This post is part of the "Tea with a Dragon" podcast created for Not The Hidden Wiki.
The Middle Ages. A time of brave knights and beautiful princesses. A time of castles, feasts, and chivalric romances. A time of Romanesque architecture and my beloved Gothic style. A time when people lived in harmony with nature and close to it, when daily life unfolded in tight-knit family circles... the dominant religion explained the world, yet there was no shortage of belief in various more or less supernatural events. Alongside the Polish legend of Popiel — a prince devoured by mice — the memory of the Wawel Dragon lived on carefree, as did the story of Bishop Stanisław, whose dismembered body was said to have miraculously reunited — What times! You can't help but feel a little nostalgic, can you?
Sometimes we'd love to travel back to the past, to those "better" times when there wasn't such a frantic pace, such confusion, such instability, and several other things that sometimes chafe at our 21st-century existence. Usually, however, the dreamy adventurous mood fades the moment we recall wars, torture, witch hunts, the plague, sewage running through city streets, the plight of serf peasants, and the average family with a large brood of children crammed into a single hut alongside farm animals. Compared to that, today's substandard real estate developments sometimes look like spacious apartments!
And if someone is tempted to reach even further back and argue that the ancient Romans were more civilized, let me remind you that beyond their aqueducts, sewage systems, and bathhouses, they also had widespread slavery, and the use of lead in wine production, cosmetics, everyday vessels, and water pipes, which, even if it didn't cause the fall of the empire, certainly didn't benefit the health of its citizens.
The privileges and burdens of our times, or there's always "something"
Looking not through the lens of everyday inconveniences, but rather at the types of threats humanity has faced over the centuries, we can say that we live in relatively peaceful and safe times. At least in the developed world, very few people die from a common cold or a bladder infection, poor harvests are problematic for farmers but don't yet threaten community survival, and we — despite many limitations, including financial ones — have relatively wide freedom of action and a fairly sizeable set of rights.
Taking a more philosophical perspective, we might conclude that there have always been times with their pros and cons; times better in some ways and worse in others. Every era had its challenges and hopes. And in our times, the dynamic development of technology is both a hope and a challenge in one.
Technology that simplifies many things, yet the pace at which it develops poses another test for humanity and for each of us individually. And there's no point in playing on emotions, seeing technology as a miracle worker and saviour on one side, and on the other as a demon dispatched from the deepest pits of hell for our destruction, or as an instrument of universal psychophysical disorder. Yet sometimes, reading sensational books or articles by proponents and opponents of these theses, one gets the impression that we are in a digital war — only the enemy in the narrative changes.
Technology as a tool and perspectives juggling
At its core, technology is like a knife and any other object or tool that can be helpful in certain contexts while posing a threat to health and life in others. Whether a given tool helps or harms us depends on what we do with it — as individuals and as societies.
Since we don't have in the room (most likely) another Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, or Linus Torvalds — in short, people who have a somewhat greater influence on societies than we do — let's focus on our sphere of influence: ourselves.
One of the side effects of the digital world's development that I notice is that we have more and more opportunities to point fingers at others. Someone creates a media climate that is more or less favorable, someone else creates a product or service we can't do without, someone creates soulless legislation, and to top it all off, we can't log off from work (because the boss won't allow it), and our loved ones can't log off their phones, because what's on the phone is obviously more interesting than this dreadful world — and it's the fault of influencers, content creators, and the mere existence of the phone itself. As my first sports coach used to say with a wry smile — it's always somebody else's fault!
And here's the first surprise — despite everything, a lot depends on how we choose the media we consume, the tools we use every day, what purpose all this technology will serve for us, and how we plan to use it. Above all — how we plan our life beyond technology, whether we'll build the skills to cope without technological anaesthesia, and whether we'll have activities that make us feel it's worth the effort of putting down the phone or computer for a while.
Do we really have to be "always on"?
Both professionally and personally, we can also fall into the illusion that we "have to" use technology. That we have to be available by phone, by email, that without us the company will grind to a halt and the world will crumble. Realistically, there are very few situations where that's actually the case, and many similar ones could be eliminated with better work planning — which we don't always have control over. The question is whether we must bear the consequences and enter a situation where professional and private life blur together to the point where, over time, it becomes hard to find the boundary... but we'll talk more about this in the podcast.
Regardless of the source of our technological troubles, the scale of our adaptation to what technology offers means that today it's sometimes hard to imagine life without not so much the fridge, vacuum cleaner, or washing machine, but without social media (from which we increasingly draw information), an email inbox preferably connected to a smartphone, plus wireless headphones, films, podcasts, and all other on-demand entertainment, as well as ChatGPT or another tool to help write an email, code an app, brainstorm, or add a creative spark to social media content — not to mention graphics or videos. If even our parents and grandparents are starting to use AI, it truly means the revolution is underway — and our sense of what we need to live and in what form we reach for it will also evolve throughout this revolution.
