The Antidote To Digital Fatigue

A skills programme aimed at improving visual intelligence in sports is now helping business people think better on their feet.

- Glenneis Kriel

The digital evolution in combination with the rise in social media platforms has resulted in many people wandering aimlessly from one social media platform to another. These meaningless searches result in a loss of productive hours and fragmentation of verbal communication skills. It is also having a negative impact on visual performance skills, according to Dr Sherylle Calder, mastermind behind the visual intelligence training platform, EyeGym.com.

“We are living in the age of distraction, where continuous exposure to the internet on smartphones is negatively affecting people’s visual motor skills. Our work over the past five to six years has found it to result in a drastic decline in athletic ability as well as children’s reading and concentration skills. It also affects business, but that is more difficult to measure,” Calder explains.

Digital fatigue, she says, has the same impact as when people retired and stopped being involved in everyday activities, like driving or shopping: “Visual fitness deteriorates over time [and] this can cause all kinds of problems, such as poor memory and slower responding times, amongst others.”

Calder defines visual intelligence as the speed with which you see, interpret, decide and act. “The enhancement of visual intelligence results in faster and smarter decision-making, an improvement in concentration, attention to detail, comprehension and memory; and also in response times, coordination, peripheral and spatial awareness.”

The solution