Skip the Digital Detox—Abstinence Won’t Work (But This Does)

Skip the Digital Detox Abstinence won't work, but this does. I once tried a digital detox. It failed miserably. When I realized I was distracted during quality time with my daughter, I blamed my smartphone and made some extreme changes. I replaced my smartphone with an old school flip phone so I couldn't be tempted to use email, Instagram and Twitter. But I found it too difficult to get around without GPS and the addresses saved inside my calendar app. I missed listening to audiobooks while I walked, as well as all the other handy things my smartphone could do. That digital detox didn't help me get any better at managing my distraction. And in a recently published study, participants who tried a digital detox experienced the same issues I did. One might think, given all the bad press about so called smartphone addiction, that using no technology would be the right cure. But the study instead found that reducing daily smartphone use by one hour led to far more sustainable results. Hey, my name is Nick Gray and I'm reading from the near and Far podcast. I'm reading Near's latest blog post which is about the digital detox and why you should skip it because abstinence won't work. But this does. Let me introduce Nir because Nir's going to be giving us commentary in real time as I read his latest article.

Hey Nick. And hey everyone, it's great to be with you again. So the way this works is that Nick Gray, my good friend, is going to read my latest blog post and then we're going to stop every once in a while and discuss some points that I didn't put in the article perhaps, or elaborate here or there. Just some general banter on the topic. And I just want to thank Nick again for being here today. If you don't know Nick, Nick Gray is an amazing author. He wrote a wonderful book called the Two Hour Cocktail Party, which is an incredible book you should definitely check out if you haven't read it yet. And with that, should we dive back in?

Nick, let's dive back in. I am curious. You said that you swapped your smartphone with an old school flip phone. How did you even get that flip phone? Like did you buy it on secondhand or what happened?

I went to Alibaba actually. So I got it like direct from China and I hadn't seen one of those since the 90s but apparently they still make them, you know, some no name company. Then you put your SIM card in it and I got one of those and yeah, I thought that was going to be the answer because that's kind of what you hear in the popular literature and a lot of other books. Not literature, actually. The scientific literature doesn't say that. But the popular press, I should say is very like the New York Times and various publications are very anti tech. And so I thought when I read books on this topic, I read books like break up with your cell phone, things like that. And so I, I decided to try it.

I'm curious to see how that went because I've seen things where they say, you know, switch your screen to black and white and do all these different sort of hacks. So we'll see what happens. Reducing screen time beats cutting it out altogether. The study that was published in the Journal of experimental psychology separated 619 participants into three groups that abided by specific smartphone use guidelines for seven days, a control group that used smartphones as usual, a group that abstained from all smartphone use, and a group that reduced daily smartphone use by one hour. Participants completed online surveys at four points during the study before the week long intervention, one day after the intervention, one month after the intervention, and four months after the intervention. Here are the findings. Number one, while the abstinence group did see positive results, they didn't last suggesting that a digital detox is nothing more than a quick fix. Reduction in smartphone use, however, leads to sustainable positive results. Number two, four months after the intervention, daily initial smartphone use time was reduced by about 38 minutes in the abstinence group and and by about 45 minutes in the reduction group. Both groups also saw lower smartphone use intensity, problematic use tendencies, depressive and anxiety symptoms, and higher life satisfaction and physical activity. But the effects of nearly all were larger and more stable in the reduction group over four months. Number three. Surprisingly, smokers in the reduction group saw a long term decrease in smoking behavior, whereas there were no changes changes in smoking within the abstinence group.

Yeah, it's worth pausing here just to kind of reframe the study, make sure everybody understands on the same page what we're talking about here. So, so they took two groups and they had an abstinence group. They said no smartphone use and then they had another group that they said reduce your smartphone use. And then they tracked the results over time. And I think the big aha here is that the digital detox, the get rid of your smartphone altogether turned out to have worse results for the study participants than just reducing their time. And I think that's, that's a really interesting result because I think we hear a lot about how, oh, do a digital detox get rid of your smartphone, close off your social media accounts. And what this study seems to suggest is that by excising it all together, that's not a great idea. And of course, if you think about it, the first line reaction is, yeah, just get it out of your life. If it's bad, stop it if it has bad aspects. But I think what this study finds is kind of what you see with dieters, that when dieters go on one of these stupid diet detoxes and they say, okay, I'm going to have nothing but, you know, lemon juice and cayenne pepper or, well, when they get back to the real world and start eating real food, they don't just go back to the way they were, they actually tend to rebound. They actually get worse because they are so deprived that they, they consume too much. And so just like why temporary diets don't really work. I think this study around our digital use of, our use of digital technology seems to imply similar results that, that excising these things altogether is not such a great idea, that these digital detoxes are not a very good idea. Better to reduce and use them mindfully and become indistractable.

