How to Overcome Digital Distraction

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Today human beings are living more in the parallel world known as the "Digital World" or the "Virtual World". This computer-based online community environment has no doubt its incredible benefits and advantages, not even dreamt of by our preceding generations. At the same time, it has also the frightening potential to make human beings mentally sick, and isolated, and suppress all those healthy elements which make human beings human. Today, it is a fact that this digital or virtual world is something which cannot be done away with. This being so, the only option left to us is to develop the art or skill of using it intelligently, without endangering the mental and physical well-being of the individual and the society. How to handle this "digital distraction" caused by "digital slavery" is the focus of this book, the importance of which doesn't need to be emphasised. The book endeavours to address this important issue from various angles, through articles written by experts and thinkers from various backgrounds.

Evidence shows that technology-which includes emerging artificial intelligence-is having an impact on our cognitive abilities, including our abilities to think, feel, and will. What type of impact will it have and including possible new applications which will benefit the world? Will it help us to expand our cognitive abilities, or on the other hand, will it increase our dependence upon digital technology and make us subservient? How to live in the modern world as the master-and not the servant-of these technologies? These are important questions for which there are not necessarily clear-cut answers: instead, these questions require discussions and diverse perspectives from experts, scholars, teachers, psychologists, and laypeople.
Part One of the book entitled An Emerging New World Order discusses the effects of digital technology at the individual and collective level. Part Two entitled Digital Distractions: the New Enemy to Mental Health discusses the effects of the overuse of digital technology on our mental health and raises important questions for discussion. Part Three entitled Solutions for Overcoming Digital Distractions explores different solutions to help us maintain mental balance with our digital devices. Part Four entitled Using Digital Technologies for enriching our World discusses how we can use technologies to alleviate the plight of the poor, improve the quality of our life including better medical treatment, etc. Part Five entitled Miscellaneous briefly discusses digital technology from metaphysical perspectives including Vedanta.
The articles in this book originally appeared in the January special issue 2022 of Prabuddha Bharata entitled Living a Meaningful Life in a Digital World. We have attempted to reclassify the articles into different categories to make them more reader-friendly and practical for our audience.