How screen time affects your health (DON'T watch this before bed!)

Hey there, starfish and difference makers. I am definitely going to show you some stuff and talk about some stuff today that you don't want to miss if you are spending any time in a virtual meeting on Zoom or if you spend any time on social media, which is basically all of us. So you're not going to want to miss the tips and tricks. And I also have a homework assignment for you at the very end of this video and you get to know how I can make your own personal video just for you, just to answer your question. So definitely stay tuned and we can jump right in it. I'm just sharing you this pillow. Just a girl boss building her empire. So let's jump into it. I know you're like, all right, Bunny, what is digital well being? Some of you are like, nope, I'm not actually asking that question at all. Well, it's not just an app on your phone. It actually is the relationship that you have with your screens. And this is everything from your phone to your laptop to your desktop to your tablet, iPad, anything that has a screen, even your car. So this is the the same way that you would measure the well being of your marriage or relationship or your relationship with your kids. This is measuring the relationship that you have with your screens and your phones and your devices. And as you can imagine right now, the past six months, obviously a lot of our screen time has increased. And how does that impact us as humans? Well, it impacts everything from our sleep to our eyesight to frequency of headaches, appetite. It can impact absolutely everything. So coming from your friendly business therapist, you really want to make sure that you are super intentional about your screen time and definitely, definitely limiting that screen time right before bed and TV is a huge part of that. Hopefully you do not have a TV in your bedroom. This is something that definitely will impact the quality of your sleep, how quickly you fall asleep. So I would break up with your TV before bedtime if at all possible. Try reading, try using blue light filter glasses. All of these kinds of things can definitely improve your overall well being when it comes to being with screens and how your relationship can improve with screens. Sometimes clients will wonder why they're feeling more irritable in afternoon or distracted in afternoon meetings. And that's because if you've been on screens all day long, that can really impact you. So there are a couple things that you can do that we've already talked about and some that I'm going to show you right now. So one of the things is being able to actually turn your screen on black and white mode, some of these cell phones, and brightness, you can control and being able to turn that down. So it's not such a stark contrast, but particularly at night, because that can really impact your sleep. And then making sure that when, especially if you're driving, that you're putting that phone somewhere that you're not looking at it. And that's for a safety factor, but that's also for a distraction factor. So what we know is that if you're a chronic tabber and you can go to our blogs on abetterplaceconsulting.com blog to be able to read more about this. But when you get distracted in the digital world, it takes about 23 minutes to get back into that flow of focus. So there's a ton of content that is on the blogs about overall work, life alignment and overall wellness and burnout. But screens can definitely impact how quickly you are burning out because they contribute to a lot of physical factors such as headaches and decreased sleep. And, you know, you can participate in your meeting, but also take pen and paper notes, and that will limit the amount of time that you are staring at your screen. You don't actually have to stare at your screen. And if you're taking notes on a pen and paper, it doesn't look like you're distracted the way that, you know, when you're on digital meeting, you can see somebody checking their tabs behind their meeting. Having an external camera is something else that you can think about where you're staring at a camera instead of staring directly at your screen and at your laptop. This is also great for security because you're able to just choose when you have your camera on and off, and being able to, again, like I said, impact that brightness. You can actually get filters that you can magnetically put over your computer screens, over your phone screens, for security and for limiting that blue light. And you can also do this, I believe, for your TVs as well, and seeing where your screens are so that you can, like, I'm sitting on a ball right now, but it would be better if my screen was a little bit higher so I could look up rather than looking down, and that would impact my neck. So those are basically some of the things that I wanted to share with you. There's also the limiting the amount of screen time hours before bedtime, because this is the thing that I was telling you, that you have to watch this video way before bedtime is because you're decreasing the amount of melatonin that your body is actually Releasing and melatonin is what we use to naturally fall asleep. So then you have difficulty falling asleep and then you normally retrie your phone and cruise on social media or you go out and you watch a movie or something. I know, I'm totally guilty of that sometimes. And then we're decreasing our melatonin more. So not on the topic of screen time, but on the topic of being able to get some more work life alignment resources and burnout prevention resources. I wanted to share with you some of the newer blogs that have come out. And so again, a betterplaceconsulting.com blogs bunnyyoung.com will get you there as well. We've got some great work life alignment blogs that you can share with your teams. You can read for yourself around multitasking, around mental health for the remote worker. So I wanted to share that with you guys. I also wanted to share that if you are struggling and I think that we've all done this where you have that divided attention. So I told you last time about these guys that I want to give all of my love and all of my attention. Well, if I'm staring at my phone while I'm talking to my kids, I'm not giving them my full and undivided attention. And so that's another way that definitely screen time can impact your relationships and your overall well being is with your relationships with your family. So, and a little bit of bad news, but hopefully some good news for you guys is that we're actually moving all of the video resources off of the difference makers group. So I won't be going live in Facebook. So if you're watching this on YouTube, great, hit the subscribe button right now and you'll be perfectly fine. If you're still watching this on the difference makers channel, then you're going to want to head over to the YouTube channel. And not only do we have a ton of videos that are already up there in playlists for you to subscribe to that channel, but it's also organized and has, like I said, those playlists that are themed out and edited subtitles, all of those good things for you so that you know how to find exactly what you're looking for when you're looking for it. And so starting next month. So if you're watching this live, that would be in October. If you are watching this after the fact, don't worry about it because you can still head over to the YouTube channel and it's the Power of Purpose YouTube channel, you can find it through Bunny Young you can find it through the website and make sure that you are subscribing and hitting the bell as well on the video so that you're notified when you when a new video comes out, which is still going to be weekly, we're still going to give you your videos weekly and they're just all going to be in one place on the YouTube channel. So you'll have an entire little TV channel there that has all of those topics. Now to get to the point that I wanted to share it with you is comment. If you have a specific topic related to work life alignment right now or burnout prevention that you want me to answer and I will make you your own very own video and post it and tag you in it so that you have it. Next month, what we're gonna do is a series of videos on tools for burnout prevention and work life alignment. So you're gonna want to stay tuned for that. You're gonna want to subscribe to the YouTube channel and make sure that you like this video. Leave your comment below. And I love hearing from you. I read every single comment, I read every single message that you send. So that is my commitment as far as my screen time goes. But as for you right now, world a better place. I just want to thank you for the impact that you have on this planet and encourage you right now to take your time, stay safe, stay sane, and as I said, go limit your screen time. Which unfortunately that means that for now this is goodbye. But make sure that you like and comment before you leave your screen and I will see you in our next video. Bye, Starfish.