Mind · 7 minute read

All you wanted was the weather. Twenty minutes later you know a lot about a stranger’s kitchen renovation and still have no idea if you need a jacket. So a group of researchers took the internet off people’s phones for two weeks to see what would happen.

You can’t just chuck this thing in a drawer. The school app lives on it, so do the bank, the group chat and the photos of your kids. In Australia, 92% of adults use the internet on their phone every day, and we average nearly three hours a day online that way. You probably don’t need telling. You’ve seen your own screen time report and quickly closed it.

Plenty of research links heavy phone use with feeling worse, but nobody could tell which came first. Maybe the phone makes you miserable, or maybe miserable people scroll. The only way to find out is to take the phone away and see what happens.

What the experiment involved

The researchers randomly split 467 adults into two groups, then asked them to install an app on their iPhones that blocked all internet on the phone, wifi included. Calls and texts still worked, and laptops were fine. For two weeks they had, more or less, a phone from 2005 with a nicer camera.

One group did it straight away. The other carried on as usual for two weeks and then took their turn, which gave the researchers something to compare against. Everyone did surveys along the way, and an attention test where you have to keep pressing a button for five minutes without drifting off.

What changed

Among the people in the blocked group who sent in their screen time, it dropped from 314 minutes a day to 161. That’s about two and a half hours handed back to you, every single day. Once the block ended it crept back up to 265.

Over the fortnight, 75% of the blocked group felt better about their lives. So did 47% of the people who changed nothing, because some of that is just life. The gap between them is the real result.

Attention improved too, though not clearly more than in the group who hadn’t started. People reckoned they slept about 17 minutes longer a night, and most of us would take that. When the internet came back they slipped a bit, but still felt better than when they’d started.

What people did with the time

People drifted towards the good stuff. They saw friends in person, exercised, got outside, picked up hobbies and read books, and that seems to be part of why they felt better.

So maybe the phone’s biggest crime is what it pushes out. An evening on the couch with your thumb moving isn’t terrible in itself. You’ve just missed the walk, the phone call to your sister and the early night you could have had instead.

Most people couldn’t stick to it

Only about a quarter of people kept the block going for at least 10 of the 14 days. Plenty never got it set up at all, which will sound familiar to anyone who’s ever downloaded a meditation app. The results still count the ones who gave up, as long as they finished the surveys, and the people who kept going did a little better again.

There are a few more reasons not to get carried away. These were volunteers, mostly keen to cut back, with an average age of 32. They knew what was being tested, so hoping to feel better could explain part of it. We also don’t know what it’d look like for a mum of three who needs the school app at 3 o’clock.

It also seems to matter how you do it. Taking a week or so off social media made no difference to people’s mood on average across 10 studies, so blocking the whole phone may work differently from a short break from your feed.

How to try a smaller version

The researchers think a gentler version might be enough, so pick one of these for a fortnight and see how you feel.

Get your notifications in batches. Three batches a day improved attention and mood in a two-week trial of 237 people, and iPhones have a Scheduled Summary setting that does it for you. Let calls and messages from the people you care about through, though. The group who turned everything off felt more anxious, and you’ll want to know if your mum rings.

Make the first few seconds harder. Move your most-opened apps off the home screen, or log out after you’ve used them. In one study of 280 users, an app that paused them for 10 seconds and offered a way out before opening apps they’d chosen cut openings by 57%. There was no comparison group and one of the authors made the app, so take that number lightly, but a small pause is an easy thing to try.

Put it down before bed. Thirty minutes without your phone before lights out helped students with poor sleep drop off about 12 minutes faster in one small study. A cheap alarm clock solves the problem if waking you up is the phone’s only excuse for being in the bedroom.

Have something else to reach for. Since part of the benefit seems to come from what fills the gap, set that up first. Leave a book on the couch, keep your walking shoes by the door, or make a standing plan with a friend. An empty hour gets filled with the phone.

The takeaway

More people felt better when they blocked mobile internet for two weeks than when they changed nothing, and what they did instead seems to be part of why. You don’t have to go that far. Pick one small rule for a fortnight, and put something you like in the space it opens up.