From the moment we wake up to when we go to bed, screens are a constant presence. So you might think taking a break from screens would be an easy sell.
Researchers tried selling one. They signed up 467 people for a month-long experiment and gave them a code for an app that would block the internet on their phones for two weeks. Calls and texts would still work, and so would the laptop at home. About four in ten never used the code. Presumably they were busy.
If that stings a little, you're the audience for this one. Every list of the benefits of unplugging promises the same ten things, and hardly any of them says which have been tested. So here are the ten, checked. Some hold up well, some are thinner than they sound, and one result changes how you should take the break at all. Digital Overwhelm: Breaking Free from Phone Addiction and Information Overload, linked below, has what makes the phone so hard to put down. This article is about what you get when it stops.
The complaint is older than the screen. In 1881 George Beard published a book on America's "nervousness" and blamed modern civilisation, which he said was marked by five things: steam-power, the periodical press, the telegraph, the sciences, and the mental activity of women. He was wrong about at least one of those, and he still had a point about the telegraph.
The two weeks
Start with those 467 people, because it's the best test so far.
Among those who stayed with the survey, phone time in the first group fell from 314 minutes a day to 161, a gain of about two and a half hours. Mental health and well-being rose, and so did a measured ability to hold attention on a dull task. The authors compare the attention gain to being 10 years younger. No face cream has dared to claim as much. Overall, 91% improved on at least one of the three, and the gains were larger in those who left the block on for at least ten days.
Then the block ended, and phone time climbed back to 265 minutes within two weeks. Well-being and mental health stayed higher all the same.
Read that with one eye open. People knew what the study was about, so some of the mood gain may be expectation, as the authors say themselves. The attention score is harder to fake. And those who stayed to the end had started out with better attention and mental health than those who dropped out.
The best part is why it worked. The researchers looked at what people did with the time, and part of the improvement ran through it: they saw more of other people in person, they exercised more and they spent more time outdoors. Hold on to that, because it decides most of what follows.
1. Less stress
This is real, and it comes with a price tag.
When 138 Facebook users were split into two groups, one gave the site up for five days and one carried on. The ones who stopped had lower levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, in their saliva. They also had lower life satisfaction. The authors' reading is that the flood of social information is taxing, and that a break may ease it, at least in the short term. You feel less hunted, and you also miss your friends.
Email has a better deal to offer. 5 Ways to Harness Your Energy and Beat the Afternoon Slump has the 124 adults who limited it to three checks a day for a week and reported less stress than in their free-for-all week. No one had to give anything up except the checking. Keep the first hour after you wake up and the last one before bed free of it.
2. Better sleep
Mostly true, though the usual explanation is shakier than it sounds. Blue light gets the blame, and Digital Overwhelm has the test that complicates it: 167 young adults used their iPhones in the hour before bed, some with night mode, some without and some not using them at all, and their sleep didn't differ overall. It also has the readers whose sleep came later after a lit screen.
Work email may matter as well as the light. In two studies, using a phone for work at night went with worse sleep, and that went with feeling depleted the next morning and less engaged at work during the day. The computer and the television didn't explain it away.
Either way, the phone in bed gets you twice, because it's the light and it's also the thing you are still reading. Charge it outside the bedroom, and buy an so it has no excuse to come back. Read a book instead, or do something else that has an ending.
3. Sharper focus
This is one of the strongest of the ten, because attention was measured, not asked about. In the two-week test, people did a task built to catch the mind wandering, and the score improved.
Short breaks help too, as long as they're real breaks. Why Your Brain Sabotages You Every Time You Try to Start has the Pomodoro method and the students it was tested on. Twenty-five minutes on and five off won't do much if the five are spent on the phone. That is a shift change. Stand up and look out of a window.
4. Closer relationships
Have you ever been talking with someone who kept glancing at their phone? You know how much of them you had.
Digital Overwhelm has the restaurant test, with more than 300 diners and their friends or family, and what a phone on the table did to the evening. The longer test is the one with children. Fifty-one preteens spent five days at an overnight nature camp with no screens allowed, and 54 others carried on at school. By the end, the campers were better at reading emotions from faces and from silent video clips. It's a small study, and those children also spent the whole week in each other's company, which is rather the point.
Researchers also sat in fast food restaurants and quietly watched 55 adults eating with young children. Forty of them used a device during the meal.
So pile the phones up at meals, somewhere out of reach, and start with your own.
5. More movement
Nothing about a blocked phone makes your legs stronger. The two-week group moved more because they had the time, and that is all this benefit is. It depends entirely on you.
So decide now. A walk at lunch instead of the scroll is an easy trade, and the walk is the part doing the work.
6. A quieter mind
The lists call it mindfulness and self-reflection, and they make it sound pleasant. Why You're Always Tired: The Rest You're Missing, linked below, has the people left alone in a room with only their thoughts, who disliked it enough that many of them pressed a button to give themselves an electric shock. Your phone spares you from finding out which you would choose.
