In the third season of the hit TV show The White Lotus, the protagonists arrive at an exclusive resort where guests are asked to turn off and turn over their phones; that is, to engage in a digital ‘detox’. For many of us, cutting ourselves off from our devices completely might seem like an extraordinary thing to do. But even outside the fictional world of The White Lotus, the idea of taking a break from technology to ‘reset’ the brain has been gaining popularity. People can now detox from technology by signing up for fancy weekend retreats or week-long getaways, or by downloading a growing number of apps that ironically claim to help you quit other apps. It’s reasonable to wonder: does digital detoxing actually work, or is it simply another health trend that distracts us from our real problems?
Before we answer that question, let’s define what a digital detox is. To most people, it likely means giving up all digital technology for some period of time. But it can also include partial abstention from specific digital technologies or features, such as giving up social media, or a specific overused app, or even just silencing notifications. There are various reasons someone might have for engaging in a digital detox, but people seem to be at least partly motivated by a desire to break bad habits, reclaim control over their attention, and spend less time in front of a screen and more time engaging in more productive activities.
The growing demand for digital detoxes does not necessarily mean that they work. To be sure, we can find plenty of positive testimonials online – from people giving five-star reviews to a digital detox app to others swearing by the tech-free retreat they attended. While such anecdotal evidence can be persuasive, it can also be biased. For example, a person who spent a lot of money on a digital detox intervention might be motivated to think it was money well spent. To examine whether digital detoxing helps, and which approaches are really worth our time and money, we need scientific evidence, preferably based on well-controlled experimental studies. So, what do those tell us?
On the basic question of whether digital detoxes work, the simple answer is: ‘Yes, they can.’ While more evidence is needed, some experimental studies now show that taking a break from social media can have positive effects on mental health. Similarly, one study has shown that reducing the number and frequency of notifications can reduce stress and boost wellbeing. And a handful of studies have identified some benefits of reducing or completely giving up the use of smartphones for a period of time. Notably, the evidence for these effects comes from prospective field experiments, in which participants are randomly assigned either to some kind of digital detox or to a control condition. These types of studies are considered the gold standard for providing evidence that an intervention has genuine effects.
Given these promising results, it is noteworthy that there is no evidence that brief and total digital detoxes work. Thus, it’s not clear that no-technology weekend retreats are worth the money and hype. In most of the research, people experience benefits from simply giving up a specific app or just reducing their phone use rather than completely giving up all digital devices. These partial detoxes last anywhere from one week to about a month. Importantly, the effects seem to be more reliable when people make a change for two or more weeks. (The studies that have found no benefits tend to be those where digital detoxing is practised for less than a week.)
When spending time with other people, you can’t go wrong with taking a break from your phone
Another reason to be sceptical of fancy digital-detox weekends is that partially reducing technology use seems to have similar, if not stronger, effects compared with complete abstinence. For example, in one large study in Germany, people assigned to reduce their smartphone use to one hour a day for a week experienced similar improvements in wellbeing and mental health as people assigned to completely give up using their phones. Those benefits also persisted for longer in the reduction-only group, perhaps because a reduction in use is easier to maintain than complete abstinence.
In short, the existing evidence suggests that rather than completely abstaining from tech use for a weekend, smaller changes in digital screen time – giving up a problematic app, reducing daily phone use – might be a more productive and sustainable way to practise digital detoxing. That being said, when you’re spending time with other people, you can’t really go wrong with taking a break from your phone. Whether it’s friends sharing a meal or parents visiting a museum with their kids, my colleagues and I have found that people engaging in activities together feel better when they set their phones aside.
Of course, a particular intervention (such as a daily limit on phone use) that is effective on average might not be effective for every individual. In other words, if you’re interested in a digital detox, you might want to design your own version that works for you. Before you can do that, it would be helpful to understand why and how digital detoxes work to improve wellbeing.
My colleagues and I recently examined this question in a field experiment that I like to call the ‘dumbphone study’. We randomly assigned half the participants to block their mobile internet for two weeks and the other half to use their phones as they normally would. Specifically, we used an app called Freedom, which prevents people from accessing the internet on their phones. With smartphones thus turned into old-fashioned ‘dumbphones’, people were able to call and text but not do much else. They could still access the internet on their other devices, such as computers and laptops.
At the end of the two weeks, people assigned to the dumbphone condition reported significant improvements in subjective wellbeing and in their mental health (based on a composite of anxiety and depression symptoms, anger, and personality functioning) compared with the other participants.
The improvement was comparable with reversing 10 years of cognitive decline
What was driving these effects? First, removing the internet from people’s phones reduced the overall amount of digital media they consumed. This reduction in and of itself drove some of the positive effects on wellbeing – but not all of them. A second factor had to do with time. Essentially, people spent less time on their phones, freeing up about 2.5 hours per day for other activities, such as reading or spending time outdoors. The final factor had to do with attention: with no internet on their phones, people felt less distracted. This presumably allowed them to enjoy whatever they were doing more, further enhancing their wellbeing.
Beyond the effects on subjective feelings of wellness and attention, we found that, after two weeks in the dumbphone condition, people performed better in a computer task designed to objectively measure the ability to sustain attention. This task is boring by design: it involves having to press the space bar when a picture of a mountain flashes on the screen and not press it otherwise – over and over again. As you can imagine, people with ADHD perform worse on this task, and performance declines with age. The improvement we observed in participants in the dumbphone condition was substantial, comparable with what you’d expect if you reversed about 10 years of cognitive decline.
We can only speculate about how and why dumbphones improved people’s ability to pay attention, but one possibility is that most everyday tasks are no match for the easy and constant stimulation available on our phones. When that easy source of dopamine is restricted, someone might gradually rediscover their ability to derive pleasure from activities that require effort and sustained attention.
It seems, then, that when adopting a digital detox practice, you need to be thinking about three things. First, you need to decide which of the content you consume is ‘toxic’ for your wellbeing – eg, a certain social media app where you tend to doomscroll – and avoid or reduce it. Second, you should replace at least part of this toxic content with non-digital activities that you know make you happy, whether it’s socialising, reading, exercising or other hobbies. Finally, you need to make sure that the change you introduce limits the distractions from your phone, so that you and those around you can reap the full benefits of those activities.
In the dumbphone study, we used an app to help participants keep the internet off their phones. There are many such apps: some allow you to grow a virtual plant the longer you stick to your digital detox plan, while others prompt you to reflect every time you open an app, or add social pressure by informing a friend that you’re trying to break your detox. Unfortunately, there is little research on the effectiveness of these consumer apps. But, as a rule of thumb, the best app for you will be an app that you actually use. For example, an app that blocks mobile internet might be able to improve your ability to concentrate (as we saw in the dumbphone study), but only if you are able to use that feature for more than a day or two. If not, a less restrictive feature, like blocking a single app, might work better.
Keep in mind that you do not need to be permanently detoxing to reap the benefits. Research suggests that practising digital detoxing for as little as a week might have benefits for months afterward. Pick a digital detox practice, resolve to practise it for a meaningful period of at least a week or two, and then decide whether you want to continue for longer or try something else.
In a world that is increasingly dependent on digital technology, reducing the burden on users will likely require a much more fundamental appreciation of the preciousness of our time and attention. It will also require corresponding changes in the form of thoughtful policies and technology design. For the time being, though, digital detox practices offer a degree of self-protection. They are more than just a fad: as we’ve seen, they can actually improve wellbeing, reduce stress, and even spruce up one’s ability to sustain attention. And while spending a retreat with friends and without screens is likely good for wellbeing, research suggests that there are much easier and cheaper ways to practise digital detoxing in our daily lives.
