It’s summertime: Give yourself permission to unplug as you seek to unwind

Summer is here, and families are planning getaways to recharge and unwind.

Laurie Fritsch, assistant director of Hokie Wellness at Virginia Tech, said it is essential to take breaks from devices, especially during a vacation.

“If we are always distracted by devices during our breaks, especially on vacation, we will not feel like we had a break,” said Fritsch. “Stress and anxiety levels will remain high, and, most importantly, when we are on our devices when with others, it takes away from our ability to connect.”

For adults, Fritsch offered this advice for those who want to enjoy vacation and take a break from digital devices.

Tips for adults on vacation

• Give yourself very specific times to respond to work and messages.
• Set up auto-respond messages stating when you will be responding.
• Create a vacation focus mode on your phone that helps you protect your vacation time by allowing notifications only by people and apps that you want to allow to disrupt your vacation.
• Commit to keeping your phone out of sight when sleeping or in conversation with others.
• If pictures are essential, take a picture and then put your phone away rather than holding it in your hand.
• Write a list of things you want out of your vacation. Ask yourself how your phone or technology will contribute to or take away from your vacation experience. What are tangible steps you can take to maximize these vacation goals?
• Give yourself permission to unplug.

Children and teens

For children and teens, unstructured summer days may mean an increase in children’s and teens’ device time.

“Many of us have forgotten how to be bored. Kids, especially growing up today, have likely not experienced much boredom in the digital era,” said Fritsch. “When device time is taken away or decreased, kids emerge from their devices and games often with bad attitudes, which makes it increasingly hard to manage for them and their caretakers.

“An important thing to know here is that when we scroll or play video games for hours, our brains are flooded with dopamine, a reward chemical,” said Fritsch. “This response is very powerful, and even more so in a developing brain.”

Fritsch said it’s important to create opportunities, playdates, and other experiences that are device free. When children are on their devices, she said, it’s important that for every hour on the device, they take a break for an hour.

“It needs to be a 1 to 1 ratio in most cases, back to back, not five hours on and then five hours off,” said Fritsch. “This helps manage the dopamine response.”

Summertime is a great time to have family conversations about digital wellness and the benefits and drawbacks of digital life.

Julia Feerrar, University Libraries’ head of digital literacy initiatives at Virginia Tech suggests a few tips to get started.

Tips for digital well-being

1. Work together on a family plan for digital well-being. What can you all commit to together?
2. Share some of the joys and challenges you experience yourself — model the ups and downs of your own digital well-being pursuit.
3. Look for opportunities to have family screen time. A big screen and others to share it with can often be a healthier scenario than a small screen solo.
4. Look for screen-free family time. Commit together to a device-free dinner, for example.
5. Prioritize screen time that lets kids get creative or engage in other passions.

“Concerns about new media consumption pop up with every generation, from the dawn of the printed novel to radio, television, and social media,” said Feerrar. “This complex digital life is a new context for all these concerns though, and the speed and interconnectedness of our digital society feels like it raises the stakes.”