"Going phone-free for a week was harder than going sober for a year: 3 lessons I learnt the hard way"

My face is glowing! But not in good way. It's one in the morning and my alarm will sound at six for work, but I just cannot. Stop. Scrolling. My screen hops from devastating images of war to styling tips, plunging me into an entirely different world to the one my boyfriend, who is sleeping soundly beside me, is in. Although I know switching my mobile on to airplane mode and going to sleep is best for my (physical and mental) health, it’s easier said than done. As famed statistician Edward Tufte once said, ‘There are only two industries that refer to their customers as “users”: illegal drugs and software.’ Sleep isn’t the only thing I – and probably you – sacrifice when it comes to technology. As Instagram celebrates its 15th birthday, it’s reported that we now spend over 30% of our waking lives on our smartphones. Over half of us can’t get through dinner without picking it up and it’s damaging not only our social interactions, but also our memory and attention spans, with screen focus times dropping from 2.5 minutes in the early 2000s to just 47 seconds today. For others (women in particular), phone overuse can spark body-image issues and life-comparison spirals. Critical skills, such as map-reading and nuanced debate and thought, are also at risk of becoming extinct, in favour of apps, memes and tribalism in social media comments. I want out. Or at least an improvement. Still, the idea of stopping cold is daunting. It feels more momentous than even my decision to stop drinking alcohol back in 2020, after waking up bruised following yet another disastrous night out. Those 15 months of being alcohol- free, thankfully, were the tonic needed to reset my relationship with booze for good and transform me into a mindful drinker. Four years later, hangovers no longer feature in my life whatsoever. But when it comes to phone usage, hitting rock bottom in order to reset your habits feels a far more nebulous concept. Not least because nearly half of our smartphone use is driven by a need to regulate our emotions and distract ourselves from the uncomfortable ones; we’re unconsciously stuck. Plus, so many aspects of our lives are wrapped up in devices now, from banking to dating. After a few weeks of procrastinating, I take the plunge, sending my loved ones an ‘out of office’ via WhatsApp, along with my email address, committing to being phoneless for seven full days. Offline and feeling fine My heart thumps as I rotate the paper map in my hands, unsure if I’m even holding it the right way round. Buildings I’ve walked past endlessly – but have never properly taken notice of before – loom overhead as I search for the site of a chronically online friend’s birthday brunch. When I told her I’d be travelling analogue, she was emphatic that I wouldn’t make it. Normally, this walk from the Tube station to a new restaurant would barely register. I’d be on auto-pilot following whatever Google dictated, while WhatsApping pals an ETA. But two days into my phone-free week, it’s different. During a slow morning (so much extra time without Vinted!), I finished a book – Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, about how morally bankrupt she feels Facebook is (highly recommend) – and started another. Once at the restaurant, I feel lighter. The change is stark, and I’ve remembered my dreams for the first time in forever. A sign of better sleep? For Jessica Hill, therapy programme manager at Castle Craig rehab centre, it’s legitimate to talk about smartphone ‘addiction’ in the same way we would a shopping or gambling problem. And, for some, psychological and physiological withdrawal can be a thing. Someone in an unhealthy relationship with their device might feel cranky, irritable and like they can’t manage their emotions alone, Hill explains, ‘[When assessing], we ask, “Is it impacting how you function? Are you compulsively checking your phone so much you can’t work? Does it impact your ability to engage with life in a healthy way?”’ Phone confiscation, she adds, is one of the most challenging aspects of managing drug and alcohol rehab programmes. Surprisingly, during my detox, my phone wasn’t something I thought a lot about. Sure, I instinctively patted my pocket for it every now and then, woke up in the night due to fear my alarm clock would fail and I missed the ease with which I could reach loved ones or research something. But one upside of my experiment was the conversations I had with friends via email. Something I could check in on as and when I felt in the zone, minus expectations of an instant reply. Less casual than WhatsApp, emails sparked talking points I’m not sure my friends and I would have reached via another form of communication (at least, not as quickly or in the same depth): one confided she’d secretly had a plastic surgery consultation due to her turbulent dating life getting her down, while another confessed job-hunting was destroying her mental health. The fact we were all having to sit and think more carefully about what we wanted to discuss – and why – led to some insightful, meme-free chats. Five days in, my