In this episode of the 30‑Day Healthy Habits Challenge, Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal, Nourish, Grow, introduces the Day‑19 habit: setting a single digital boundary for the day. She explains why excessive screen time is harmful, citing research on blue‑light disruption of circadian rhythms, posture and wrist strain, and the strong link between social‑media use and anxiety or depression. McColgan also notes that many apps are deliberately designed to keep users scrolling and to prompt impulse purchases, with TikTok highlighted as a prime example. She offers concrete, one‑day actions—uninstalling a problematic app, using Do‑Not‑Disturb or notification controls, charging the phone in another room, or selectively allowing work‑related notifications. The habit is positioned alongside the daily 10‑minute movement routine, with optional further reading linked in the accompanying email. Viewers are invited to share their experiences in the comments.
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I'm Cheryl McColgan, founder of Heal, Nourish, Grow, and welcome to Day 19 of the 30 Days of Healthy Habits Challenge. So today's habit is that we're going to set one digital boundary for the day. And why this matters is probably obvious to you. Uh, there's so many, so much information and so much research now on screen time and how it's affecting people. And there's so many reasons it's not healthy. So the number one thing, and we talked about this before in relation to sleep, is the blue light that emanates from your phone. You're holding it very close close to your face for a great part of the day. Uh, so it definitely interferes with your circadian rhythm and sleep. In addition, you know, just the act of looking at your phone, having it in your hands can create wrist carpal tunnel kinds of issues. It creates a hunch in the shoulders and this forward head lean that is very hard to counteract. And then saving the, probably the most important one to talk about for last is that it really affects depression and anxiety. And we're seeing a lot of research come out on this having to do with social media specifically and young children and screen time. And there's kind of two separate things. Just screen time in general for children is less clear, I think, in the literature, cuz I saw at least one research study recently that was saying something about it. It wasn't really the screen time itself necessarily interfering with neural development. So it can be a positive thing in some cases, but screen time as far as social media for both adolescents and adults is not healthy. It creates a lot of anxiety and depression. And some of this is by design. So the app designers, and if you ever listened to any of the interviews with people that talk about this stuff, it's really interesting how they purposely want to make you scroll more and spend more time on the app. And now I think TikTok has gotten to be especially the worst because now it's all like live streams of people trying to sell you something. So it's also become a means by which you can, you know, lose some control of your financial situation. And, you know, TikTok in particular, they're just making it so, so easy to click on a live video and purchase the product immediately or put it into a cart where you still can watch the video and then prompts you to buy. So there's any number of reasons giving yourself a a digital detox is a good idea. In addition to just freeing up some of the time during your day, if you ever look at the stats on your phone about time spent on social media, like unless you're scrolling social media while you're on a treadmill or working out or something like that, that's probably about the only other thing you could really reasonably do at the same time. But if you ever look at your screen time on your phone for specific apps, it can be really interesting and give you a big clue as to whether you need to do this type of detox a little more often or not. Those, the links to that, some of the research will be in the email, of course, for you to read all about that if you want to do something extra. But today's only habit is to just set the one digital badg— boundary. So I wanna give you some ideas about what that might be. It could be to, um, uninstall the app entirely for, from your phone for the day. That's one really easy way to do it. There's also some different apps and features, I believe, on either Android and, and iPhones that can put on a do not disturb where you don't get notifications for a certain period of time. You can also take it at a specific time of day or kind of have it stack it with other things. So for example, there's some also some literature that says, you know, maybe having the Wi-Fi next to your head at night or things plugged in next to your head, the EMFs is not that great. So instead of plugging in your phone next to your bed, maybe today your digital boundary is you plug your phone in another room and just leave it in the other room. And then that way you also aren't having that instantaneous access to it when you wake up first thing. You can You can kind of wake up more naturally and maybe take a few breaths and do some of your gratitude practice or one of the other habits that you've been working on throughout this challenge. And so those are just some ideas about how you can do this. Now, if you need for your phone for work, obviously, or you have apps that you use specifically for work on your phone, you might need to figure out how to let those specific notifications come through. Or like I said, if it's just one app that's particularly problematic for you that you tend to spend too much time on or let it distract you, maybe just uninstall that one from for the day. So hopefully that gave you some good ideas to set your digital boundary. As always, you'll be doing your 10 minutes of movement, which is amazing. And then optional are the extra reading, but I do think these are two pretty good ones, although it seems maybe obvious to you at this point that, cuz it's been in the news so much, that too much screen time or too many apps and social media can create a lot of anxiety and depression. But those links will be in the email. And yeah, I think that's about it for today. So, uh, hope you enjoy trying this little detox, digital detox, and, uh, be sure to let me know in the comments if this is something you practice already on a regular basis, or it's something that you're going to try. Would love to just hear your thoughts about the digital media space and how you're taking any steps to mitigate that. So I will see you again tomorrow.
