this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
154 points (95.8% liked)

Technology

63082 readers
3858 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
154
When You Block the Internet on Your Phone, Something Astonishing Happens Mentally (futurism.com)
submitted 14 hours ago by whydudothatdrcrane@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.world
10 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

A specialized iPhone app was used to block internet access, recording any time that the feature was disabled.

In numbers, nearly all the participants — 91 percent — improved on at least one of the three outcomes, while around three-quarters reported better mental health by the end.

The findings even suggest that the intervention had a stronger effect on depression symptoms than antidepressants, and was roughly on par with cognitive behavioral therapy.

What's driving all this? Ward suggests that the simplest explanation is that the experiment forced participants to spend more time doing fulfilling things in the real world.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] gnome@programming.dev 59 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Anecdotal, but I can see this. Last year, I took a 2-3 months off of what I now call recreational internet use (e.g. keeping up with the news, forums, etc.), because my mental health and cognitive abilities have deteriorated a lot. The result wasn't just improved mood but also regaining cognitive skills that I thought I had lost forever. Brain fog also lessened. A year later now, and the improvements are stable and still there, even though I do use the internet recreationally again. It's still not where I used to be before, but it's a work-in-progress anyway.

[–] ashenone@lemmy.ml 18 points 13 hours ago

I have a very similar experience as you, using the internet less as recreation and more as a tool definitely helped my mental health

[–] antonim@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

How did you even do that, assuming you didn't prevent your usage of computers and smartphones altogether? Just sheer willpower?

[–] gnome@programming.dev 6 points 11 hours ago

Yeah, it was prevention - to my knowledge there wasn't a comparable internet-blocking feature in Android at the time. I have a dumb phone from way back that I switched to, and I shut off my smartphone. For desktop, it was primarily site blocking extensions like Block Site, and willpower to develop a habit. I'd still use the internet for things like banking and - since I was re-studying CLRS - SO and reference collections, but I trained myself to a hard cutoff of not using it besides the purposes I switch it back on for. The rest is on paper: my books are physically with me or loaded on an e-reader.

I should clarify that I had taken last year off to recover from burnout, and I was freelancing. I think that helped a lot with being able to detach for that long.