Supporting digital wellness and wellbeing

Elements of digital life, such as information overload, distraction, privacy concerns, and interpersonal interactions, can significantly affect an individual’s well-being. Cultivating digital wellness involves the ability to navigate these aspects of digital life and to make mindful decisions related to time spent, account settings, sharing, and more. Education in support of digital wellness and well-being is an important and growing feature of wellness-related initiatives on college and university campuses. Academic libraries can be key partners in these kinds of programs.

This chapter shares approaches for librarians looking to support digital well-being. Following a review of the literature on digital wellness and college students, the author details a case study of two pilot approaches to digital wellness support at the University Libraries at Virginia Tech: contributing to a large campus-wide event and developing cocurricular workshops. Connecting relevant outreach and instructional programs to digital well-being, and framing them in wellness terms, offered librarians new opportunities to build partnerships across campus and to connect with students.