When You Block the Internet on Your Phone, Something Astonishing Happens Mentally
Image by Getty / Futurism Let’s face it: we’re all hopelessly addicted to our smartphones. Such is the power of having the internet at your fingertips at literally every single moment of the day. Is this bad for our brains? Probably; there’s a reason terms like “doomscrolling” exist. But demonstrating a connection between heavy smartphone use and cognitive woes has been difficult. There’s a clear correlation, but causation requires another level of rigor. Determined to find answers, a team of researchers conducted an experiment that forced participants to completely block all internet access on their smartphones for two whole weeks. Phone calls and old-school texting were still permitted, and if they wanted to, the subjects could still go online using a computer. What the team found, as detailed in a study published in the journal PNAS Nexus, was that even though the intervention was relatively short, it finished with significant improvements — and we really mean significant — to the participants’ mental health, attention span, and subjective well-being. “Smartphones have drastically changed our lives and behaviors …