I think that's what you're proving with this article, that it's saying that the abstinence group actually did worse, if I heard you right, than the group that said, look, let me be mindful and just do one hour less. Is that right?

That's right.

I love the third one. It said, surprisingly, smokers in the reduction group saw a long term decrease in smoking behavior, but there were no changes at all in smoking within the abstinence group. That's really interesting.

Yeah, yeah.

Why would moderating smartphone use affect smoking? My guess is that the reduction group experienced a feeling of agency and control by cutting back screen time. A sense of I can do this. The relatively easy step of cutting back a bit might have made them better able to cope with the urge to smoke by making them believe they were more powerful than they thought. The abstinence group was not getting the same feeling of self efficacy since their challenge was binary.

This is a really, really important point because I think what we are learning from these studies is that it's all about agency and control. That when you feel that you have agency over something, you are more likely to act upon it. And this is really important because I think what we hear these days when you watch films like the Social Dilemma, when you read people who say, oh, the technology is hijacking your brain, what this is doing is leading to less Agency. When you think that something is controlling your brain, you think you're powerless, there's nothing you can do about it. And so with this, what this study is showing, I think the reason that we had these knock on effects of, hey, if you feel like you can reduce your use of social media, you're empowering yourself. You feel like you have more agency and control. And lo and behold, if you were one of those people who just reduced versus eliminated completely your screen time, you found those benefits in other areas of your life. You might say to yourself, well, hey, if I can control and reduce my use of screen time, maybe I can control and reduce my smoking. Whereas the abstinence group, the group that says no social media, no screen time, they never got that effect. They never got that increased sense of agency. And I think that's maybe, of course, this is just a hypothesis, it requires further study. But that may be what's going on here.

That's that sense that you said of this I can do this idea. In fact, a reduction in smartphone use had such a significant correlation to well being that the study authors recommended it be incorporated into intervention programs aiming to enhance physical activity or reduce smoking behavior. It's also worth noting that the present compliance rate was slightly higher in the reduction group than in the abstinence group and that the reduction group had the lowest dropout rate.

So this is, this is also super important because what we're also seeing is that if you tell people the right answer is to break up with your smartphone, people don't do that. It's silly to recommend that kind of stuff because as this study showed, people don't comply. Whereas if you say, look, we just want to taper off, we just want to use it in a way that serves you as opposed to hurt you, we want to reduce rather than detox rather than eliminate. That's a much healthier approach.

Why did reducing smartphone use garner better results than a digital detox? The answer is manifold, but much of it comes down to our ability to control our attention and manage our time. It comes down to learning how to use the tools as opposed to letting the tools use us. Find a better relationship with your smartphone. Let's face it, smartphones are a necessity in today's world. We use them not just as phones, but also as alarm clocks, navigation systems, ebook readers, cameras, and social tools. Maintaining long term abstinence, as the study acknowledges, is simply impractical. Depriving yourself of online social interaction over a long period of time can negatively impact your well being. Reducing smartphone use doesn't require such an abrupt and limiting lifestyle change. The study authors wrote the limitation of daily smartphone time can foster a more conscious and efficient handling and reduce the just to beat boredom use. Time spent on smartphone use may become more appreciated. Furthermore, the limitation provides smartphone free time for offline activities, their conscious perception and enjoyment.

So what what he's saying here, the study authors are saying that when we mindfully use our devices, they can be wonderful tools. And I think part of this effect is that knowing that you have a limited amount of time to use your smartphone makes you appreciate it more. That, and this is exactly what I preached indistractible that by using timeboxing, which I know, Nick, you and I have read several articles on time boxing and I've written quite a bit about timeboxing. Is that there's nothing wrong with using social media or YouTube or whatever it is you want to do with the Internet, it's fine. But use it on your schedule and according to your values, not someone else's. Certainly not the tech companies. So by saying, yeah, I'm going to go use social media, there's nothing wrong with social media, but I'm not going to use it when I'm feeling bored and lonesome and tired. I'm going to use it at 8pm every night on my schedule. And what this study author is saying is that maybe by reducing and mindfully using it on a schedule, this made it made people appreciate it more as opposed to using it as an emotional escape device.

