Imagine a global pandemic before video calls, messaging apps, collaboration software, cloud storage, and remote access to servers. Or without online shopping, telemedicine, social media, and video streaming. Undoubtedly, technology has made the COVID-19 pandemic much easier to endure than if it had happened 30 years earlier. Even just one month into the pandemic, in April 2020, more than half of US adults said the internet was essential to them, according to a Pew Research Center survey. And with the rise of remote work and remote learning, people have spent even more time online. By the end of 2020, a report from OpenVault found that monthly data consumption was up 40% on average, compared with 2019.
Now, more than a year since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, vaccinations are helping us shift into a less distanced existence. It’s time to take stock of our relationship to personal technology. How has it changed our minds, bodies, and behaviors? And what’s the best way to move forward?
How Much More Online Are We, Exactly?
Remote work and learning haven’t been equally accessible to everyone. But where they’ve been available, they’ve helped people keep their jobs and further their education. As thankful as we are, though, the transition has been bumpy. Teachers and students have had to learn to use unfamiliar software and hardware on the fly, which has sometimes led to longer and more frustrating online experiences. Parents and caretakers became impromptu IT support for school-age kids.
For those working and schooling from home for the first time, the lines between when the workday or school day starts and ends have blurred. A full third of people working from home all or most of the time say they’re putting in more hours at work than they did before COVID-19, according to a December 2020 report from Pew Research Center.
People have also been depending on their devices more for personal use. In 2020, US online merchants saw more than $860 billion in sales, an increase of 44% year over year, according to estimates from Digital Commerce 360, a media and research firm. That figure is nearly triple the increase seen from 2018 to 2019. Specifically, online sales of sporting goods, puzzles, games, and craft supplies all rose sharply. And internet shopping during the pandemic hasn’t been just for entertainment. Online grocery revenue surged to more than 350% higher in late March 2020 compared to pre-pandemic levels and has since leveled out to be around 230% higher, according to the Digital Economy Index by Adobe Analytics.
The amount of time we spend on mobile devices has also increased, suggesting an overall rise in online activity that isn’t solely related to working and learning. In the US, adults spent, on average, 229 minutes per day on their phones in 2020, compared with 223 minutes the year before, according to Statista.
Kids are spending more time online, too—and likely not just for school. A survey by Superawesome, a company that works on technologies to make the online world safer for children, found that more than half of US kids say they’re using screens at least 50% more now than before the pandemic.
Technology has allowed many people to keep working, learning, socializing, and shopping safely this past year. But there are no best practices for how to handle our increased screen time, because we’ve never been in this situation before. And it’s hard to settle into a healthy routine when the conditions and theories keep changing—how best to keep ourselves and others safe, vaccine efficacy, vaccination rates, details about variants of the virus, and so much more. What’s the right way to live in a pandemic and maintain a healthy relationship with technology?
Work-From-Home Burnout
For adults working from home, especially those doing so for the first time, burnout and work-related stress have been a huge problem. A Harvard Business Review survey of nearly 1,500 people across 46 countries found that 89% felt their workplace well-being declined since the start of COVID-19, and the biggest contributor (56%) was increased job demands.
Twenty-five percent pointed to the loss of work-life separation as a major factor, 23% mentioned unmanageable and increased workloads, and 21% cited longer work hours. Being forced to work from home unexpectedly and with no planning is hard and is taking a toll. To exacerbate the problem, many organizations that have asked employees to work remotely hadn’t thought about how to adapt their practices, company culture, and tools for a remote environment.
“The biggest problem—and there’s no question in my mind—when it comes to digital overload in the world of remote work is ‘meeting overload,’” says Dr. Alexandra Samuel, Ph.D., co-author of Remote Inc.: How to Thrive at Work Wherever You AreRemote Inc.: How to Thrive at Work Wherever You Are.
“Even before the pandemic, even before remote work, people complained about having too many meetings, but the problem is dramatically exacerbated when those meetings go online,” Samuel says. With in-person meetings, a host might not invite people who would have to travel to attend or who are only tangentially involved in the work. But there’s a tendency when working remotely to invite every possible party to an online meeting, because there are fewer barriers to attending. Samuel recommends that people who feel burned out should push back on meetings before anything else.
