Digital detox

What It Means

A digital detox is a planned break from phones, computers and other screens. Oxford Learner's Dictionaries describes it as time spent without these devices, often to relax and reduce stress, and the Cambridge Dictionary adds that people take one because they normally use them too much. Researchers use the term more broadly: it covers a short, complete stop as well as a voluntary cut in how much you use your devices, and the habits that help you do it.

How People Say It

• "I'm doing a digital detox this weekend, text me if it's urgent."
• "Phone goes in the drawer at eight now."
• "I deleted the apps for a week and honestly slept better."

The Breakdown

Worked example. Dana uses her phone about 4 hours a day outside work. Her plan is to put it in a drawer from 8:00 to 1010,000 stepsA popular daily step goal that began as the name of a 1960s Japanese pedometer; later studies find health benefits begin well below it. See more:00 pm on weeknights. These are example numbers, the same ones the calculator starts with.

What the result means. 520 hours is about 21 full days a year that her plan moves away from the phone. The number only tells you what the plan costs and frees up. Deciding what fills those hours, such as a walk, a call with a friend or an earlier bedtime, is what makes the plan worth keeping.

Common shapes of a detox. These are Buhata's suggestions, from smallest to largest:

Good to Know

Research on digital detox is still young. A scoping review in PubMed Central, "Digital Detox Strategies and Mental Health," reports that detox interventions may ease depression and problematic internet use, so treat the benefitsBenefits packageEverything an employer offers on top of wages, such as health insurance, paid leave and a retirement plan, which can be worth thousands of dollars a year. See more as possible rather than proven. One piece of screen advice is well established: the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and CDC both advise switching screens off at least 30 minutes before bed, which makes a bedtime cutoff a sensible first detox. If you feel unable to cut back, or your phone use comes with low mood or trouble sleeping that lasts for weeks, talk to a doctor.

Related Terms and Categories

• Screen time for adults

  The hours an adult spends looking at phones, computers, TVs and other screens, for work and for leisure, counted across a day or a week.

• Doomscrolling

  Scrolling on and on through bad or upsetting news and posts on a phone or computer, often for longer than you meant to and in a way that's hard to stop.

• Dopamine detox

  A popular name for a break from quick-reward habits like scrolling, though Cleveland Clinic notes it doesn't lower or clear dopamine from the brain.

• Digital minimalism

  Cal Newport's approach to technology: use only the apps and tools that clearly support what you value, and let the rest go.

• Screen-free time

  Set times or places in a family's day, like meals, bedrooms or the hour before bed, when phones, TVs, tablets and games stay off.

• Wind-down routine

  A set of calm, screen-free activities in the last part of the evening that helps you shift from being awake to falling asleep.

Wellbeing and habits