The information flood, nostalgia for a paper newspaper, and the illusion of saving time
A good illustration of how our ideas, needs, and habits are changing is the way we gather knowledge about the world around us. The phenomenon of information bubbles is no longer unfamiliar to us. Statistics cited in a NASK cyberpolicy article show that already in 2016, 50% of Americans aged 18–29 admitted that they get most of their news from social media. Only 27% additionally watched TV news broadcasts, and merely 5% read newspapers. Meanwhile, a 2023 CBOS report (Poland's Centre for Public Opinion Research) shows that in Poland, people still primarily get information about what's happening in Poland and the world from television: 49%, with the internet in second place at 37%, while other media lag far behind — radio: 6% and press: 1%. One can fondly recall the days when on holiday you'd run to the newsstand for a newspaper...
And we can, at least partially justifiably, blame evolution — which has made our brains seek paths to get things done without overexerting themselves, i.e., to conserve precious energy. Why spend an hour on a phone call when you can send an email (and maybe that'll solve the problem)? Why search online when you can ask ChatGPT? Why go to a shop, office, or government agency when — again — many things can be handled online? Why go buy a newspaper or a radio when everything is available on the internet? Using tools to make life easier in many areas isn't yet a problem, as long as we do it sensibly.
The worse part is that we don't notice how we start getting lost in this "time-saving". On one hand, yes, we spend less time on things that are as tedious as watching paint dry, or downright stress-inducing, like standing in a queue or talking to that colleague at work you can't stand. On the other hand, we lose opportunities to be bored (and boredom is essential for creativity). We move less and less, and we don't always compensate for our daily need for movement with a walk or other physical activity. And finally — the time saved offline is often carelessly frittered away online.
So how do you know when you're starting to lose your sense of reason and balance, and sinking in to the point where your body and brain are crying out for more cyber-health?
Warning signs and a moment of honesty with yourself
The Polish government's portal lists problems with sleep, digital stress, neglect of responsibilities, and concentration issues as examples of the negative effects of a lack of digital hygiene.
The Polish "I Care About My Signal" Foundation (Fundacja Dbam o mój zasięg) lists a whole range of other consequences, for example: fatigue, sleep deprivation, deterioration of health (e.g., eyesight), reduced work efficiency, FOMO syndrome and the "always on" attitude, cyberbullying and sexting, withdrawal from social contacts, and deterioration of relationships with loved ones. We can also learn that a lack of digital hygiene can contribute to professional burnout — which, given the digitalisation of our work, doesn't sound far-fetched.
Alright, but we can of course feel tired for other reasons (my recent discovery — excessive vitamin B6 can cause sleep problems, and a digital detox won't help much there). So how do you check whether what you're experiencing might be connected to the virtual world?
This is where questionnaires come in handy. One from the "I Care About My Signal" Foundation, and another from the Institute of Digital Citizenship (Instytut Cyfrowego Obywatelstwa; both in Polish). They'll help you examine your own habits and can be useful in determining whether it's already time to put more resources into the "digital health" bucket.
And here honesty matters. The results are results for you, not for showing off on social media or telling your family "see, it's not that bad yet". Alternatively — think: when you're eating, are you actually eating, or are you also scrolling on your phone at the same time? Or when you're in such a rush that you eat your meal in front of the computer? Do you feel anxious if you leave your phone behind when going to the bathroom? Does a new notification popping up on screen make you lose the thread of a conversation while you check what's new? Or maybe before falling asleep you treat yourself to a scrolling session through your favourite social media?
I'm asking you, but I'm also asking myself — because the mere fact that I know what digital hygiene is doesn't mean I don't need to work on it myself!
The brain that can still change — a few words about neuroplasticity
Alright, but if evolutionary mechanisms can undermine my actions, what can I do?
Our brain still has the superpower called "neuroplasticity" — one that doesn't only appear magically when we have a stroke and the brain needs it to return us to relatively normal functioning, but accompanies us every day. It's precisely what ensures that our learning doesn't go to waste, but instead settles in the brain as new neural connections, and our habits are not set in stone. Although they're not always as easy to shape as plasticine, they are still easier to sculpt than rock.
So there is hope. But before we start reaching for neuroplasticity, it's time for an experiment in noticing!
In the Digital Hygiene tab, you'll find a sample worksheet that you can print or use in digital form. It will help you examine your technology usage habits. I encourage you to invest a bit of time before the next podcast episode to fill it in and see how you use technology on a daily basis. It will serve us well further along the path to building digital health.
Dum spiro, spero — while I breathe, there is hope
There will always be things to complain about, no matter the times — so instead of focusing on justifying the thesis that our ancestors had it better (or alternatively, that our children and grandchildren will have it better) — it's worth making use of our capacity for adaptation and learning.
In the digital world, many solutions make life easier for us, but that doesn't mean there's no risk of falling into a digital mess. Going overboard with technology can happen to anyone at various stages of life.
Before we despair, however, it's worth remembering that we have considerable influence over how we function day to day. To begin this journey, we need a large dose of honesty with ourselves and a little time to look at how we use technology.
And that's all for today. Time to look — carefully, this is important! — with curiosity and without extra self-flagellation, at how we use technology every day.
