In today's digital landscape, individuals must protect themselves from the overwhelming flood of content that is constantly pushed to them online. Many websites, social media platforms, and apps are designed to capture and retain users' attention as long as possible, prioritizing engagement over well-being. They use algorithms to promote sensationalist, misleading, or addictive content that can skew perceptions, create echo chambers, and impact mental health negatively. This content often serves the interests of advertisers, influencers, or tech companies rather than the users, making it essential for people to be vigilant, critically assess what they consume, and set healthy boundaries to safeguard their mental and emotional well-being.

Almost every app has a negative effect, sometimes with very little benefit.

• TikTok: Encourages highly addictive behaviors through endless scrolling of short videos, significantly diminishing attention spans and promoting surface-level content over depth and quality, especially affecting young users.
• Instagram: Promotes unrealistic beauty and lifestyle standards, fostering a culture of comparison and validation-seeking that leads to anxiety, depression, and low self-esteem, particularly among teenagers and young adults.
• Twitter (now X): Amplifies toxic discourse, outrage, and misinformation to drive engagement, contributing to a divisive, hostile, and often harmful online environment.
• Facebook: Uses algorithms to promote sensationalist content and divisive posts, creating echo chambers and fostering political and social polarization among users.
• YouTube: The “shorts” feature encourages mindless scrolling and distraction, moving users away from valuable, long-form educational content and promoting short, low-value videos.
• Snapchat: Fosters a culture of instant gratification and social comparison with streaks, filters, and location-sharing features, which can lead to privacy concerns and social anxiety among younger users.
• WhatsApp: Although widely used for communication, it is often exploited for the rapid spread of misinformation and fake news in private and unmoderated groups, posing a risk to public discourse and information reliability.

Theses are some questions you may have about digital well being:

How to make Twitter less toxic?

On the web you can use the Arc Boost feature. It allows to simplify websites including Twitter. It helps a bit.

To get rid of troll and haters, just mute them. Twitter power user mute more than 10k peoples. No need to block, just mute everyone that is not adding anything to the conversation.

You can mute words too. This is very usefull is you don’t want to be poluted by all the Trump or Musk trolls.

How to deactivate YouTube Short?

On the web you can use the Arc Boost feature. It allows to simplify websites including YT. Using this feature you can remove the shorts.

On mobile you can use NewPipe that you can download from NewPipe github.

How to spend less time on your phone?

Opal seems to be a good solution for iphone.

AppBlock seems to be a good solution for Android

Are feature-phones worth it?

What To say to a teenager who spend too much time on TikTok?

Where to find ressources to help children and teenager manage risks associated with their digital life?