Screen Time & Self-Regulation By Tony Vernon HWC, NMC, AMC, MMC
Life in 2020 due to the pandemic shifted to computer, tablet, and phone screens. With electronic screens literally becoming our windows to the world for the majority of us. The amount of time we spent on our devices significantly increased with the changing world, and this happened for children too. But electronic screens remove a large part of what happens in our social interactions: presence, visual signals, stimulation, chemistry, body intelligence and more. This is why long video calls with others can be exhausting, as they are unable to provide us with adequate human-to-human nutrition from the interactions online.
Virtual coaching using Zoom or Google Meet can be excellent for executives and businesses because it is mostly about helping a client to cognitively get clear on what they need to prioritize, delegate, or strategies and goals that need to be actioned, how, when, and involving who, etc. I myself limit having more than four 60-min virtual coaching sessions a day, or four hours daily on a computer for my mental and emotional health. Those of you who have spent a large amount of time in virtual meetings or in online conferences will know the exhaustion and fatigue the electronic environment can bring – due to your body not getting fed from a reciprocal human-to-human interaction in the physical realm – where we are meant to reside.
Do not expect to self-regulate yourself by being on a computer screen for too many hours in a day. This will deplete your ability to self-regulate. We need human interactions in the physical or real world to achieve self-regulation.
