“A cell living in a body experiencing chronic fear is a cell that cannot fully thrive…
Don’t confuse setting boundaries to what information you allow in your ears and eyes with putting your head in the sand; it’s understanding and protecting your biology so you don’t implode. This allows you to show up with maximal energy to positively impact the world.”
-Dr. Casey Means, MD, Good Energy
One of the many issues we treat at Yarmouth Acupuncture is anxiety, and often feeling overwhelmed. While acupuncture and Eastern medicine has been shown in studies to reduce anxiety, we also talk about what lifestyle measures we can take to help feel better. Let’s look at phones/devices and socal media.
We have a love-hate relationships with our phones and devices. The convenience we all experience from our devices of interconnectivity, information, entertainment, and in some cases dependency for livelihood, must be weighed against the very real cost to our well being.
First we can distinguish between devices themselves, general utlitities, and social media and/or anything that provides real time notifications (not counting phone calls and messages from real people). Then we can talk about the trade-offs that each aspect of this technology requires.
1. Devices: phone, tablet, laptop, wearables such as watches.
2. General utilities: maps, music, phone calls, text/messaging, weather, calculator, compass, e-reader etc etc.
3. Notification producing apps: social media, news apps, marketing etc.
1. Devices
The first trade-off against the incredible convenience and fun of these devices is that they produce light and noise. The grab our attention at every moment, even without notifications, even with the sound turned off, even with the device out of sight! We always wonder what exciting thing could be happpening on the device.
The real problem with the glow and noise of devices comes when we are trying to honor our body’s natural circadian rhythms. When the sun goes down, the body is gearing up for the long night of rest, fasting, darkness, and revitalizing sleep. The body starts to produce melatonin naturally, the hormone that helps us have restful sleep.
It doesn’t matter if we consciously register what we are looking at on the device as “stressful” or not, our nervous system and endocrine system are receiving the signal to not prepare for deep sleep.
This is harmful to the body and can be a big contributor to insomnia, whether it is difficulty falling asleep, restless sleep, or waking very early and not able to get back to sleep.
Solution: no devices in the bedroom. Purchase an alarm clock so you don’t need to use your phone to wake up. This has the added benefit that you won’t look at the phone first thing upon waking. If you need to have your phone on to receivei emergency calls then leave it outside the bedroom where you can still hear it if need be.
Bonus solution: no devices at least 2 hours before bedtime.
2. General utilities
I remember hearing a podcast with Tristan Harris, a brilliant voice warning against the dangers of social media in particular, and device dependency in general. He admitted that his particular weakness was for checking email, whereas someone else’s might be checking social media, another person a sports or news app etc. I felt a little startled because I check my email often, and I always justified it as basically a utility. I need to stay in touch, and particularly for my work I want to be available for patients, colleagues, insurance companies and all the rest.
The reality is that although our modern lives are organized more and more around the utilities presented on devices, we can still exercise autonomy and judgement around this. I have founf that I do not need notifications on for email, that I can check email when I have a moment and can focus, and most people never expect emails to be responded to within several hours, and most of the time up to 48 hours is completely reasonable.
Think about which utilities you actually need on your device, many are automatially installed by the device company. You can take several minutes and delete unneeded apps and all of their accompaning notifications, tracking, and attempts to make themselves indispensable.
On that note, turn off all notifications except for very necessary ones such as phone and messages. No one needs notifications flashing every time a news event happened, everytime someone comments on social media, or any time a new product drops.
3. Notification producing apps
This is just reinforcing the above. Once you have determined which apps are necessary then simply delete all the rest. You can always check whatever site you need to through the browser, and often the intentional lack of convenience will help you realize you don’t want or need to be checking that site any way.
Social media has made valient efforts and in some cases succeeded at integrating utilities onto their platforms we we find that social media is the means to message with people, sell or buy stuff online, advertize our business, get news, join groups, and more.
It takes some diligence to weigh the pros, such as convenience, interconnectivity at least digitally, agaist the cons such as time and energy stuck on the device, being marketed to by advertizers with detailed profiles of our preferences, less motivation to connect with people in person.
News media will show us a relentless scroll of shocking images and videos because that is what gets and keeps our attention. But at the end of the day, we have to live with our bodies and nervous systems hacked by stress-inducing stimuli.
The quote at the top of this post highlights the cost to our cells health by staying in a state of constant alert.
It’s a balancing act
The solution is not as easy as get rid of all your devices. But take back control of your time, energy, money, and stress responses by controlling the device rather than it controlling you.