That's really neat that that idea to just beat the boredom really reduced that idea. I think about my own cell phone use as it's almost instinctive, I'm embarrassed to admit, going to the bathroom and you just kind of take your phone out almost.

And that's what we talked about. I think it was the last or maybe a couple podcast episodes ago around internal triggers that we have to realize that the reason we use these things, there's nothing to be embarrassed about. Everyone is using these devices to escape a sensation, to escape an emotion. Boredom, loneliness, fatigue, uncertainty, stress, anxiety. But we have to realize that's why we're doing it, right? And that's why we that's what leads to unhealthy use. And by the way, this can be unhealthy use of anything, right? If you're drinking to escape the social awkwardness of being out, right? If you're, if you're watching TV and the news to escape your problems by watching someone else's problems 3,000 miles away, right? Anytime you are escaping these uncomfortable sensations that is the source of distraction. There's nothing wrong with the tools, it's how we're using these tools. So realizing that we don't want to use these tools just to escape an emotion, but rather to use it on a schedule, to use it where it serves us as opposed to hurts us, that's a really important realization that we have to be honest with.

They go on to say that the restricted online time enabled participants to consider functional coping strategies, such as a direct facing of daily challenges, and provided time to consciously enjoy offline social interactions without a permanent disruption by smartphone use. Simply put, participants who reduced their smartphone use had to exercise their own agency and control. They were forced to build up what I consider to be the most important skill of the 21st century, how to be Indistractable the study noted that breaking the vicious cycle of smartphone use requires external support, which its regular surveys and compliance diaries for participants provided. These surveys and compliance diaries act much the way timeboxing and tracking internal triggers do. In my recommended steps to take to break the vicious cycle of distraction, can I take a note there and just ask We've talked about timeboxing before on your podcast, but the tracking of internal triggers we haven't mentioned before. Your longtime listeners and readers probably know all about this, but can you just give a little recap about that?

Absolutely. So there's a extensive description of how to do this in the book Indistractable, but just to give you a quick recap, essentially what you're doing is when you go off track, right when you are distracted, when you're doing something you didn't plan to do. It's important to realize what internal trigger led you there. So we talked about earlier that 90% of our distractions are not caused by the things outside of us, but rather they begin from within. They begin from these uncomfortable emotional states. So the only way we can get control over these internal triggers and become their master so that we're not their slave is to identify what they are. And so by tracking, by saying, oh you know what? I intended to do that big project and why am I checking email instead? I said I was going to work on that big project. Now here I am checking email. Why? What was that internal trigger? What was that emotion? Was it stress? Was it anxiety? Was it not knowing what to do with my time? So my default became checking email. Noting that sensation is a huge practice, firstly because it starts giving you agency over those sensations, that they don't just happen to you anymore. You can say, oh, you know what? I really knew I should have been working on that blog post or finishing my sales report or whatever it is that you said you were going to do. And and yet here I am doing something else because I felt this way. Why is that so empowering? Because now you can. By noting it down, you're starting to be able to have agency over it. And you can put practices in place today to make sure that doesn't happen again in the future. So you can say, next time I feel bored because it's a hard task or I feel stressed because I feel out of control. Now you have practices in place that you'll know what to do when you feel those sensations again. It's like that wonderful quote by Poelo Coelho. He said, a mistake repeated more than once is a decision. A mistake repeated more than once is a decision. So if we don't take steps today to prevent getting distracted tomorrow, we're going to get distracted by the same things again and again and again. We are deciding to be distractible as opposed to people who say, okay, you got me, one time distraction, that's fine. But here I noted what happened. I noted what that internal trigger is and I'm going to put practices in place now so it doesn't happen to me again. So if you're not doing that, you're deciding to be distractible. Whereas the definition of someone who's indistractable is someone who knows why they got distracted and takes steps to prevent it from happening again.

Nir has a great article on his website about how to disarm internal triggers and improve focus. You can find that@nearandfar.com internal triggers so the next time your weekly screen time summary makes you gasp in horror, don't listen to the gut reaction to turn off your phone and hide it in a drawer. Let's not moralize and medicalize the issue unnecessarily. Instead, consider whether you're spending time with your device in a way that matches your values, not the tech companies. Well, this has been Nir's latest article called Skip the Digital Detox. Abstinence Won't Work, but this Does. That's a great article. It was fun to read your latest one, Nir.

Thanks Nick. Great job and appreciate it very much. Thanks everyone for listening.