Digital Detox > A way to restore calm and reset tech expectations
The Feels Guide is a field guide to internet emotion — new feelings, moody machines, emotional design, and wherever, whenever, however emotion and technology mix and mingle.
A digital detox acts as a reset that encourages us to be mindful of our tech use and may influence us to use it more intentionally after a break.
🔑 DEFINITION
A period of time when a person voluntarily refrains from using digital devices such as smartphones, computers, or social media platforms.
See also: Dopamine fasting, problematic internet use, nomophobia, phone stacking game, addictive design, FOMO, tech neck
📜 A BRIEF HISTORY
For as long as people have been on mobile phones, they have also wanted to be off of them. Researchers in diverse fields including psychology, cultural studies, and neuroscience have been studying problematic internet use and internet addiction disorder since the mid-1990s but the idea of a digital detox didn’t take shape until over a decade later.
As people began to spend more time on their mobile phones and on social media platforms like MySpace (2003), Facebook (2004), and Youtube (2005), they also felt the need to spend less time online. The impulse to reboot our internet habits, shape-shifts according to how dire people or organizations perceive the effects of internet use.
In the most extreme instances, the detox is modeled after the most draconian drug rehabilitation programs where internet addicts are sent to boot camps to break the addiction. In 2008, China became the first country in the world to classify internet addiction disorder as a mental illness. Military-style boot camps, designed to enforce digital detoxes for teens and young adults, popped up in response.
More common is a milder approach, similar to how a juice fast might reset healthy eating habits, where a short break is all that’s needed. In 2012, the phone stacking game, where people put their phones face down in the center of a table for the duration of a meal, was a playful way to take a break. Retreats like Camp Grounded launched digital detox experiences where campers would give up their phone at check-in. Now there are activity books and phone lockboxes to help us disconnect.
Nicholas Carr’s 2010 bestseller The Shallows was the first of many popular books to suggest the internet is toxic. It was followed by countless books on the negative effects of too much internet. The most influential were written by tech insiders like MIT sociologist Sherry Turkle’s Alone Together (2011) and Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts (2018). Still popular are books about how to achieve better balance including Cal Newport’s Deep Work (2016), Catherine Price’s How to Break Up with Your Phone (2018), and Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing (2019).
Thousands of social sciences studies on the effects of mobile phone or social media use continue to explore the addictive properties of phone or social media use. Some capture the public imagination in popular media. A 2008 study by YouGov in the UK found that nearly 53% of mobile phone users felt anxious when they lose their phone, run out of battery, or lose network coverage which led researchers to coin the term “nomophobia” which is a shortened form of “no mobile phone phobia”. In 2015, a report by the Microsoft Canada consumer insights team caused a sensation by claiming that attention spans had dipped to be shorter than that of a goldfish — a mere 8 seconds. Psychology professor Jeanne Twenge presented her own research in The Atlantic article, “Have smartphones destroyed a generation?” which caused panic about teens and internet use.
The design of addictive technology is part of the history of digital detoxes, too. In 2013, behavioral science writer Nir Eyal published the bestseller, Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products, a handbook for creating addictive app design. Around the same time, former Google tech ethicist Tristan Harris countered with the Time Well Spent (now The Center for Humane Technology) initiative to expose auto-play, infinite scroll, and other mechanisms of addictive design. He also popularized detox strategies like switching to a grayscale home screen and turning off notifications.
The digital detox is a staple of popular culture, from music like Erykah Badu’s Put Your Phone Down to the spoken word of Price EA to Goop’s digital detox kit. On any given day you’ll find articles in the popular media about why you should or shouldn’t detox, how to do it, and personal accounts from influencers, celebrities, and regular folk. So long as there’s immersive and ubiquitous technology, it’s likely that humans are going to feel conflicted.
💪 PRO TIP
There are no strict rules about how to do a digital detox but here are some ways to make it work.
- Set realistic goals, a digital detox doesn’t have to be extreme. It could mean disconnecting from social media or just limiting daily screen time.
- Create healthy boundaries by limiting use immediately after waking up, during a meal or a workout, or before going to sleep.
- Choose positive activities by spending your time doing things that make you feel good like going for coffee with a friend, spending time in nature, or picking up a new hobby.
- Ask for support, and let friends and family know that you are trying to reduce time online
- Use technology to get off technology with apps like Freedom which blocks distracting websites for a period of time or Forest which gamifies focus time or Noisli which provides a soothing soundtrack for focused work or Space which analyzes your behavior to create a custom plan. If you need accountability partners for staying off social media, you can try virtual co-working rooms like Focusmate or Flow Club and virtual study rooms like Study Together.
🎉 FUN FACT
Apple and Google have the idea of digital detox built into the platforms. Apple’s Screen Time tells people how much time they spend on the device. Google’s digital wellbeing tools track how often you use your phone and how frequently you use your apps. In addition, both platforms offer do not disturb modes, ways to set limits with app timers, and customization of notifications to help minimize distractions.
🤔 LEARN MORE
- Read a few high-profile accounts of the digital detox experience like Baratunde Thurston’s experience with a digital detox in Fast Company and how celebrities like Selena Gomez and Ed Sheeren take long-ish breaks
- Here’s a piece in The New York Times about how Nir Eyal went from writing about how to design addictive apps to creating a guide to become Indistractable
- Nellie Bowles wrote a three-part report (part 1 | part 2 | part 3) on how Silicon Valley executives keep their kids away from technology*,*
- Watch the documentary, The Social Dilemma, or the more lighthearted Off the Hook, both on Netflix
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That’s all the feels for this week!
xoxo
Pamela 💗
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The guide behind the guide
I’m Pamela Pavliscak, a tech emotionographer who studies emotion on the internet. I’m writing a book, All the Feels (Algonquin, 2024), about how technology is changing our emotional life — mostly for the better. I run an emotion tech consultancy called Subjective Labs and teach emotional design at the Pratt Institute in NYC. And I’m starting to share what I learn here and on Substack, Instagram, and Twitter.
