3.1.2 Your digital wellbeing

It was mentioned earlier that this course would examine wellbeing from a digital perspective, informed by the ‘Digital Wellbeing’ element of Jisc’s individual digital capabilities framework (Jisc, n.d.). Let’s look at this now.

Hybrid working, communication and digital collaboration can sometimes be challenging or demanding, and can affect your wellbeing.

It can be more difficult to develop organisational culture and build trust in hybrid working environments. Culture and trust are built through human connections, and, as humans, we have had to adjust to be able to develop these, both in person and in a digital virtual world.

As new ways of working evolve, it is worth asking questions such as: Have we adapted? How is it different now? If you think about how you work with your colleagues and your organisation in a post-COVID-19 context, you may find that your culture and trust naturally evolved as you adapted to hybrid ways of working. As hybrid working evolves, you may find that you and your colleagues are going into the office more, either due to organisational requirements or personal choice. For teams that have a hybrid approach, it is important to remember that some people will still be remote workers and ensuring that they continue to feel connected is important. Considering how you work with your team to make the most effective use of digital technologies can help with this.

Activity 4 The impact of digital technologies on your wellbeing

Timing: Allow about 30 minutes

Look carefully at the diagram below.

1. Consider how technologies can affect your digital wellbeing at work by identifying positive and negative impacts they have had, either from your own experience or those you’ve observed in colleagues.
2. What capacity do you think you have to change your digital practices to improve your wellbeing?

Maximise

Figure 6 Four aspects of digital wellbeing for individuals.

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This diagram shows a triangle split into four segments, containing text as follows. Top segment: ‘My own awareness and capacity to change my digital practices’. Bottom left segment: ‘Positive impacts of technologies on my wellbeing’. Bottom right segment: ‘Negative impacts of technologies on my wellbeing’. Middle segment: ‘How technologies can improve digital wellbeing’.

Figure 6 Four aspects of digital wellbeing for individuals.

You can make some notes in the box below.

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Discussion

Jisc’s ‘Digital Identity and Wellbeing’ capability includes the capacity to:

• look after personal health, safety, relationships and work–life balance in digital settings
• use digital tools in pursuit of personal goals (e.g. health and fitness) and to participate in social and community activities
• act safely and responsibly in digital environments
• manage digital workload, overload and distraction
• act with concern for the human and natural environment when using digital tools.

How does this relate to your response to this activity?

Jisc (2019b) have stated that for individuals in an education context, digital wellbeing ‘links closely to their personal and social digital wellbeing and to developing and managing their professional and personal digital identities and footprints.’

Now watch the video in which Sas Amoah, Digital Media Producer at The Open University, shares how he manages his digital wellbeing.

Download this video clip.Video player: hyb_4_2022_sept103_managing_your_digital_wellbeing_sas_compressed.mp4

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Transcript

SAS AMOAH

At home, I work in my living room. We’ve actually got a very small space, so the options were fairly limited. So yeah, I work in my living room. I actually work on my couch, which isn’t great for your back, but I do sit in my spread lotus yogi space, and that’s really good-- with my legs crossed-- and I’ve got cushions on my back keeping my back straight.

So I have my work PC and then I have two Macs as well, and I tend to work across all three of them, and then I’ve got the TV in the background. But I find, actually, it’s a really good setup now for what I need, but it did take a bit of trial and error initially when the pandemic happened.

It was a bit of a struggle to figure out what was the best place to work in at home and what was the best seating arrangement. But after a few months, I’ve settled on one, I think, which is quite productive. In terms of managing my digital wellbeing, I try to take a break I think every two or three hours from staring at a screen.

I hadn’t realised, but I think I was suffering a bit of an adverse effect from staring at a screen for 10 hours a day. So I try to take a break I think every two to three hours, 20 or 30 minutes, just to do something else to give my eyes a bit of a break. I’ve actually also got a new set of glasses I wear that takes away, I think-- is it the blue light you get from screen sometimes?

I tend to wear those as well if I’m going to be on screen for more than one or two hours. So between that and taking the breaks, I find that that really helps. One of the things I do if I know it’s a particularly busy time and because I do a variety of roles at the OU-- so a lot of people might want to contact me for all sorts of reasons-- is I take my profile off active when it comes to online spaces. People can still contact me by email, but I know it can be very quickly overwhelming when I get a number of different calls. So that’s the good way for me of just managing the amount of contact I have with people, particularly when I know it’s going to be a really busy time. And obviously, when I do get an email, I’m in a position to contact people and get back to them at the right time for me.

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The Jisc model focuses on four contexts of your digital wellbeing – social, personal, learning and work – that can help you consider areas you might want to focus on. These are listed in Table 3.

Some of the recommendations Jisc suggests to help improve your digital wellbeing are:

• Ask for training and support on the digital systems and tools relevant to your role, so that you can use them effectively and safely
• Take time to explore and understand your digital preferences and needs
• Consider the impact of digital activities on your own health and the health of others
• Manage your digital workload by learning how to use tools effectively, managing your emails and avoiding distractions
• Create a positive digital identity.

Many of these will be explored in Sections 4 and 5 of this course.