Digital Detox

 

A new age term-Digital Detox, describing when one takes leave from social media and in many cases from Internet. Today, everyday life, is synonymous with Internet, Facebook, Instagram, Hangout and so on. But, it seems a time-to-time digital detox offers a huge number of benefits.

 

A recent research conducted behaviors of preteens in a 5-day camp where they were Internet free. The study ‘s objective was to find whether absence of Internet had any effect on nonverbal emotion–cue recognition in these kids.

From Science Daily

Fifty-one preteens spent five days at an overnight nature camp where television, computers and mobile phones were not allowed; this group was compared with school-based matched controls (n = 54) that retained usual media practices. Both groups took pre- and post-tests that required participants to infer emotional states from photographs of facial expressions and videotaped scenes with verbal cues removed. Change scores for the two groups were compared using gender, ethnicity, media use, and age as covariates. After five days interacting face-to-face without the use of any screen-based media, preteens’ recognition of nonverbal emotion cues improved significantly more than that of the control group for both facial expressions and videotaped scenes. Implications are that the short-term effects of increased opportunities for social interaction, combined with time away from screen-based media and digital communication tools, improves a preteen’s understanding of nonverbal emotional cues.

 

Sometimes, it does look like that we are spending more time with virtual friends , or friends that are non-existent in our daily life . Interaction with close friends and neighbors decrease significantly when time is used in interacting with friends online . Digital living is realty and so is digital detox.

 

A smart device in hand while having dinner with family has become a reality, you could be connected to 100 people who don’t matter and disconnected with the 4 important family members who are right in front of you .

The digitaldetox.org is a place to go to if you cannot enforce this detox diet on your own. Adults and kids have various camp options –where they lead a camp life of without Internet.

One obvious benefit of digital detox will be more hours of sleep- and a benefit of a good night sleep doesn’t have to be highlighted. Isn’t this a common scenario in most people’s life. You hit the bed and then you think-let me check my Facebook or Whatsapp or Twitter-and bam few hours have gone by –aimlessly wondering all over the virtual place.