A few weeks ago, I mentioned a book that the American entrepreneur, author, ultramarathoner, former rapper (under the name "Jesse Jaymes"), and co-owner of the professional basketball team Atlanta Hawks Jesse Itzler wrote about his month-long experience of living and training with former Navy SEAL David Goggins. The book is called Living with a SEAL: 31 Days Training with the Toughest Man on the Planet. For his next project, Itzler decided to work on his spiritual health by living in a monastery and going "off the grid" for a month (see Living with the Monks). Itzler apparently gave up all access to social media and his smart phone during his time with the monks.
While I haven't read Itzler's latest book about giving up access to information technology, I have read a recent study (see "Blocking mobile internet on smartphones improves sustained attention, mental health, and subjective well-being") published last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Nexus journal. An investigative team conducted a study in which they blocked all mobile internet access for a two-week period. They used a cross-over design in which study participants served as their own controls, i.e. they participated for a full two-week period without mobile Internet access as well as an additional two-week period with full mobile Internet access. During the intervention period (no mobile Internet access), study participants were able to call and/or text message on their smartphone and use the Internet via desktop computers.
Simply blocking access on the study participants' smartphones significantly improved objective measures of mental health and the ability to sustain attention, as well as subjective measures of well-being. These effects occurred because blocking mobile Internet access increased social connection, feelings of self-control, and sleep. As participants spent less time on the Internet, they spent more time in the "offline world" (socializing in person, exercising, being in nature, pursuing a hobby, or reading a book) and less time in the "digital world". The investigators emphasized, "the change in objectively measured sustained attention ability is about the same magnitude as 10 years of age-related decline and about a quarter of the difference between healthy adults and those with ADHD." Just as powerful, the observed improvements in symptoms of depression (one of the objective measures of well-being) was larger than what would be typical for individuals on anti-depressant medications and similar to the improvement observed with cognitive behavioral therapy.
I can remember a time when I went on vacation and somehow lost access to the Internet and email on my smartphone. There was some glitch with our mobile service provider, which I couldn't address until we got back home. I have to say that while losing mobile Internet access was certainly a change, I actually didn't miss it! I spent more quality time on vacation, which certainly improved my subjective well-being.
Studies have suggested that more than 90% of American adults own a smartphone, and the average user spends up to 4.6 hours per day on their device. Just as important, survey data suggests that half of all smartphone users in America worry that they use their device too much. I've already mentioned in previous posts that experts worry that smartphones "hijack our minds" or that they've "destroyed a generation" (see in particular my posts, "Are smartphones making us dumb?" and "Why the past 10 years of American life have been uniquely stupid...").
Unfortunately, not all of us have the ability to put work aside and spend a month in a monastery like Jess Itzler did for his book. However, all of us do have the ability to forego using our smartphones as frequently as we do currently. Perhaps we could set a certain amount of time aside every day in which we refrain from using our smartphones (there is a way to do just that)? I've already talked about how I deleted the Facebook and Twitter/X apps on my smartphone and deleted my accounts to both sites (see my post "Liberation"). I can already tell a difference. Regardless of how we do it, the data strongly suggests that spending less time on our mobile Internet devices will make all of us feel a lot better!
