Hygiene, health, and wellness: a digital perspective

Managing our digital world like our physical bodies

Digitally Exhausted came to be because I wanted a place to share my thoughts on tech’s societal impact. My writing covers social media’s spaghetti-like complexities, the curiosities of BIG tech, and why digital self-care is just as important as eating your vegetables.

Today, I am thrilled to share we have our first ever guest post!

Thank you, Kristen 😊

I’ve been writing about the intersection between technology, health, and human connection for almost a year. My awareness of the need for digital wellness, however, began almost 10 years ago, when I first got Instagram. Let me paint the picture for you. 

(This is an excerpt from an essay I wrote titled “Why I quit social media.”) 

“It was my 14th birthday. I was finally allowed to download Instagram, and I couldn’t have been more excited.

Instagram was a fascinating vortex that I desperately wanted to feel a part of.

So, I curled up on the corner of the couch and watched that rainbow app slowly materialize on my iPod touch. 

3 hours after creating an account, I looked up from my phone, dazed.

Where did those 3 hours go?, I asked myself. “

I fell into cyclical addictions of doom scrolling, which always ended in me feeling lonely and ugly because I had fewer followers, fewer comments on my posts, or fewer invitations to parties than the “friends” that appeared on my feed. 

If I had 5 minutes of downtime, I’d sneak into my room to check Instagram, scrolling in an almost desperate way, hoping for that quick dopamine hit. 

When at a party feeling awkward or out of place, I’d find a corner where I could pull out my phone and scroll through the app.”

At fourteen, I could sense that my digital habits were unhealthy. I could feel a shift in my mental health after spending a few hours staring at a screen. Had someone asked, I could probably have articulated that my compulsive technology habits were a way for me to numb the hard emotions of loneliness, rejection, and insecurity. 

But no one asked. 

My parents, however, did set some pretty strict rules around technology use, and (in hindsight) I’m extremely grateful for those rules. But as a teen in the early days of social media, digital wellness simply wasn’t a part of the parenting equation back then. 

Whether you’re a parent, child, or somewhere in between, technology influences everyone’s wellness equation today. 

I want to break the digital wellness world into some of its more foundational elements, using terms we’re all familiar with when it comes to physical wellbeing: hygiene, health, and wellness. 

Hygiene is defined as “the degree to which people keep themselves or their environment clean, especially to prevent disease.”

Physical personal hygiene exists to prevent illness. Hygienic habits are the bare minimum on the health spectrum. Wash your hands. Don’t eat raw chicken. Brush your teeth. Wash your clothes regularly.

Digital hygiene, then, would encompass basic daily habits and practices that we use to prevent “digital illness” like data breaches, malware attacks, or running out of device storage. Manage your passwords well. Clear cookies often. Declutter emails and files. Use antivirus software to protect devices from cyber threats. 

We learned physical hygiene as small children, and we’re (hopefully) pretty good at it. Basic hygienic habits are so automated in our lives that we rarely have to think about them.  

Health is defined as “the condition of the body and the degree to which it is free from illness, or the state of being well.”

Strong health means that your bodily systems function well and you can perform daily activities effectively. Your habits not only prevent life-threatening diseases but also reduce the prevalence of less severe mental and physical illnesses that could become life-threatening over time. Eat a balanced diet. Get adequate sleep. Let your body heal after an injury. Manage stress effectively.

Digital health, then, would encompass the ways that digital use ensures that the body is free from illness (mental, physical, and digital) and allows you to perform daily activities effectively. Balance screen usage to prevent eye strain. Work in an ergonomic environment. Ensure screen time doesn’t prevent you from getting adequate sleep. Engage in online activities that reduce, not amplify stress.

Wellness is defined as the state of being healthy, especially when it is something that you actively try to achieve.

Most of the time, we act either to prevent something negative or promote something positive. Hygiene and wellness lie on opposite ends of this spectrum; hygiene exists mostly to prevent disease while wellness exists mostly to promote a holistic sense of health. Wellness activities often feel more personalized, because each person’s most fulfilling lifestyle looks different. Discover a type of exercise you enjoy. Eat with intention and gratitude. Cultivate regular spiritual practices. Nurture deep relationships. 

Digital wellness, then, would encompass actions that you actively take to maintain a holistic state of health. Less worried about disease and illness, a person focused on digital wellness develops digital habits that maximize life fulfillment. Call or FaceTime long-distance loved ones regularly. Establish phone-free hours to focus on meaningful work. Delete apps that diminish your self-esteem or steal precious hours from your day. Use technology to find or create rich offline experiences. 

Using the principles of digital hygiene, health, and wellness, I’ve mostly broken free from the addictive grasp of social media and technology. 

Our digital world is as or more complex than our physical bodies, and the two interact almost constantly. Understanding and applying principles of digital hygiene, health, and wellness can have just as profound an impact on our holistic wellbeing as do the corresponding physical principles.

To conclude, let me share my current favorite habit for each level: 

• Hygiene: There’s nothing more frustrating than searching for a document you know you saved somewhere in one of your three cloud drives or on the desktop on one of four computers. While this is definitely still a work in progress, I’m trying to save everything to the same cloud storage platform and am slowly migrating/consolidating/deleting all files stored in other places. 

• Health: Seeing red notification bubbles on my phone’s home screen always increases my stress a little bit. And, I hate when I open my phone to complete one task and get distracted by clicking on a different app. So, I removed every app from my home screen. This is what it looks like now:

  

• Wellness: I try to take a phone-free walk every day while at work or school. All I do is think and absorb my surroundings. It’s usually 5-10 minutes, and afterwards I always feel more alive, energized, and motivated.

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Currently, digitally exhausted with…

YouTube. Every video seems to have 2-3x more ads than it would’ve a year ago. YouTube, you’re one of the few social media platforms I still feel *might* have a net positive effect on society (considering long-form content only, not Shorts), but I find myself going to YouTube less and less because I so often feel frustrated by the ad to content ratio.

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Wherever you are, be there ✨

I took a quick road trip to Sun Valley, Idaho during Labor day weekend. (My phone died on Saturday afternoon and I didn’t bother to charge it until Monday afternoon.) Hiking to a mountain lake with no distractions, the clear air, rugged mountains, deep forest, and vibrant wildflowers purified my body and soul. Taking the time to truly disconnect from my usual technology-saturated life left me feeling more grateful, more empowered, and more grounded. (I’ll insert a picture my brother took so you can get a glimpse of the landscape.)  

Kristen Hansen is the co-founder of Ignite — a digital wellness movement designed to help young people break free from addictive technology and develop deep relationships. 

She is a senior at Brigham Young University studying strategic management and works as a special projects intern at Leland. 

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