Digital Mindfulness Jenga

kujenga!

digital mindfulness

Digital mindfulness is the practice of paying careful attention to our online behavior in order to build healthy digital habits.

THIS RESOURCE WAS CREATED BY JENNIFER LAGARDE & DARREN HUDGINS FOR USE WITH THE BOOK DEVELOPING DIGITAL DETECTIVES.

The purpose of this game is to help you:

• understand the role of dopamine in affecting your behavior online
• develop healthy relationships with the digital devices and platforms you use most

have fun!

start

question 1/8

Dopamine is a chemical that is released in your brain when you experience something pleasurable or beneficial. The release of this chemical can make you feel good and it can make you want to repeat the behavior that resulted in the dopamine release in the first place. This desire for more dopamine can result in all of the following except:

OPPONENT’STURN

YOURTURN

INCREASED MOTIVATION

HAIR LOSS

ADDICTION TO DOPAMINE LINKED BEHAVIORS

WELL DONE!

Dopamine can help motivate you to start and complete tasks. This is a good thing! However, wanting more dopamine can also lead to addiction to behaviors that feel good, but that aren't healthy. This applies to social media, too. Social media platforms drive surges of dopamine to the brain in order to keep us scrolling and engaging. If you've ever found yourself scrolling mindlessly online, it could be the result of your brain's quest for more dopamine!

YOURTURN

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question 2/10

Social media addiction is a spectrum disorder: it’s not as simple as being an addict or not being an addict. One way to look at this spectrum is by thinking about how you feel when told you are unable to be online. The strength and intensity of those feelings can help you better understand whether or not you have a healthy relationship with the platforms and devices that you use most.

OPPONENT’STURN

YOURTURN

TRUE

FALSE

WELL DONE!

Digital Mindfulness Experiment!

• Set a timer for however many

minutes feels reasonable to you

• Turn off your device and put it

away

• Spend the time offline being

aware of your feelings. Take note of your desire to be online. Did these feelings intensify as time went on? Were you tempted to end the experiment early?

• Chat about this activity with a friend or family member. Use this conversation to set some goals for creating a healthy relationship with the devices and platforms you use most.

YOURTURN

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Question 3/10

Emoji based responses on social media platforms are often weighted so that the emojis associated with the strongest emotions have a greater affect on what content is priorized in our feeds.

OPPONENT’STURN

YOURTURN

TRUE!

FALSE

WELL DONE!

Emoji based reactions on social media are designed to get us to engage with content. This engagement tells the algorithm what kind of content we want to see more of. When we engage with content that triggers a strong emotional response, we are telling the algorithm two important things:

YOURTURN

1. We went to see more content like the kind we engaged with.
2. We like feeling the emotions triggered by the content we engage with AND we want to feel those emotions again.

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question 4/10

Which of the following social media engagement features can trigger dopamine releases in our brains?

OPPONENT’STURN

YOURTURN

LIKES

COMMENTS

FOLLOWS

ALL OF THESE

WELL DONE!

Digital Mindfulness Experiment!

• Set a timer for however many minutes feels reasonable to you

• Spend time on social media as you normally would with the following exceptions:
• While the timer is active do all of the following:
• Be aware of your urge to engage with content
• If you feel the desire to like, share or comment on a post, ask yourself the following:
• What emotion is this content triggering?
• Is this emotion driving my desire to engage?

• Do I want to feel this emotion again?

YOURTURN

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question 5/10

We experience a hike in dopamine in anticipation of doing something as well as when we do the thing itself, which makes us want to continue doing it.

OPPONENT’STURN

YOURTURN

TRUE

FALSE

WELL DONE!

As soon as the dopamine release is finished, we experience a comedown or dopamine dip. This is our brain's way of self regulating. During the dopamine dip it is not unusual for us to really want to repeat the behavior that gave us that shot of dopamine to begin with. Resisting that urge takes practice.

YOURTURN

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question 6/10

When we give in to the urge to repeat behaviors that result in dopamine releases, our brains compensate by reducing the intensity of each subsequent dopamine rush. This means we have to repeat the behavior many times in order to experience the same dopamine rush as the first time.

OPPONENT’STURN

YOURTURN

FALSE

TRUE

WELL DONE!

We can compare social media binging to eating too much chocolate (or another candy that you love!) While the occasional indulgence in chocolate tastes great and isn't harmful, over indulgence can:

YOURTURN

• lead to addiction
• make us feel bad
• result in an unhealthy relationship with chocolate (or other things!)

If you wouldn't spend hours mindlessly eating chocolate, perhaps you shouldn't spend hours mindlessly scrolling on social media.

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question 7/10

Being mindful of how we spend our time online can help us avoid unhealthy habits including those that are the result of letting dopamine control our behavior on social media. Which of the following is an example of practicing digital mindfulness?

OPPONENT’STURN

YOURTURN

When the alarm goes off in the morning, Shelby grabs her phone and checks to see who has posted overnight. Spotting some drama, Shelby shares several posts with friends. Before she knows it, an hour has gone by and Shelby realizes she will now be late for school.

When the alarm goes off in the morning, Shelby grabs her phone and checks to see who has posted overnight. Spotting some drama, Shelby feels the urge to share several posts, but also notices that those same posts are making her feel anxious. Shelby decides to put the phone away for now and get ready for school instead.

WELL DONE!

Digital Mindfulness Experiment!

If you use your phone as an alarm clock, try doing the following:

• Take note of your behavior AFTER the alarm goes off.
• If your urge is to immediately check social media, try changing this behavior by:
• doing something else first, or...
• limiting this specific social media time to a set number of minutes
• using something else as an alarm clock so that your first few moments of the day are spent focusing on something else

YOURTURN

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question 8/10

Social media "fasts" require participants to remove access to social media for a specific period of time: usually 24 hours. Some experts suggest a social media fast as a way to disrupt unhealthy relationships with dopamine.

OPPONENT’STURN

YOURTURN

FALSE

TRUE

WELL DONE!

Some experts say that staying away from social media for 24 hours can be an effective way of disrupting dopamine addiction. However, social media fasts can be hard to stick to. Some tips for success include:

YOURTURN

• Asking someone else to keep your phone for the first 12 hours, because this is the time when we are most likely to give up!
• Planning alternative activities for the time you won't have access to your phone.
• Planning strategies for noticing and thinking about your feelings during your social media fast.

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Congrats!

Digital mindfulness begins the same way all mindfulness practice does - with a desire to be more aware of how our behavior fosters healthy or unhealthy relationships. Being digitally mindful isn't about closing all of your social media accounts and tossing your phone in the trash. Rather, it's about making a committment to paying careful attention to your online behavior in order to build healthy digital habits

Now that you have finished this activity, take some time to identify 3 steps YOU could take to be more mindful on the platforms and devices you use most.

YOU LOSE!

yourturn

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