STAY HUNGRY, STAY HEALTHY - UNVEILING DIGITAL DETOX TO THE 'DIGITALLY VEILED'

 HUNGER IS GOOD? BUT HOW?

What on Earth is Digital Detox?

 

Am hungry already! ☹

Hunger benefits us in ways that we couldn’t imagine or fathom. This is strange because many of us try as much as possible not to go hungry for whatever reasons known to each one of us. This hunger could be for anything, not just for food.

Going hungry has some remarkable advantages that could change our attitude towards hunger, with some notable ones arising from my fact finding being that.

• Hunger gives us purpose or direction
• The ability to know when to stop eating (Many have no idea 😊)
• Some hunger is good for the gut, that is why we fast sometimes 😊
• Hunger lets us not waste time on unimportant things

You can think of other that I might have left out, but I guess the picture is slowly coming

I might need some food, or not

Having known some benefits of going hungry, it is common knowledge that our mobile phones and other gadgets (digital media) are keeping us glued to them for many hours throughout the day. This means we are always satisfied or always ‘eating’ without knowing how or when you will get satisfied.

Also note that when we feel we have taken a lot of beer or other substance we do talk about detoxification to rid us of the excess, the same can be applied to out gadgets and devices. There comes a time when we consume too much digital media and forget about effect this might cause to us and the people around us.

From shorter attention spans, to neglect of responsibilities, to gaining digital content consumption stress without even knowing it. This can be dangerous to our overall mental health in the long run if we don’t notice and break the habit into manageable segments.

 

Oh! I think I know where we are heading with this - Earn Trust, Engage 😊😊

From the research I have carried out as I write this is that too much use of digital media is related to depression and death as a result among mostly the teenage group of people. But it doesn’t mean that the older age groups don’t go on to experience the same fate. The actual numbers might be different but the percentages close together.

A study from a source thelancet.com show the rise of depression among adults, with one third of them reporting to experience higher levels of depression, representing a rise of 8.5% compared to the period before the Covid pandemic.

Someone might argue that the pandemic brought about the depression rather than the use of the gadgets for digital media consumption. This is a bit of paradox because this could be the case. However, data shows that the consumption of digital media has never been this high ever before, hence your guess is as good as mine in what is causing the depression in both adults and non-alike.

It is clear from the graph provided that the time we are spending on digital media consumption is on the rise, and that the effects of this are hard to ignore at this point.

Let’s Reboot Our Lives 😊😊😊

So, knowing all this, what do we need to do in order to keep our mental and physical health in check? We don’t want to be that car that never gets serviced and abruptly gets and engine knock.

Well, one way is to use you phone sparingly if you are using it for leisure and not work or business. A schedule for phone access creates lots of time to live the physical life that we all need.

But sometimes we might need to lose complete access to our gadgets for a couple of days to a week, this is considered the better option for those want to reboot their lives by keeping the digital distractions far away from you.

A single or group retreat might come in handy as you get away from digital world and into the natural world with activities ranging from Yoga, Tai-Chi for health, Cooking, Storytelling around campfire and many more activities that your body and life will wonder what took you so long to figure this out.

Sometimes you need to get away from your current dwelling to figure out your life better. We get too taken up by one thing in our lives and leave out others unattended to, this causes an unbalanced life, hence leading to the problems that go along with living in such a way.

Let us use digital media wisely, let us not always be satisfied with digital media, let us stay hungry for digital media, because when we do that, we consume it with more appetite, and hence effectively.

To get to know more about digital detox and how it can help you stay focused on your goals in life please contact the writer on contacts provided.

bladuneet@gmail.com / WhatsApp +256 712 333 988

Gerald Y. Munduga (Media and Communications Strategist)