2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43
Information detox is rapidly gaining popularity. It has become fashionable to cleanse the mind and brain of toxins and get out of the digital world into the real one for at least a couple of hours a day. And even for a week or two.
No wonder! Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, most of our lives have moved online. On the Internet, we now work, communicate, flirt, study, have fun, do sports and shopping.
The world even began to celebrate "International Day without the Internet" on January 31.
As a psychologist, I want to share in this article:
- recipes for informational detox
- tips on how to protect your psyche, brain and smartphone from unnecessary information
- ideas of how to occupy yourself and entertain yourself in your free time offline.
Save the publication and share with your loved ones so that there are more happy people!
What is informational detox
Information detox - cleansing the psyche, brain, space by getting rid of toxic information. Information that is too much becomes toxic. As well as negative, unreliable, alarming information, useless informational rubbish. Being online for a long time becomes toxic, like a vampire is sucking energy and stealing your time. And the search for quick pleasure and light dopamine, for example, in the form of humor and likes, over time turns into displeasure, apathy and dissatisfaction with oneself.
When does a person need an informational detox?
If you notice the following symptoms in yourself or your loved ones:
✔️ violation of diet and sleep patterns
✔️ you plan a bunch of things in the morning, but in fact you don't have time for anything and you get lost in the ocean of information and correspondence
✔️ feeling tired even on weekends
✔️ tension, irritation from the fact that online is pulled from all sides - is available to everyone. Such stress incapacitates the mind and body.
✔️ loss of contact with yourself, your desires, feelings and even basic needs
✔️ decrease in self-esteem: watching successful people on social networks, we involuntarily compare ourselves with them, envy or try on their lives instead of living "our own"
✔️ critical thinking is turned off, creativity weakens
✔️ lack of human attention, physical contact, hugs and energy exchange with living people. Covers periodically longing, loneliness. And this can lead to depression, alcohol and other addictions.
✔️ the appearance of excess weight - a sedentary lifestyle slows down the metabolism
✔️ when you sit for a long time in a tense position with a gadget, you feel muscle clamps, fatigue in the spine, headaches, decreased vision
✔️ it is difficult to form an objective picture, because there is too much information, and you do not know which is reliable and which is not (or you spend a lot of time checking it)
✔️ oversupply of data has made it harder to make decisions and make choices, productivity has decreased
✔️ increased self-doubt, irritability and anxiety.
Scientists' studies have confirmed
People who spend most of their time communicating online in real life have serious difficulties in building social connections and love relationships. It's easy to be cool online. And in real life all the complexes are suddenly exposed
Having a virtual sex life and porn addiction increases the risk of sexual problems, even if they never happened before
- According to neurophysiologists, social networks, messengers, online games, news and search resources cause a constant influx of "cheap dopamine" in our brain.
- Instant pleasure, anytime, anywhere, without the emotional and physical cost, deprives us of the motivation to make an effort. Accustomed to high doses of dopamine, the brain wants to get a lot, easily and right now. Laziness and apathy sets in.
- "Clip" thinking develops, concentration of attention, the ability to learn, plan and achieve a goal decreases.
- It's not only about gadgets, but also about an overabundance of information that a person receives all day and does not have time to comprehend and process.
Psychologist's recommendations on how to reduce and filter the information flow:
- Install an application on your smartphone that monitors how much time you spend online. With its help, you can set goals for the day, block sites that reduce productivity, set the time during which the phone is not picked up. For example, from 8 pm to 8 am.
- Do not use your smartphone or tablet while eating. This will keep you from overeating.
- Put your phones in your purse during business negotiations, meetings with friends.
- Take an hour-long hike every day without your smartphone.
- Start a family tradition - in the evenings, have a tea party with a lively exchange of impressions of the day.
- Arrange a competition with friends - who will last longer without a smartphone or without communication in social networks.
- At work - do not go to the Internet if you do not need it for work. And if you came to work, ask yourself a question - why and what information you will be looking for. It will take you a couple of minutes, but it will save you a few hours.
- As soon as you have finished working, turn off your laptop or smartphone.
- Stop yourself when you start re-checking your mail, flipping through feeds on social networks.
- Learn to listen to body signals. If your head becomes heavy, your gaze moves to one point, you hold your breath, you want to read faster, but you can assimilate and understand the text, if you are impatient and irritable, stop. These are signs of information oversaturation. It's time to rest and turn your attention to the moment here and now.
- If you do not notice these body signals, you can set the timer while browsing the Internet or reading. For example, you read for 45 minutes and rest for 15 minutes, digest informational food.
- Process the information you read for work or study: take notes, diagrams, write down quotes. Make a short summary or your conclusions from the materials read. Thus, the information will really be absorbed, and not flood you with an avalanche or pass by.
- Spend a day off without online communication in social networks and reading the news
Here are some ideas for how you can spend your day to recharge with positive energy:
- Go outdoors with family, friends or children
- Invite your friends over and prepare new or exotic dishes.
- In winter, you can arrange a tournament in board games, dance, swim in the pool.
- In the warm season - go fishing, picnic, walk in the park, ride a bike or yacht, play football, badminton or tennis.
- Take language classes, speaking club meetings, painting, singing, or playing an instrument.
- Read paper books and share the books you read with your friends.
- Do a good deed - help pensioners, low-income families, teach children from the orphanage some kind of creativity
- Visit an art exhibit, film or theater. The quarantine will end - use every opportunity to watch live shows and matches.
- Play with pets. There is even such a direction as pet therapy.
- Read paper books. And if you are reading on a tablet, turn off Internet access.
- Transplant flowers at home or in a flower bed, help relatives in the garden or in the garden.
- Take a trip. Travel programs with informational detox, retreats, hotels on the islands are very popular now. Without going abroad, you can do green tourism, live in a house in a deep forest or in a distant village.
Smartphone information detox
Remove:
- Apps that have not been used for a month.
- Subscriptions and mailings that you have not read for 3 months.
- In instant messengers, delete the contacts of those with whom you do not maintain business relations or friendship
- Delete or move to the cloud, to your computer, old photos, books, notes.
- Leave only reliable 1-2 news resources and only those applications that have a positive effect on your health, work, relationships with family and friends.
- Try quitting leftover apps for 1-2 weeks. Observe and write down when and why you are drawn to them. Analyze this information and you will understand which programs are beneficial and which consume your time and energy.
Be healthy in mind and body!
ELENA ERMOLENKO is a psychologist who is always there.
And if you need the help of a psychologist - welcome to my consultation
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