Digital Flourishing In The Time of Physical Distancing

While sheltering in place, many of us are spending more time than ever online. The virtual world is our lifeline to connect, work, and check in on loved ones. It even offers an outlet to give our anxious little hearts respite (looking at you, Netflix binge).

Our friends at The Digital Wellness Collective have designated May 1, 2020 as Digital Wellness Day. It is a day to shine a light on strategies to help us flourish in a digital age.

COVID-19 brings greater urgency to the questions Digital Wellness Day explores: How can technology bring us together, rather than drives us apart? Can we illuminate the connective power of technology to enhance human relationships?

Last week, our very own Joan Blades sat down with Nina Hersher, the creative force behind Digital Wellness Day, to have a (virtual) Living Room Conversation on Technology and Relationships.

They talked about setting boundaries with devices, reflected on a new generation raised with social media, and shared hopes and fears about tech’s role in our rapidly changing society.

If, like Joan and Nina, you’re longing for a meaningful conversation about the Corona-infused digital world we now inhabit, register here for our Technology and Relationships conversation, which we are hosting on Digital Wellness Day. Or, feel free to host your own conversation using our “Do-It-Yourself” guide.

Please join us in this vital digital wellness movement. Visit the Digital Wellness Day site for great resources, tool kits, and events you can host or attend (virtually, of course).

“We have the power to utilize technology in a way that fuels versus fatigues us,” Nina says. “Digital Wellness Day is about raising awareness and activating solutions for living in harmony with technology.”

Living in harmony with technology, and in all things, is exactly what this great pause is asking of us.

This is a time when our very definitions of human flourishing are seismically shifting under our feet. Opportunities to reflect and question and wonder couldn’t be more essential to finding meaning in this suffering.

Digital Wellness Day provides just this opportunity.

If you get involved, just pinky promise you’ll report back on your discovery.

If we’re going to create new models of human flourishing, we need to learn from each other. Now, more than ever.

Yours,

Shannon Mannon

Newsletter Editor