So don't be surprised if the first quiet ten minutes feel bad. That doesn't mean the break has failed. Sitting with a notebook, or with nothing at all, is a skill that has gone out of practice, and it comes back with use.
7. Tired eyes
This one has a good remedy and a bad promise. Why Your Eyes Are Getting Worse (And How to Improve Vision Naturally) has what screens do to blinking and the test of the 20-20-20 rule, which means resting your eyes on something 20 feet off for 20 seconds, once every 20 minutes. It helped while people kept it up, and within a week of stopping, the strain had returned.
So it's worth doing every day, like washing. It won't protect your vision in the long run, whatever you've read.
8. More creativity
Fifty-six adults on Outward Bound wilderness trips took a word puzzle in which three cues point to a hidden fourth: SAME, TENNIS and HEAD all go with MATCH. Those tested on the fourth morning of a trip scored 50% higher than those tested before they set out.
It's the most quoted finding in this field, and the authors are honest about the limit. They can't say whether the gain came from the nature, the lack of screens, or something else about days spent in the hills. Why You're Always Tired has a humbler version that costs no airfare: a dull task beforehand led to more creative answers, and the wandering mind seems to be why.
So let your mind wander on purpose. The next time you're in a queue, stay in the queue.
9. A digital detox
The word "detox" promises a reset button. Digital Overwhelm has the review that argues with it: across 21 papers and 3,625 people, the findings pointed in every direction, including people feeling worse. The two-week group had started climbing back within a fortnight.
A weekend away from all your devices, out in nature or deep in a hobby, is a very good weekend. Just don't expect it to fix the Monday after it.
Rules alone don't do it either. Across 30 English secondary schools and 1,227 pupils, those at schools that banned phones for fun spent about 40 minutes less on them during school hours. Across the whole day, there was no difference in phone use or in well-being. It's a snapshot rather than a trial, but it's what you'd expect if the hours just move.
10. A happier life
This one depends on who you are. In Denmark, 1,095 people were split in two, and half gave up Facebook for a week. Their life satisfaction and their mood both rose. The gains were larger in heavy users, in those who scrolled without taking part, and in those who tended to envy what they saw.
Digital Overwhelm has the longer version, four weeks off Facebook before an American election, with well-being up and less use afterwards. But remember the 138 users whose life satisfaction fell. If your feed is where your friends are, you may be happier with less of it and not with none. If it's mostly other people's holidays, you know what to do.
What goes in the gap
Go back through the ten and the same things keep turning up: people, movement, the outdoors. In the two-week test they explained part of the gain. At the camp and in the hills they were the whole setting, so the studies can't separate them from the missing screen. An empty evening is a fine start, but the phone is right there, and it won't stay empty for long.
So take the break the way you'd take a holiday, with a plan.
People. Pick someone you would see if you had the time. You have the time now, about two and a half hours of it. Something like a gives the evening a shape.
Your legs. A walk counts, especially outdoors, which is the third thing the two-week group did more of.
Your hands. Cooking, drawing, writing, mending, or anything else that leaves you with something to show for it.
Start small
You don't need a retreat. A day without it is less dramatic than it feels: when smartphone users gave up their phones for 24 hours, only craving changed, and their mood and anxiety did not. Expect the first evening to feel wrong. Craving was the one thing that changed in those 24 hours, so it's the one thing you should plan for. It doesn't mean anything has gone wrong.
The test's block was simple enough to copy, with no mobile internet on the phone, calls and texts still on, and a computer available for what you actually need. That also answers the fear of being unreachable, because anyone who needs you can still call. The phone's own settings can do most of that, and there are apps that make it harder to undo, or a for when you really mean it. Try one evening first, then a weekend, then see if you want the two weeks.
Do the boring part in advance. Write down the directions and the numbers you'll want, and print anything you'd normally pull up at the door. Tell the two or three people who might need you. A short message saves you an evening of wondering whether they tried.
In 2025 the city of Toyoake in Japan went as far as passing an ordinance on it, by 12 votes to 7. It asks residents to keep leisure use of phones and tablets to two hours a day. There is no penalty, and the mayor called it a guideline. One councillor who voted against it summed up her case in one sentence: "It's none of your business." Which is a fair point. Your two hours are yours to decide.
The aim isn't to live without the thing. It's to be the one who decides when you pick it up.
Tonight, write down what you'd do with two free hours. Then switch off your phone's internet after dinner and do the first thing on the list.
Still reaching for it without thinking? Digital Overwhelm: Breaking Free from Phone Addiction and Information Overload — why you reach, how to make the phone duller and further away, your eyes and your sleep, the news, and the people in the room.
Tired even when the screens are off? Why You're Always Tired: The Rest You're Missing — the waking rest that isn't sleep, why boredom pays, and the nap that works.
Know someone who would pick the electric shock over an hour without their phone? Send them this, and hide the button.
Disclaimer: This article is general information. For advice about your own health, talk to a qualified health professional.
Affiliate Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, All For Life earns from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. We only link to products we would recommend without the commission.
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