Our brains have a limited ability to focus. So distractions can be a powerful tool for reducing the impact of painful or negative experiences.For example, children are notoriously anxious before surgery. And engaging in video games at that moment helps them direct their attention away from their fear and towards the challenge of the game.

Distractions Can Ease Pain

<ul><li>Distractions can be used to control our urges and impulses: certain games like Tetris can help reduce cravings for fatty foods and even addictive drugs.</li><li>Distractions can help us stay fit: taking our minds off the pain of physical exercise, with music or television, can improve performance and endurance.</li><li>Digital distractions and personal technology can also help us develop our ability to take on challenges in the future and build up our courage.</li></ul>

Distractions Can Make Us Better

Whether personal technology distractions are a force for good depends on why and how we use them.Identifying why and how you engage with personal technology may be the difference between healthy and destructive behavior: Do you play to escape your real life, or do you play to make your real life better?

When Distractions Are Destructive

<div><div>Clearly, distractions can help us deal with pain and build our courage to tackle future challenges. However, don’t distractions pull us away from our priorities? What about the many products and services, like video games and social media sites, designed to be so good we want to use them all the time? Sometimes we have trouble limiting their use and find ourselves sucked into distractions.Whether personal technology distractions are a force for good, McGonigal explains, depends on why and how we use them. “Do you play to escape your real life, or do you play to make your real life better?”McGonigal describes two modes for how we engage with distracting activities: self-suppression and self-expansion.Self-suppression is using distractions to avoid negative experiences; while self-expansion is using distractions to promote positive ones. Sounds simple enough, but McGonigal warns that at times, it is hard to tell the difference between the two. The same activity could be expansive for one person and suppressive for another. It all depends on why the person is engaging in the distraction and for how long.How can you tell if a distraction is good or bad for you? McGonigal suggests first asking yourself, “Why am I doing this?” If your response is to avoid a negative feeling such as “Because work is boring,” or “I don’t want to deal with anything right now,” the distraction may be self-suppressive.Of course in some instances, such as burn victims or children about to go into surgery, distractions can be an effective coping strategy. However, these are justified in that the distractions are used as a temporary solution. Once the patient is healed physically, they no longer require the escape from pain.However, problems can arise when distractions become a permanent escape from an uncomfortable reality. McGonigal warns of solutions that don’t build our ability to deal with pain in the future. Temporary distractions used for too long may backfire because, “Over time self-suppression actually diminishes our sense of self-efficacy … We no longer see ourselves as people who can effectively solve our own problems.” When we rely on pain-relieving distractions, be it personal technology, drugs, or other escapes, we may never build our capacity to deal with a painful situation, either physical or psychological.In contrast, self-expansive distractions involve achieving goals, building skills, or attaining new knowledge that can be used over the long-term. These distractions help us improve ourselves and can build self-efficacy.For example, answers to the question “Why am I doing this?” that sound like, “I want to learn a new language,” “I want to build a bigger career network,” “I want to know more about my health,” or “I want to improve my well-being,” are the kind of answers that a self-expansive technology can help with. Using distractions with an expansive mindset builds strength, while using them with a suppressive one simply shields us from the pain we are avoiding.Identifying why and how you engage with personal technology may be the difference between healthy and destructive behavior. Take a look at your favorite digital distractions — social media, video games, puzzles, television shows, podcasts, news, and spectator sports — and ask yourself whether you are using them as tools to build strength, skills, knowledge, and self-efficacy for the future or for temporary escape from an uncomfortable reality. If it’s the latter, you may want to reconsider the role these distractions play in your life. If the pain you’re escaping is permanent, no distraction will ever heal it. You must either learn new coping strategies or fundamentally fix what is broken.When we think about personal technology distractions, we must ensure they continue to serve us. Whether it is helping us get through a difficult <a>time in our lives</a>, or helping us build strength and perseverance for the long-term, continually asking “why am I doing this?” can help make sure we’re getting the most out of our distractions.</div></div>

Is distraction a good thing? Research shows that some games can redirect our attention from craving triggers and reduce cravings for addictive drugs.

When Distraction is a Good Thing

Distractions Can Ease Pain

Distractions Can Make Us Better

When Distractions Are Destructive

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