Week 6- Digital Health: Experiences, Technology and Networks
Digital detox is a necessity to the world of health and well-being considering the disadvantages of social media, online web pages and being connected to the internet for long hours. I personally like the movie ‘into the wild’ where the lead actor gets disconnected from the world after his degree, leaving money, family and pleasure of living in a modern world and goes to the extreme north, exploring the extreme climates and conditions. But, he gets a lot more than what he had left behind, a piece of mind, self-exploration, friends and nature. I believe digital detox is important considering the movie outcome.
It is indeed a topic of discussion in the world of media and communication that, technological advancement has led all of us to an effective communicating world and has increased a varied network of connectivity while the other side of technology has given us mental distress (Van Djick 2013).
Google is a monopolistic search engine in the media ecology which provides information about health issues, local services, language translations, emails, social networking, entertainment, government, business and many more. This way it is a development to the world of health and well-being (Broadbent & Papadopolous 2011). Research says around 83% of internet users seek health information online where a varied range of information about health and health-related issues is shared online.
Along with the above services, we have self-tracking including, scales, pedometers, sleep trackers, emotion trackers, heart rate, blood pressure check-ups and many more. The increasing use of apps for health tracks has been in trends like FitBit, Bupa, Apple watches and etc. These factors offer adequate opportunity for people to understand their own health issues and have an update of health records (Ruckenstein 2015).
A research on the housing estate in Collingwood that gives analysis on the economical housing to low-economic migrants and refugees. The research findings suggested that there has been the improvement in the lives of these migrants and refugees due to the modern technology that has been provided to them (Broadbent & Papadopolous 2011).
In other words, the group of people who are digitally illiterate faces the problem of technological advancement, as a result, there has been growing for ‘digital divide’. The disruptive technology has degraded the educational values, skills, employment opportunities for these group of people (O’Mara et. al 2010).
Therefore, technology has been beneficial for networking, communication and for health and well-being while it has created the digital divide among groups of people in the community. And this situation asks for digital detox to be applicable to the real world.
REFERENCES:
Broadbent R. & Papadopoulos T. 2011, ‘bridge the digital-an Australian Story’, Behavior & information technology, vol.32, no.1, pp.4–13.
O’Mara B. & Borland H. 2010, Sending the right message: ICT access and use for communication messages of health & well-being to CALD communities, Victorian Health Promotion Foundation, Viewed 7 September 2018, < https://ilearn.swin.edu.au/bbcswebdav/courses/2018-HS2-MDA80004-232987/OMara%20etal_Sending%20the%20right%20message_ICT%20access%20and%20use_2010.pdf>.
Ruckenstein M. 2015, ‘uncovering everyday Rhythms and patterns: food tracking and new forms of visibility and temporality in health care’, Techno-Anthropology in Health Informatics, vol. 215, pp.28–40.
Van Djick J. 2013, The culture of connectivity: A critical history of social media, Oxford University Press, Oxford.