Examining Our Digital Lives: Technology, Health, and Society

A Discovery Core Experience

This course may be taken either as BCORE 117 (Arts & Humanities) or as BCORE 115 (Social Sciences). This course also meets the DIVERSITY graduation requirement.

What will I learn?

How is your digital life shaping your health, your relationships, and your sense of self? This course takes a critical look at the intersection of technology, society, and well-being — examining how the digital technologies we use, and our relationship to them, affect our mental and physical health, our information channels, our social connections, and our behaviors.

We will explore an array of topics, such as:

  • Digital wellness, your use of technology, and the digital determinants of health
  • Digital equity and algorithms of exclusion
  • Health mis- and disinformation
  • Technology design, the attention economy, data privacy and surveillance
  • A.I. and its impact on individual, community, and global health
  • The healing effects of nature on the brain
  • The science of social connection and its relationship to our health

We will draw on scientific research, journalism, narratives, fiction, podcasts, documentaries, scholars and practitioners, as well as your own lived experience to understand both the individual and structural forces shaping our digital lives. And we will envision what it would look like for technology to be designed for human flourishing rather than profit.

This course operates as a community of inquiry. You will reflect on the readings and issues individually and collectively each week through journaling, connect with classmates through dialogue and shared experiences, and develop lasting skills for critical digital literacy, health, and well-being.

Course objectives

By the end of this course, students will be able to:

  • Analyze how digital technologies and platform design shape mental health, social connection, and information environments.
  • Apply the digital determinants of health and a socio-ecological framework to identify who benefits from, and who is excluded by, current technology systems.
  • Explain the neuroscience of attention, dopamine, and habit formation, and connect it to personal technology-use patterns.
  • Evaluate health-related claims and media using lateral reading and other critical information-literacy strategies.
  • Describe the relationship between nature, social connection, and cognitive and emotional well-being.
  • Reflect critically, through structured self-audit and journaling, on personal digital habits and develop an intentional, sustainable plan for a healthier relationship with technology.
  • Articulate a vision for what technology designed for human flourishing, rather than profit, could look like.
  • Create a video, zine, or children’s story to a campaign relating to digital wellness.

What Will We Be Doing?

Topics and activities include:

  • Assessing our relationship with technology — examining your own screen time data, app habits, and emotional responses to your devices through structured self-audits and reflection.
  • Screen time and the brain — exploring the neuroscience of Dopamine, habit loops, attention, and what compulsive phone use is actually doing to our cognitive health.
  • Nature and the brain — connecting the research on Attention Restoration Theory and green space to a hands-on outdoor experience where you step away from screens and observe what happens in your own mind and body.
  • Misinformation and disinformation — building practical skills for evaluating health claims, influencer culture, and factors that contribute to the spread of mis/disinformation.
  • Social media and self-identity — examining our digital footprint and identity and how social media platforms shape body image, creativity, self-expression, and our sense of beauty and worth.
  • Social connection as a determinant of health — Analyzing the science behind social connection as a basic human need, how technology is effecting it, and strategies and policies globally that improve it.
  • The Offline Club — participating in a phone-free social gathering modeled on the international offline movement, where we put down our devices and connect with each other in ways that improve our social connection and our cognitive health

Why should I take this course?

Economics, education, culture, identity, politics, and systems all shape our digital lives in ways that most of us have never been asked to examine. We will go beyond individual factors to critically examine the larger forces at play. Who profits from your attention? Who is left out of the digital world entirely? Whose experiences are centered in technology design, and whose are ignored or exploited?

This course will help you sharpen your critical thinking skills and increase your knowledge about digital determinants of health and socio-ecological factors that impact our digital lives.

But above all, this class is about YOU. You’ll take a deeper dive into your own digital life: your habits, your screen time, your social media feeds and information channels, and your relationship with your devices, and develop practical strategies for using technology in ways that enhance your relationship with it.

Jody Early, PhD, MS, MCHES® (she/her)

School of Nursing and Health Studies

About Dr. Early

Dr. Jody Early is a Professor in the School of Nursing and Health Studies at the University of Washington Bothell and a Faculty Affiliate in the Center for an Informed Public, Center for Communication Difference and Equity, and the Pacific Northwest Agriculture Safety and Health (PNASH) Center at UW Seattle. Her scholarship and public health praxis take a critical, equity-centered approach to improving the social, political, economic, and structural determinants of health. She uses principles of community-based participatory research (CBPR) to co-develop prevention-focused and culturally responsive health programs and communication. She is principal investigator and co-director of the programs, Mental Health Matters of Washington and ¡Basta!: Preventing Sexual Harassment in Agriculture.  Professor Early’s research also examines the link between digital equity and health, societal impacts of generative A.I., and the effectiveness of tailored digital strategies and pedagogy in public health, healthcare, and higher education.

Professor Early brings to this course not only her scholarly expertise but her own ongoing, imperfect, and personal practice of trying to pay attention to what actually matters.

“This is your life. What do you want to pay attention to?” — Catherine Price, How to Break Up with Your Phone (2025)

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