The Health Benefits of Cutting Down Your Screen Time

In today’s society, we’re constantly interacting with the devices around us. Whether we’re answering texts, emails, calls, or performing work duties, we’re always staring at a screen. The more we spend on our phones, tablets, laptops, and other devices, the more we negatively impact our health. In fact, cutting down on your screen time has numerous health benefits. Keep reading to learn how reducing screen time can improve your health.

Minimize the Strain on Your Eyes

The devices we interact with use blue light to display images on the screen. Prolonged exposure to this light can cause your eyes to become dry and itchy, and it causes headaches since you have to strain your eyes. While you can reduce eye strain by using the yellow light feature on your device or wearing blue light-blocking glasses, nothing will reduce your eye strain more than minimizing your screen time.

Lower Your Stress Levels

Did you know that screen time can cause more stress? The light and stimuli from the features on your device can cause repeated stress to your central nervous system. The more time we spend in front of the screen, the more agitated, impulsive, and angry we can become. Reducing screen time will lower stress, putting you in a better mood.

Encourage Physical Activity

Our phones, computers, and televisions consume a large portion of our day. When you’re constantly sitting in front of a screen, you won’t have time to exercise. Once you set your phone and devices aside, your schedule opens up, leaving more time in your day to get your physical activity in.

Improve Your Quality of Sleep

Blue light can also cause a disturbance to your sleep pattern because it prevents your body from producing melatonin—which causes us to get sleepy. So when you’re staring at your screen for hours on end, you’re tricking your brain into thinking it needs to stay awake, even if it’s two in the morning. Cutting down on your screen time can benefit your health by improving the quality of your sleep.

Increase Your Focus

A goldfish has an attention span of nine seconds, while a human has an attention span of around 8.25 seconds. The reason our attention span is so low is that the majority of us are spending too much time on our screens, lowering our attention spans, impulse control, and empathy. Using strategies for cutting down screen time can slow your brain, allowing you to focus on a task without distractions.

While technology can be an essential tool to further advance our society, too much screen time can be harmful to our health. It’s important to set aside your devices and live in the moment. If you’re a chronic user of your phone or computer, consider cutting down your screen time—you’ll be amazed by the results it has on your mental and physical health!