What is Media Wellbeing?

Lately I've been dipping in the mornings. This word "dipping" has taken on an entirely new meaning. Gone is my association to the gross, toxic habit of chewing tobacco and spitting into various containers. In its place is the glorious practice of wading through seaweed fields with my dipping community to plunge into the frigid waters at 7 am each day, then heading to the coffee spot with heaters where we collectively shiver, laugh, and naturally solve all the world's problems together. Talk about a serious semantic upgrade!

I love this addition to my wellbeing practice. Having spent my working hours in edtech for several years, very few in my professional network know me for my personal wellbeing practices. However, I spend at least as much time biking trails, flowing into down dog, and (as of late) dipping, as I do on Zoom calls, in board meetings, or working with teachers in schools. While I started exercising in my late 20s, it wasn't until 40, when I tried to donate my kidney and serendipitously discovered I had a kidney tumor I had promptly removed, that I committed to prioritize my wellbeing alongside my professional pursuits. At LINC, I led the co-creation of our vitality vision statement, which sought to at least establish the shared ethos and commitment to team and individual vitality alongside the vitality of the company even if we acknowledged sometimes it would temporarily rotate lead positions.

All this to say, wellbeing has been a critical part of who I am as a person and leader as subdued as it's been in my professional discourse. However, in the convergence of the Gen AI deluge, with the research showing the media's health impact on children, my two passions have collided. That is why I'm talking so urgently about phone-free schools and what I'm calling "media wellbeing". I've had several people ask me to define media wellbeing, often prompting, "Is it the same as digital citizenship?" or "Is it the same as media literacy?" I believe it's a step beyond both and differs from each materially.

Media wellbeing is part media literacy and part wellness. Media literacy is certainly the prerequisite. School stakeholders, including parents and children, need to understand and talk about how media algorithms and AI work, plus the benefits and harms of using media. With this knowledge, they can make conscious choices about when and how they use media. But these choices differ from those they make in interacting with others responsibly online, or what we would consider good digital citizenship. Whereas digital citizenship is primarily concerned with the impact of media behavior on others, media wellbeing is primarily concerned with the impact of media behavior on the individual.

Media wellbeing is the practice of making choices towards a healthier lifestyle and relationship with media. It's about taking control of media versus letting media notifications control us. It's about establishing communities of practice in which members support one another in their healthy media habits.

I've been practicing certain media wellbeing habits for a while now -- not using my phone or social media right before bed, not keeping my phone in my bedroom, not checking things like Slack or social media upon first wakening. However, as I've begun to work on solutions which would support schools in fostering media wellbeing in their community, I've started new practices such as:

• keeping my phone away, whether in a specific room I only go to periodically while at home, or in my bag when I'm out and about
• putting my phone on do not disturb mode so that only emergency contacts can reach me, only checking it when I'm consciously engaged in "checking my phone" instead of reacting to notifications
• deleting social media apps from my phone (including LinkedIn...likely going to have this buried by the algorithm now!) and only checking social media as a conscious activity on my computer or through adding the app back momentarily
• committing to 1 screen at a time, using only my computer or only my phone, not both at the same time
• eliminating my beloved "multitasking", so whether writing, eating, or Zooming, it's only one thing at a time right now

So far, I've noticed a significant increase in presence, recall, and focus. I truly believe these are the kinds of tools we need to model and teach children so that they can learn to swim in the saturated sea of media which surrounds them. Just like we teach children how to be healthy through the foods they choose and exercise they do, we have the opportunity to cultivate a much higher level of wellbeing in the way they engage with media. If we viewed mental health impact with the same level of concern and attention as we do physical health, we would immediately prioritize programs which taught these skills in our schools.