Digital Smarts - The Benefits of Unplugging

The first Friday of March every year is the National Day of Unplugging (this year from sundown March 6 to sundown March 7). It is a chance to carve out time to relax, reflect, be active, be outdoors and connect with loved ones by “unplugging” from your digital devices. You may even find the desire to unplug and recharge more often. The scientifically proven merits of unplugging can be enjoyed any time. Choose a specific period of the day to intentionally power-down – you could try the first hour of the day, or the last… or even lunch, dinner, or the hours just before your kids go to bed. The specific time of the day is not important. What is important is the discipline of learning when and how to power-down. Choose something that works for your family and lifestyle and stick to it.

Some benefits found from unplugging:

• Students that participated in a research study say that unplugging for 24 hours upped their productivity, helped them stay focused, and made them unexpectedly aware of aspects of their life to which they had become oblivious (like face to face interactions). Participants in other similar studies talk about how they felt they had an improved quality of life – more time with friends, more outdoor and exercise time, and even cooking more often and enjoying healthier food.
• Unplugging can help you sleep better. Being woken up by notifications and alerts on news, random memes, and funny tweets is likely not doing much for your sleep patterns. You also should give those work emails a rest, because without recharging it is more likely you will make snap judgments or worse. Some of the most recent research also shows that for adolescents, sleep quality was negatively influenced by mobile phone use in general and social media use in particular.  Other research suggests that the blue light from the screens in our computers and phones also makes it difficult for our bodies to fall asleep, implying that we should disconnect before bed, rather than falling asleep while staring at our laptops and phones.
• Multiple studies have shown that unplugging from technology might benefit your in-person communication and interpersonal relationships because it encourages you to communicate outside of the screen- and text-based medium. While technology makes communication super fast and convenient, it also removes body language, tone, and other things that help us understand one another and form bonds. Adolescents, in particular, need practice in reading and interpreting body language - something social media can’t help with, and in fact, often hinders. Unplugging can also mitigate FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) syndrome that so many adolescents suffer from.