For organizations, a little planning and adjustments for a remote environment would go a long way, too. “Working at home has some amazing advantages for individuals and for teams that you can only take advantage of once you rethink your work processes and your team processes and learn to work more asynchronously,” Samuel says.
A majority of remote workers have discovered some of these perks: Another finding from Pew Research Center is that 54% of remote workers would like to continue working remotely after the pandemic ends. And roughly 20% of respondents in the HBR survey said their workplace well-being improved in some way since the start of the pandemic.
While remote workers have complained about too many Zoom meetings and longer hours, there haven’t been many reports citing burnout from excessive technology use in other realms, such as social media, games, and streaming. That doesn’t mean it’s not happening—just that people aren’t citing it as a top reason for burnout. Before the pandemic, some researchers suggested that adults may suffer from “screen guilt,” negative feelings associated with taking breaks that don’t get them away from screens, such as using social media. But again, remote workers seem much more overwhelmed by meetings and increased work demands.
Adults do worry, though, that excessive screen time is a problem for children.
Unique Challenges for Young School Children
Of younger school-age children, many have been in a unique situation since March 2020 in that they have no idea what traditional in-person learning is. At the beginning of the 2020-2021 academic year, schools saw a drop in kindergarten and pre-K enrollment, according to Anya Kamenetz, education correspondent for National Public Radio and author of several books, including The Art of Screen TimeThe Art of Screen Time.
“A lot of parents were operating on the assumption that kindergarten on the computer was not going to be a good idea for kids,” she says. “I think that’s been somewhat borne out.”
Like businesses, many schools transferred their curriculums online when the mandate for remote education started without having time to test it or adapt to the new environment. Additionally, some school districts have state requirements—the number of hours of instruction per day, for example—that aren’t flexible even during a pandemic. In some cases, the result has been educators, who were never trained to teach online, putting in long hours in front of a video camera and trying to communicate with young, tired, and fidgety students.
For young students, the range of outcomes is extraordinary. Those who have a parent or caretaker at their side to provide help seem to be doing well. A recent NPR/Ipsos poll found 29% of parents want remote learning to continue indefinitely. Parents who can put in the time to co-teach like being able to give their kids individualized attention and let them work at their own pace, and they enjoy the relative freedom and relaxation that comes with being in their own home, Kamenetz says.
Other students don’t fare nearly as well, though. “About 14% of students have an IEP [individualized education plan] or disability,” Kamenetz says. “Within that group, there are many parents who say, ‘It’s just not possible for my child to get the services they’re entitled to while learning from home.'”
For kids, school screen time is typically sedentary. The problem is not the screens, per se, but in what kids aren’t doing while they’re learning in front of a laptop. “It’s not time that you’re outside. It’s not time that you’re moving your body, and that has health and mood impacts,” Kamenetz says. Sleeping less and snacking more are related problems kids encounter when sedentary time increases.
Kamenetz and Dr. Samuel both agree that parents shouldn’t generalize technology use too much, however. “‘Screen time’ is a meaningless concept,” Samuels says. “It matters what you’re doing. Even ‘kids’ is a meaningless concept. There are some kids to whom you can give unfettered access to technology and others you can’t,” she says.
Although school-based screen time is often passive, kids do have plenty of engaging, participatory, and physically active tech opportunities. “TikTok is an interesting example of a platform that invites young creators to get involved with features like dueting. ‘I want to learn that dance. I want to post my own video and get in on the fun,'” Kamenetz says.
“I have a fourth grader who’s on Roblox,” Kamenetz adds. Roblox is an online platform where people create games and play games that others have created. “She’s on Minecraft. She FaceTimes with her friends on a daily basis,” she says, as evidence that kids’ relationship to tech is “changing in all kinds of ways. There’s more consumption, but there’s also more creation.”
Professor Andrew Przybylski is a social science researcher at the University of Oxford whose work covers how people interact with games, social media, and other virtual environments. He also pushes for policymakers to look at reproducible, evidence-based science and data when creating policy related to technology use. When asked whether increased technology use now, during the pandemic, could affect children in the future, Przybylski says there’s no data yet.
