04 Feb One week of smartphone digital detox [INFOGRAPHIC]
What really happens to your brain and body when you do a digital detox for a week? We loved this infographic which showed what happened when seven people gave up their smartphones for a week and recorded their experiences.
Overall although anxiety and inconvenience ended the week slightly up on the levels recorded at the beginning of the experiment, frustration, after peaking mid-week significantly wore off. Anxiety was directly linked to not being able to make calls and texts (functions of a simple mobile phone) whereas frustration was linked to specific smartphone features such as maps and search, suggesting that subjects adapted relatively easily to their digital detox life without a smartphone.
Personal comments on the digital detox experience were largely positive, including; “I would turn to technology to distract me but when I didn’t have that option I was forced to have a conversation…I think in the long run this is benefiting me”. “I was forced to do the healthier thing and just enjoy what I was doing that minute.”
We were also interested in the views of the 800 people surveyed for the research. Particularly that only 16% really didn’t think that smartphone addiction was a problem. In fact 36% said they were ‘very concerned’ about smartphone addiction with 52% saying they actually felt they had a smartphone addiction themselves.
The overall findings supported the conclusion that people have become so connected to their phones that they truly feared losing them. For a growing number this has become a real and debilitating addiction. In a previous blog post we’ve written about how our brain chemicals are supporting and rewarding us constantly checking our phones, and we know this is having a serious impact on our attention spans. Retraining the brain to go without smartphones for regular periods of time is important to reverse the damage that constant connection can cause.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.