pre-locking the phone away nerves flipped to trepidation about switching it back on. Going without one forever isn’t practical, but luckily there are still lots of things we can do to rewire our relationship with tech and put ourselves back in control, say the experts. Knowing Big Tech’s sneaky tactics is a strong start. Ditto, doomscrolling has us in a chokehold. Sometimes my own news addiction reaches the point where friends ask if I’m alright, because my vibe has noticeably shifted and my response will be the quite unsolvable problem of ‘No, it’s Putin’ or ‘Climate change’. It’s no coincidence either. Big Tech wants us to stay online and be angry, intentionally serving divisive and shocking posts because rage bait equals engagement. Still, as much as it may feel like we’re in a losing battle, it seems we do at least want to try to curb our dopamine-disrupting habits. In a booming era of in-person book and running clubs, Pinterest’s latest trend report found searches for ‘digital detox vision board’ have grown 273% this year. But… is going cold turkey really the best approach to a more mindful relationship with your phone long-term? And once I figure out where to begin, will I even be able to hack it for a week? The best things in life are phone-free Uncertainty around how to digital detox is why the popularity of Unplugged (tech-free cabins around the UK) has soared in the past few years, says its co-founder Hector Hughes, who I call for advice before I go phoneless for a week. Following his own burnout at a tech start-up, Hughes felt that people were urgently craving an offline and nature- or wellness- focused space to reset. ‘We’re constantly overstimulated and have more low-level anxiety and tension than ever before,’ he tells me. ‘What’s amazing is that when you go off your phone, after only a day you feel a deep sense of calm. That’s how humans are supposed to live, but our environment is so different from that. ‘Conscious tech breaks are the next step for humanity,’ he adds. ‘You’re not going to solve all your problems by going offline, but it gives you space to see what those problems are – and to make a plan.’ For me, said phone-related problems involve getting caught in the information-overload vortex, feeling panicked that I can’t save the world and wasting hours of my time that could be better spent. For others (women in particular), phone overuse can spark body-image issues and life-comparison spirals. Critical skills, such as map-reading and nuanced debate and thought, are also at risk of becoming extinct, in favour of apps, memes and tribalism in social media comments. I want out. Or at least an improvement. Still, the idea of stopping cold is daunting. It feels more momentous than even my decision to stop drinking alcohol back in 2020, after waking up bruised following yet another disastrous night out. Those 15 months of being alcohol- free, thankfully, were the tonic needed to reset my relationship with booze for good and transform me into a mindful drinker. Four years later, hangovers no longer feature in my life whatsoever. But when it comes to phone usage, hitting rock bottom in order to reset your habits feels a far more nebulous concept. Not least because nearly half of our smartphone use is driven by a need to regulate our emotions and distract ourselves from the uncomfortable ones; we’re unconsciously stuck. Plus, so many aspects of our lives are wrapped up in devices now, from banking to dating. After a few weeks of procrastinating, I take the plunge, sending my loved ones an ‘out of office’ via WhatsApp, along with my email address, committing to being phoneless for seven full days. Offline and feeling fine My heart thumps as I rotate the paper map in my hands, unsure if I’m even holding it the right way round. Buildings I’ve walked past endlessly – but have never properly taken notice of before – loom overhead as I search for the site of a chronically online friend’s birthday brunch. When I told her I’d be travelling analogue, she was emphatic that I wouldn’t make it. Normally, this walk from the Tube station to a new restaurant would barely register. I’d be on auto-pilot following whatever Google dictated, while WhatsApping pals an ETA. But two days into my phone-free week, it’s different. During a slow morning (so much extra time without Vinted!), I finished a book – Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams, about how morally bankrupt she feels Facebook is (highly recommend) – and started another. Once at the restaurant, I feel lighter. The change is stark, and I’ve remembered my dreams for the first time in forever. A sign of better sleep? For Jessica Hill, therapy programme manager at Castle Craig rehab centre, it’s legitimate to talk about smartphone ‘addiction’ in the same way we would a shopping or gambling problem. And, for some, psychological and physiological withdrawal can be a thing. Someone in an unhealthy relationship with their device might feel cranky, irritable and like they can’t manage their emotions alone, Hill explains, ‘[When assessing], we ask, “Is it impacting how you function? Are you compulsively checking your phone so much you can’t work? Does it impact your ability to engage with life in a healthy way?”’ Phone confiscation, she adds, is one of the most challenging aspects of managing drug and alcohol rehab programmes. Surprisingly, during my detox, my phone wasn’t something I thought a lot about. Sure, I instinctively patted my pocket for it every now and then, woke up in the night due to fear my alarm clock would fail and I missed the ease with which I could reach loved ones or research something. But one upside of my experiment was the conversations I had with friends via email. Something I could check in on as and when I felt in the zone, minus expectations of an instant reply. Less casual than WhatsApp, emails sparked talking points I’m not sure my friends and I would have reached via another form of communication (at least, not as quickly or in the same depth): one confided she’d secretly had a plastic surgery consultation due to her turbulent dating life getting her down, while another confessed job-hunting was destroying her mental health. The fact we were all having to sit and think more carefully about what we wanted to discuss – and why – led to some insightful, meme-free chats.Five days in, my pre-locking the phone away nerves flipped to trepidation about switching it back on. Going without one forever isn’t practical, but luckily there are still lots of things we can do to rewire our relationship with tech and put ourselves back in control, say the experts. Knowing Big Tech’s sneaky tactics is a strong start. Menka Sanghvi, mindfulness expert and co-author of Your Best Digital Life, explains the science at play: ‘The brain releases 10 times more dopamine in anticipation of a reward compared with experiencing it.’ Social media keeps us hooked in this way and is similar to a casino slot machine – we just never know what we’re going to get. ‘Many apps such as Instagram deliberately don’t show you notifications that you want to see straight away to keep you checking, then they’ll show them to you in a burst. That’s really exciting to our brains – it’s called intermittent variable rewards.’ Meaning, we constantly want to check our feeds and notifications to see if we can get a hit – or stay scrolling until we do – and we’re up against companies spending billions on tapping into our psyches. Sanghvi’s whole approach to healthier phone use is about being conscious of it and our decisions, particularly via her MORE method: mobilise, observe, reflect and experiment, which encourages people to be proactive in examining their habits. This sounds similar to my own alcohol-related rules – no drinking for the sake of it, keep it to an absolute minimum and don’t go near it if I’m upset or anxious – to stop what Sanghvi calls ‘passively consuming’. ‘You could have two people sitting on the train looking at their phones, and one of them is harming themselves, while the other is flourishing,’ she explains. ‘It just depends who’s actually making a choice at that moment.’ The phone itself isn’t the issue, she adds; rather, it’s how we manage it. ‘Devices are an environment like any other. It’s about what you do in that space [rather than how long you spend there], but the environment is volatile and designed to keep interrupting us, tugging at our attention, even when we’re not using it,’ Sanghvi highlights. ‘It’s easier to replace bad habits with good habits, or different habits, rather than trying to exercise your limited willpower and just not to do a thing.’ I was reluctant to switch back on, but the experience gave me the breathing space to think about how to interact more consciously with tech in the future. Now, I’m actively trying to watch more films with subtitles on, so I don’t double-screen, and I no longer take my phone into the bathroom for a toilet scroll (ew, I know, but… you probably do it, too). I’m limiting my news consumption to feel less existential panic. I also make an effort to bookend every day with a no-phone hour and don’t plug it in beside my bed; instead, I put it out of reach. So far, so good. Fast-forward to a few weeks after my break, my screentime is down and I’m no longer destroying my sleep with scrolling. If I relapse, it’s okay: I’ll work hard to reset. As for the future, Hughes predicts tech and social media in its current state won’t be around in 10 to 15 years, given the negative impact we’re going to see on mental health, isolation, decreased social skills and an inability to relate. He compares it to when the world woke up to the dangers of smoking. ‘There are parts of technology that are unhealthy, but we’ll get better at designing those out. What will become valuable is the power and magic of spending time offline.’ Until then, it’s good to know we have it within us as individuals to become more mindful users. We can control phones, not the other way around – and a short, sharp break can be the perfect reminder of that. Printed-out maps and all.

"Going phone-free for a week was harder than going sober for a year: 3 lessons I learnt the hard way"

Data shows we’re all looking for a digital detox. But, as Jennifer Savin discovered, ditching our devices can be harder than quitting drinking…

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