“It’s certainly the case that a much greater share of young people’s socializing has been mediated by games such as Minecraft or Fortnite and online courseware, such as Google Classroom, but it’s not clear to what extent these relationships will show enduring changes over time,” Przybylski said by email. “Much of the data from adults suggests that when lockdowns lift, the upward spikes in digital behaviors recede.”
Przybylski co-wrote an op-ed in The New York Times last year telling parents not to worry about kids’ increased screen time during the pandemic: “The evidence linking screens to harm is, in reality, paper thin.”
One of the positive outcomes of kids schooling at home, according to Kamenetz, is that parents now are in a better position to shape their kids’ relationship to technology and guide them to become good online citizens. “Younger kids get online, and they’re home in the space with their parents, unless the parents are essential workers. Then you have an ability as a parent to overhear,” Kamenetz says. “That’s a situation where there are training wheels. You can say, ‘I don’t like how you were trash-talking your friends while you were playing video games.’ Or ‘What happened when you were so upset while talking to your friends the other day?'”
For parents who are struggling with the basics of remote learning, there are also some simple schooling at home tips that may help with the day-to-day aspects.
The Toll on Adolescents
Unlike younger schoolchildren, most adolescents (ages 10 to 19) remember a pre-pandemic world. Those who attended traditional schools sat in classrooms with unmasked teachers and ate lunch in crowded cafeterias. Now, they have to keep track of when their school is all-remote, hybrid, or in-person. Some have had to decide whether to continue or delay their education at a college or university. Is it worth it to wait for in-person instruction when the environment is safer? The idea of taking a gap year to travel sounds almost inconceivable. Given these circumstances, many young people are turning online for comfort, sometimes with unintended consequences.
A Frontiers in Psychology study of Gen Z young adults (born after the year 1995) showed that social media apps that are used passively, such as scrolling through Instagram, drove feelings of loneliness and fear of missing out. The research was conducted during March and April of 2020 in the UK, Italy, and Argentina, where lockdown restrictions at the time were much more rigorous than in the US. The same study also found that interactive apps, such as WhatsApp and other messaging apps, had the opposite effect, leaving young adults feeling more connected. So it’s not necessarily that technology causes problems—it’s some technologies and how people use them.
Many of the problems adolescents face are not all that different from those that younger school kids face. When sedentary time takes the place of active time, it can lead to mood changes and physical problems associated with not getting enough exercise. Using technology late at night can result in less sleep, too, although parents should keep in mind that teens are already biologically programmed to stay up late and sleep in late, and they need more total hours of sleep.
The World Health Organization, in an online Q&A that talks to 10-19 year-olds directly, addresses the question of whether adolescents should be worried about the increased amount of time they’ve been spending online since the start of the pandemic. The advice sounds familiar: Limit the amount of screen time not related to studying or physical activity, because adolescents need to be “physically active to keep healthy and [have] a positive attitude.”
Even acute physical problems in young adults related to increased screen use, such as eye strain, are lower among people who get more physical activity. A study of college students’ eye strain (asthenopia) in China found that high reliance on digital devices, increased workload, and increased time spent on computers per day led to more reports of complaints, while aerobic exercise duration was a strong predictor of less eye strain. Once again, the deleterious effects of technology seem to come down to what young people aren’t doing when they’re on screens.
One positive effect of increased technology use and online socializing, according to NPR’s Kamenetz, is that young people who don’t have a supportive community around them are finding their tribes online more easily and earlier in life. It’s been a particular benefit to kids identifying as LGBTQ+.
Are We Even More Addicted Now?
Parents and young adults need to keep in mind that the apps, services, and devices they use are meant to be sticky. TikTok, YouTube, Amazon, Netflix, Minecraft, and other apps and services are designed to keep you engaged. Whether that stickiness leads to technology addiction is a hotly debated topic, though many of the experts we spoke to say using addiction as a framework is often not helpful, except in the most extreme cases.
Samuel, who has a child on the autism spectrum, has researched video gaming among autistic kids to better understand what technology addiction is. “The truth is, both video games and social networks are designed to keep us coming back for our next little rat pellet. I just think we need to distinguish between technologies that use the dynamics of compulsive behavior and know how to prompt us effectively from true addiction,” she says.
