Blocking mobile internet on smartphones improved attention, mental health, and well-being during a month-long experiment.
Evidence
This randomized controlled trial used an app to block mobile internet access for 2 weeks while preserving calls, texts, and nonmobile internet access, and objectively tracked compliance and psychological outcomes.
Caveat
The intervention tested short-term removal of mobile internet rather than all smartphone use, and mediation findings only partially explain benefits through changed time use.
Simplified
Smartphones enable people to access the online world from anywhere at any time. Despite the benefits of this technology, there is growing concern that smartphone use could adversely impact cognitive functioning and mental health. Correlational and anecdotal evidence suggests that these concerns may be well-founded, but causal evidence remains scarce. We conducted a month-long randomized controlled trial to investigate how removing constant access to the internet through smartphones might impact psychological functioning. We used a mobile phone application to block all mobile internet access from participants' smartphones for 2 weeks and objectively track compliance. This intervention specifically targeted the feature that makes smartphones "smart" (mobile internet) while allowing participants to maintain mobile connection (through texts and calls) and nonmobile access to the internet (e.g. through desktop computers). The intervention improved mental health, , and objectively measured ability to sustain attention; 91% of participants improved on at least one of these outcomes. Mediation analyses suggest that these improvements can be partially explained by the intervention's impact on how people spent their time; when people did not have access to mobile internet, they spent more time socializing in person, exercising, and being in nature. These results provide causal evidence that blocking mobile internet can improve important psychological outcomes, and suggest that maintaining the status quo of constant connection to the internet may be detrimental to time use, cognitive functioning, and well-being.
Key numbers
153 min
Average Daily Screen Time Decrease
From 314 min at baseline to 161 min after intervention.
0.57
Improvement in Mental Health
Effect size after two weeks of blocking mobile internet.
0.46
Improvement in
Effect size after two weeks of blocking mobile internet.
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