Digital Hygiene — The New Requirement of the Times

Sewage on the Street

Hygiene has played a crucial role in people’s lives throughout human history. Implementing hygiene norms and standards has played a crucial role in enhancing living standards and life expectancy. About 200 years ago, when sewage flowed into European streets from windows, life expectancy was relatively low, around 40-50 years by today’s standards. However, the basic concept of having designated waste disposal areas led to a significant improvement in public health.

Hand washing, brushing teeth, and bathing have greatly improved health and quality of life. In the past, people rarely washed themselves, even nobility. Bodies could smell unpleasant. The perfume was reportedly first used to hide body odors.

Simple hygiene habits like washing hands, and teeth and bathing more regularly have contributed to major health and lifestyle advances over time. Neglecting cleanliness in the past likely led to more sickness and poorer overall well-being. Regular cleansing both inside and out has allowed people to live fuller, healthier lives.

Today, another major area of hygiene is emerging — cyber hygiene. In our digital age, where online services abound, it is vital to prioritize the mental and physical well-being of people.

What is digital health today?

A person’s digital literacy is their capacity to manage their interaction with the digital realm. Let’s be honest, giving up the familiar digital world isn’t likely or necessary. It’s important to learn how to use its opportunities wisely without letting it replace real-life experiences.

This is not easy — the same social networks were developed with the experience of gambling and casinos in mind, and this is one of the reasons why people become addicted to them.

Cyber hygiene practices are extremely important, and this is because of the following:

• A person literate in this regard gets a lot of free time for real development;
• Improper or unwise use of related technologies, can lead to serious material and reputational losses;
• Mental disorders. The human mind is sensitive, and being exposed to too much low-quality information can lead to various psychological problems and mental disorders.

Basic cyber security hygiene means understanding digital tools, limiting time online, sorting useful from unsafe content, and safeguarding personal and valuable information.

Where to Start

The digital world has many tools like mobile devices, apps, and services such as email and cloud storage, online banking, YouTube, Steam, educational portals, remote work, online client programs, cryptocurrency mining, and more. This vast world offers opportunities but also comes with risks.

To take advantage of it and understand where such dangers may lie, scammers, dubious gurus with online courses on “successful success”, and applications that may have spyware and viruses embedded in them, you need to take care of digital hygiene to reduce the risk falling the victim.

The experiences of people being addicted to slot machines, computer games, social networks, and the increasing cases of internet fraud and cybercrime emphasize the need to be cautious in the digital world. It cannot be emphasized enough how important it is to use it carefully.

Why Digital Hygiene is Important

The digital world makes no less demands on hygiene than the real physical world. If here it is enough to eat an unwashed apple and you can spend several days in bed with stomach pains, in the virtual world one program downloaded from a dubious website is enough to lose control over all personal information and sometimes even your bank account. Therefore, if we talk about the concept of “digital hygiene”, its importance cannot be overemphasized.

Ignoring this issue provokes problems for hundreds of millions of people today. This is dependence on their virtual self in social networks, degradation of personality due to loss of time and lack of useful development, consequences of a “dirty” digital footprint left behind, loss of reputation due to the appearance of stolen personal information online, etc. Good cyber hygiene can get rid of all this and open the door to a full-fledged real life in the physical world.

So far, we have considered very superficially what digital hygiene is and its importance, to study the issue more deeply, more information will be needed. We will publish a course of articles on this topic on our blog, which will cover in detail all the main aspects of digital hygiene, its types, sections, and methods.

With us, you will learn in detail what cyber hygiene is, why it is important, and how to apply it in real life. Stay tuned for more updates and explore this crucial issue in detail, making your life much smarter and better!