Kamenetz takes a similar stance, saying the term “tech addiction” isn’t useful when looking at the range of interactions people have with personal tech. “It’s similar to food,” she says, “in the sense that you can definitely have an unhealthy relationship with it, but you also can’t go cold turkey. There’s no way in our modern life that you can be completely cut off from electronic media.”
Kamenetz adds that it’s more helpful to ask, “‘How do I have a healthy and moderate relationship with this, and how do I stop it from interfering with other functions I have in life?’ That’s the framework that I encourage parents to bring to this.”
Moving Forward
Every day, week, and month of the pandemic has been unlike the one before. Organizations that jumped into remote work didn’t plan for it to continue for a year or more. Neither did educators or school districts or students with remote schooling.
Early in the pandemic, people had expectations of when work, school, and life in general might return to normal, and most of us have had to adjust those expectations continually. It’s been hard for people to examine their relationship with personal technology, as there’s been a feeling that the circumstances could change again at any moment. Who wants to modify their tech-use habits when a new pandemic twist is just around the corner?
After a year, though, people are feeling the effects. For remote workers, video calls have been a major pain point, with lack of work-life balance and increasing work demands closely behind. For school children, time spent in front of a laptop listening to a teacher is time not spent running around the playground or interacting physically with other kids. It’s similar for adolescents who may be sacrificing physical activities for sedentary time in a remote classroom, playing video games, or messaging with friends.
We now have a unique opportunity to think about what work and education should look like in the future. Organizations and school districts may not be able to plan for every change to come, but they’ve had a year to see what works and doesn’t work in remote and hybrid setups.
As for individuals who are concerned about their use of personal technology, most advice centers on quality of engagement rather than quantity of time. When kids learn a dance via TikTok, that’s physical activity and active participation. Teens messaging with their friends are socializing and perhaps even finding a supportive community that isn’t available otherwise. Adults who feel burned out by screen time have plenty of options to use personal technology to unwind without a screen, such as listening to podcasts and audiobooks or playing a quiz game with a smart voice assistant.
The key is to ask whether there’s a trade-off: Are we using personal technology instead of taking a walk, playing with our kids and pets, or practicing yoga? Even then, Samuel says not to get too caught up in the idea of what else we might be doing if we’re not staring at our phones, as we’re still living through a global pandemic.
“When we talk about digital overload,” Samuel says, “we often have, at some level, the idea that if we weren’t on screens right now, we’d be out planting a vegetable garden or out in the woods talking about our emotions. I think it’s really important to acknowledge that the opportunity costs of technology use during the pandemic are really low.”
Even parents need to cut themselves some slack and hand their kids an iPad so they can get work done or make dinner. Samuel says the narrative about the ideal amount of screen time is driven by privileged people who have resources for childcare and after-school activities.
“If you’re pulling double shifts and trying to put a meal on the table and make the next day’s lunches, it’s really preposterous to imply that your kid is somehow being deprived of the incredible value of watching you make sandwiches, because they’re sitting online learning how to program. I mean c’mon!”
Digital Detox Tips
Hopefully you’re now a little less stressed about your tech dependencies—especially since there’s a light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel. If you’d still like to put some distance between yourself and your screens, read on for some tips.
- Set ground rules for yourself: It’s all too easy to jump on your phone or computer and start scrolling and texting. Before you begin your technology break, set some parameters. Keep track of your time, and decide what counts as exceptions to the rules and what doesn’t.
- Tell people when you’re unreachable: Make sure you communicate to friends, family, and coworkers when you’ll be offline and when you’ll be back.
- Tell VIPs how to reach you: You can (and should) still be reachable to very important people. Make sure they know the best way to get in touch if there’s an emergency. They might call your phone rather than texting or emailing you, or maybe you’ll ask them to call the phone of someone who’s usually with you.
- Develop a habit for where you put your phone: Find a dedicated place to keep your phone while you’re on a technology break as a reminder not to cave in and pick it up. Putting away your phone also signals to family and friends that you are paying attention to them, not a screen. You could switch to airplane mode, for added distance.
- Make a commitment: It helps to tell other people in your home or close friends and family that you’re swearing off unnecessary personal tech use. Let them know if you want them to be supportive if you slip up or to hold you accountable. Ask for the type of encouragement you need.
