National Unplugging Day

 

On Friday 3rd March, it was the National Day of Unplugging which consisted of a  24-hour break from digital devices, with the focus on disconnecting from the digital world and reconnecting our personal one.

If you haven’t noticed already, screen time has globally become an increasing part of day to day life. Often due to the mind-numbing feeling that technology can give us, we don’t realise how much time we are dedicating to our screens.

 

Here are some alarming stats relating to our obsessions with electronic:

• Globally, people average 6 hours 58 minutes of screen time per day.
• Daily screen time has increased by nearly 50 minutes per day since 2013.
• The average person spends 7 hours and 4 minutes looking at a screen each day.
• Almost half (49%) of 0 to 2-year-olds interact with smartphones.
• Gen Z averages around 9 hours of screen time per day. 
• (Josh Howarth, 2023)

 

The above statistics consist of both national and global averages, honing in on the north west of England; Manchester Evening News (2022) report that 9 in 10 people admit to looking at multiple screens at the same time on a daily basis. However looking specifically at Liverpool we’ve got the lowest screentime and screen use statistics within the north west of England. 

 

Screen time directly impacts our health, it causes more sedentary time over partaking in active leisure time. Brits on a regular basis complain of eye strain, headaches, neck & back problems and increased mental health issues which often relate back to mobile phone use & screen time. 

 

Tips For Reducing Screen Time

Ultimate Kids always aims to engage children in a social sporting environment, this is done through sport and play. We feel the more we can remove children from screens and get them to engage with the physical world and community around them, the more it benefits society and gives children a greater knowledge of treating others with more care, empathy and understanding.

Ultimate Kids are having our Staff Wellbeing day on the 31st of March to merge with National Day of Unplugging. We are focusing on mental and physical wellbeing by disconnecting with our electronic devices and spending the day engaging in activities with our Ultimate Kids Team. For our unplugging day we plan to start our day off with a yoga session, this will be led by one of our wellbeing coaches who is a qualified yoga instructor Olivia. This is so we can start our day with some self-care, focusing on improving our mental and physical wellbeing. We then are going for a staff breakfast followed by a spa session, following on the theme of self-care and wellbeing. Later on in the day we’ve scheduled go-karting to pick up the adrenaline after a chilled morning, then to finish off the night we’ve planned a meal in a local restaurant. We can’t wait!

 

We believe that to teach wellbeing we must practise it in our personal lives, this is something that runs right through our company across every practise.

– Coach Kieran