6 Ways to Push Back on Depression in a Screen-Saturated World

Sobiya N. Moghul makes a simple observation: most of us are fused to our phones and our feeds, and that attachment quietly chips away at how we feel. Some of the ordinary habits that keep our minds steady get crowded out by the glow of a screen. Moghul points to six of those habits. Rebuild them and you have a decent shot at loosening the low mood that so much device use seems to breed. Here is what she suggests.

Start by looking around you. Moghul says she pays attention to the good qualities of the people she works with and tries to pick up something from each of them. The same is true for anyone nearby who happens to be eating well or getting out to exercise. Noticing those small, positive things in others has a way of nudging us toward doing the same. So lift your eyes off the six-inch rectangle for a minute. See who is actually in the room and what is actually happening. The physical world has a texture you cannot get through a screen, and you miss it when your face is buried in a device.

The second habit is self-talk. Talking yourself through a hard feeling or a painful moment is how you test whether the thing you are dreading is real or imagined. It also steadies your decisions and can push you toward action when you need a shove, especially if the words you choose are kind ones. Most people already carry on this inner conversation without thinking about it. Doing it on purpose can lift your mood. Step away from the noise of Facebook, Twitter, and the rest of the web long enough to hear your own voice again. Reclaim that internal dialogue instead of reciting your timeline back to your friends. What do you actually think about the world right now?

Third: listen for real. Moghul's advice is to give your full attention when someone speaks to you and to make an honest effort to see things from their side. She quotes Rachel Remen on this: the most basic and powerful way to connect with another person is to listen, and maybe the most important gift we hand each other is our attention. Active listening means you are processing what the other person says rather than queuing up your reply or waiting to drop in your own feelings. If you are half-glued to a device, you are probably just nodding along with the occasional "uh huh" to someone who wants to be seen and understood. Put the phone down. Make eye contact. Have the conversation.

Number four is singing, out loud. Colin Slater OAM, a former opera singer who founded Sing Australia, describes it almost like a sport: your posture and breathing shift when you sing, it works your body and your mind, it releases endorphins, and you come away feeling lighter and more charged up. So pull up a video online, one with the lyrics on screen if you can find it, and sing along with an album you love. The digital world is not the enemy here. Borrow the parts of it that lift you.

Fifth, cry, or just let the thing go. Crying does something for you emotionally and physically. Moghul frames it as the body clearing out its toxins and the brain releasing what it has been carrying, and she means something gentler than sobbing yourself to puffy eyes every morning. This is the quiet kind of release, the sort that empties your mind of its worries and griefs. Worth asking: are you reaching for a device to dodge your own feelings? It is an easy habit, because the screen is stuffed with things to pull your attention away from whatever you would rather not feel. Are you holding something back?

Last, laugh. Laughter has a documented healing streak to it. Moghul's take is blunt and cheerful: laugh even if you sound like a horse or a hyena. It loosens the whole body, gives the immune system a lift, sets off endorphins, and looks out for your heart. The digital world is fine in moderation here too. Put on some comedy online or a show that cracks you up, then think about getting out to a live stand-up night.

What else can you do in the digital age to stay healthy and balanced? That question gets a long answer from one reader, Bergen, who sees a social void opening up as electronic devices reach people of every age. His worry lands on interpersonal communication. In his plain-spoken view, the millennial generation and the ones coming after it will keep struggling with relationships because they have learned to talk mainly with their thumbs.

He and his wife have three children, all three teenagers by the end of the year. Their rule has held firm: no mobile phone before age thirteen, and their youngest is counting the days to her first device. He notes how far the technology has jumped between his oldest turning thirteen and his youngest about to. His son likes to remind him that they carry more computing power in their hands than NASA had when it put a man on the moon. That line, he admits, scares him a little.

Bergen wants his kids ready for whatever comes next in technology, out on the front edge of it rather than scrambling to catch up the way so many adults do now. What unsettles him is the thinning out of face-to-face contact. If people only reach each other through screens, he figures society will lose the thread of what relationships are actually for, and the isolation that follows will deepen the problem and swell the numbers of people carrying symptoms of depression, diagnosis or not.

And that leaves aside the physical danger. He is not only talking about texting behind the wheel. He has pulled his own teenagers back from stepping in front of moving cars, heads down in their phones, more than once. You can call him paranoid or say he is overstating it. As a parent, he has watched the near-disasters up close, and they sadden him as much as they worry him, for now and for what comes after.

Source: Moghul, S. (n.d.). Reframe What You Think About Depression. Retrieved December 28, 2014, from everydayhealth.com.