When You Block the Internet on Your Phone, Something Astonishing Happens Mentally
When You Block the Internet on Your Phone, Something Astonishing Happens Mentally
Researchers blocked the internet access of participants' phones for two weeks, producing an astounding boost to their mental health.
A specialized iPhone app was used to block internet access, recording any time that the feature was disabled.
In numbers, nearly all the participants — 91 percent — improved on at least one of the three outcomes, while around three-quarters reported better mental health by the end.
The findings even suggest that the intervention had a stronger effect on depression symptoms than antidepressants, and was roughly on par with cognitive behavioral therapy.
What's driving all this? Ward suggests that the simplest explanation is that the experiment forced participants to spend more time doing fulfilling things in the real world.
… the assumption here is that people know what they find fulfilling. Before the internet people would stare at the tv for 12 hours a day.
That's irrelevant. The study showed that people were in better mental health and the reason why he said it was because they were doing fulfilling hobbies is probably because they told the researchers that's what they did instead.
Yes, we love science unless it's critical of our own behavior, right? Lemme think now... who else has that attitude?
The internet is what you make it. I've never spent much time on overtly corporate media social or otherwise. Combined with largely avoiding the most politically toxic places both maga or ML.
Most of my time online is spent visiting places focused on retro Computing, Retro Gaming, music or some other hobbies. The internet hasn't changed drastically in 30 years. Just the way average people use it.
The corporate sites will never respect your time or privacy. They're just endless treadmills to keep you busy and engaged. We've always been able to hop off.
While I agree with the sentiment of your post - you can tweak your own Internet usage and you should - this part is just ridiculously untrue:
The internet hasn't changed drastically in 30 years.
In the last 30 years, we saw coming of google, facebook, amazon and others as a major forces on the Internet, deploying Skinner boxes for billions of people and shaping what internet is to vast majority of users...
Yeah definitely. I just heee to disable social media and anything that’s based on addictive behavior, algorithmic feed etc. and I automatically start doing more interesting things online, such as read Wikis of subjects I like, play with programming etc.
The problem is everything that’s driven by engagement and made to keep you scrolling artificially is toxic by consequence.
I bet it's not about the internet, just the social media apps. Why not just uninstall the apps or tell the participants not to use them?
I agree. I’m on lemmy because Reddit wouldn’t allow me to control what I was seeing. It’s definitely a breath of fresh air not it being continually bombarded by DT this and DT that. It has me thinking maybe I just dump the social media apps all together.
True. On Lemmy I can still be bombarded by stuff about the two billionaires running the USA, if I look at the active threads on all instances. But I can avoid that by just looking at threads from the instance I'm on, or by visiting particular communities individually.
I did something similar to what this article describes a bit back. For me it was turning off my phone, the effect was staggering. Anxiety etc dropped immediately.
For me in particular, it was being constantly available to anyone in my life, but also the doom scrolling, and knowing there's a vast ocean of infinite content at my fingertips. Sure, I could curate my experience, and block people, but overall the phone is still functioning largely the same as it ever does. I can always turn those features back on. By changing how the device works externally, you're disconnecting those people from the decade and a half of reinforcement and whatever they have associated with their phones.
To get similar results I was able to just turn off my phone, but that might vary for some. Anyway, it seems reasonable for the experiment at least.
The internet just isn't a good space to spend a lot of time. It's mostly corporate controlled and they've found anger drives interaction online so most things you read are designed to be upsetting. I've drastically cut down on my internet usage over the last few years and while I do spend more time doing things I enjoy, due to not being online, I've found that going back on reddit or something similar can send me right back into a negative headspace for the rest of the day like when I was online more. I just think that most parts of the internet are miserable places to be.
I don't remember it always being this way either. Back when small formus were the norm I found the internet to be much less hostile overall. Not that there weren't jerks and chuds online back then, but there wasn't the profit incentive to drive engagement over all else
So, what would be the best way to "block the internet" on an Android phone while still being somehow able to use it for communication with the family & friends, navigation and stuff like that?
Download maps, turn off wifi and data, and use SMS for friends and family. Wait, SMS is compromised now? Nevermind.
Meshtastic and a solid network?
Printing the case for my first node (arriving tomorrow) now, we'll see!
You use either focus mode or parental control tp restrict all apps except messaging ones and navigation
Or simply Do Not Disturb
Uninstall the browser and any social media apps. Google Maps and Signal aren't what's damaging your mental health.
Power saving mode. The maximum power saving mode allows for just a few apps to run at all, so picking out the apps that are for communication gets the outcome you're looking for, as long as you keep the phone on that maximum power saving mode.
Install a firewall app and restrict access for every app on your phone?
rethink is pretty good for that. it lets you control how applications can access internet
I've been thinking how socialising on the internet with strangers is so hugely different to socialising with people in real life.
In real life you can see someone face to face, you can get a sense of their personality, and you learn to trust them. Those things are harder on the internet. You can't see a person's face, or hear their accent. Someone on the internet could be lying when they tell you about themselves, and it's harder to tell if they're lying.
Also of course on the internet people are much more willing to be rude and offensive because there are few penalties. If you meet someone in a pub, they probably won't be rude to you, most of the time. If you disagree about something, you might say "okay, agree to disagree" and move onto another topic. But on the internet people will just be disrespectful cunts because they can get away with it, without negative social consequences for themselves.
In conclusion, internet socialising should be better than it is.
It's always interesting when people from the Internet meet in-person. It should happen more often to the point when the people become friends and exchange it to real life socialising.
The demand is there and keeps increasing. I even thought about some platform where people from reddit/lemmy type of platform do stuff together like sports, outdoor, going to pub or something like that. I'm writing here about non-mainstream solutions.
I like this idea, but I don't know how you build a site to facilitate that without also being super appealing to children and pedos at the same time.
Interesting idea. I suppose you could start a Lemmy community for meet ups for people in your country. I don't know how easy it would be to find willing people who are relatively local to you though.
SN: Not that I'm a fan of it, but maybe this is one of the benefits of RTO. I have always found that building rapport in person is better than doing it online.
Yeah there's some truth to that. Working at home can be lonely in my experience. But on the other hand you save all the hassle with commuting.
Striking results - 91% of participants improved their mental state, and typical improvement was similar to reversing 10 years of age-related decline.
"Ignorance is bliss"
Counterpoint: The unexamined life is not worth living.
(ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ)
~ Socrates (Plato's Apology)
the subjects could still go online using a computer
Are you suggesting that people who are intermittently connected to the internet instead of tethered to it by a pocket device are somehow more ignorant?
Yes
what app did they use?
Insightful article highlighting tech detox benefits, though lacks broader societal impact analysis.
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