”For 14 days, participants used a commercially available app, Freedom, to block internet access on their phones. They were still allowed calls and text messages, essentially turning a smartphone into a dumb phone.
Their time online decreased from 314 minutes to 161 minutes, and by the end of the period the participants had improvements in sustained attention, mental health as well as self-reported well-being.
The improvement in sustained attention was about the same magnitude as 10 years of age-related decline, the researchers noted, and the effect of the intervention on depression symptoms was larger than antidepressants and similar to that of cognitive behavioral therapy.
But two things were even more mind-blowing to Castelo and Kushlev, a co-author of the study: Even those people who cheated and broke the rules after a few days seemed to have positive effects from the break; and in follow-up reports after the two weeks, many people reported the positive effects lingered.
’So you don’t have to necessarily restrict yourself forever. Even taking a partial digital detox, even for a few days, seems to work,’ Kushlev said.”
https://archive.ph/Zrt6V
🔗 Originally posted on Akkoma
