exhaustion. Our brains just don’t have the capacity to be receiving this much information all at once.

I could go on for days about this topic, but I won’t. Instead I want to share what I have done for myself when I start to notice myself getting attached to my phone again.

• Turn my phone on black and white.

  • Lessens the amount of dopamine you get from your phone.

  • You can find this setting in settings -> accessibility -> display & text size -> color filters

• Set screen times on my most used apps.

• Leave my phone in the other room and inform people who might need to reach me that they must call me if they need anything from me.

• Get outside and focus on nature. This could look like going for a color walk, playing with my dogs, and sometimes even getting out my actual camera and taking pictures of anything and everything.

• Get crafty. I love to embroider, color, and engage in diamond art. Harder to reach for your phone when your hands are busy being creative.

• Being fully present with the people who are right in front of me. Again, setting my phone where I can’t see it so it negates the want to grab it and look at it really quick while someone is talking to me. 

• Finding new hobbies to try.

I saw a post recently (ironic since this is an anti-technology blog post) stating that we might be living in an age where people have more memories of other people’s lives than their own lived memories. This made me so sad and immediately made me get off of my phone.

There’s a whole world out there to experience first hand. As easy as it is to get sucked into the phone, try to find some ways to interact with the world and people around you. Try not to consume so much information that your brain doesn’t know what to do with it. 

So here’s to getting off of our phones more and experiencing life to its fullest!