The growing demand for digital detoxes does not necessarily mean that they work. To be sure, we can find plenty of positive testimonials online \u2013 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?<\/p>\n
On the basic question of whether digital detoxes work, the simple answer is: \u2018Yes, they can.\u2019 While more evidence is needed, some experimental studies<\/a> now show that taking a break from social media can have positive effects on mental health. Similarly, one study<\/a> 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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n Given these promising results, it is noteworthy that there is no evidence that brief and total digital detoxes work. Thus, it\u2019s 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.)<\/p>\n When spending time with other people, you can\u2019t go wrong with taking a break from your phone<\/p>\n 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<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n In short, the existing evidence suggests that rather than completely abstaining from tech use for a weekend, smaller changes in digital screen time \u2013 giving up a problematic app, reducing daily phone use \u2013 might be a more productive and sustainable way to practise digital detoxing. That being said, when you\u2019re spending time with other people, you can\u2019t really go wrong with taking a break from your phone. Whether it\u2019s friends<\/a> sharing a meal or parents<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n 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\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n My colleagues and I recently examined<\/a> this question in a field experiment that I like to call the \u2018dumbphone study\u2019. 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 \u2018dumbphones\u2019, 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n The improvement was comparable with reversing 10 years of cognitive decline<\/p>\n What was driving these effects? First, removing the internet from people\u2019s phones reduced the overall amount of digital media they consumed. This reduction in and of itself drove some of the positive effects on wellbeing \u2013 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<\/a>. This presumably allowed them to enjoy whatever they were doing more, further enhancing their wellbeing.<\/p>\n Nick Kabrel<\/p>\n Save Paul Kudlow, Karline Treurnicht Naylor & Elia Abi-Jaoude<\/p>\n Save Rhea Tibrewala<\/p>\n![\"Photo](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1766672915_67_v1-final-gettyimages-2216579148.jpg\"\/)
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