What is a Digital Detox? Why you should you try it?

A Digital Detox is when you take a conscious break from any engagement with digital media (Text Messages, News, Crypto, Email, and other Social Media Apps) or any mobile device. It's like a fast for your brain and your senses. Basically a period of time where you go device free to give your mind a rest.

The latest research from Nielsen finds that the average American spends almost 11 hours a day consuming some form of digital media. This has without a doubt an effect on your mental health, your behavior, your body, and your mind.

A Digital Detox is like intermittent fasting for your mind and senses.

Over the last couple years fasting and intermittent fasting have become very mainstream. It has been around for many centuries, even the great philosophers like Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato used it as a from of healing. Since the advent of bio-hacking, strongly promoted by Dave Asprey and his 'Bulletproof Lifestyle', millions of people around the world have discovered the multitude of health benefits of various forms of fasting.

We live in a culture of over-indulgence. What was mostly over-indulgence of food, consumption, sex, drugs, and alcohol, has now made it's way into the over-consumption of digital information and constant connectivity to social media sites. That happened over the last decade, to be precise since the launch of the first iPhone in June of 2007. I have written about the amount of screen time and information the average person consumes a while back in this article '23% of our Life spent on the Phone'.

While intermittent fasting combined with various forms of diets have become very popular, a digital fast - or dopamine fasting as creator Dr. Cameron Sepah calls it - is something that to this day has not become very mainstream. Why?

I think most people are not very aware that they have a form of internet addiction and also don't see the benefits of a digital detox and how it can help them to improve their daily life and happiness. If you go on one of the popular diets or detoxes the benefits are clear, loosing weight, feeling better, reducing inflammation, increase mental clarity and so on.

What are the negative effects of digital over-consumption?

From my own experience and the experiences from friends, family, and colleagues these are some of the obviously perceived effects:

Disruption of sleep and sleep quality from over-stimulation of the nervous system.
Inability to focus on a task for an extended period of time - I call this 'Monkey Mind'.
Decision-fatigue. Lack of mental clarity. Little or now access to their inner wisdom and intuition. Making decisions not based on their innate knowledge but based on what they read and what their told online.
Nervousness and twitchiness - The constant need for a quick dopamine hit. Disruption of normal dopamine response - dopamine addiction - the need for a quick fix every 5-10 minutes from a text, email, TikTok video, or Instagram post.
Social Anxiety and dissatisfaction from constantly comparing yourself the perfect lives and lifestyles portrayed online (Social Comparison). Strong feelings of not being good enough, beautiful enough, rich enough.
Inability to experience 'unproductive' time - a period of time when you're just be with your own self and don't listen, read, or engage with any of your devices and media
Physical stress and tension (neck, shoulders, back, etc.) that is created by the immense amount of digital information your body and mind needs to process.

What are the benefits of a Digital Detox?

As with every detox and fast, doing a digital detox has many benefits that initially might not be that obvious to a lot of people. Once you've taken the first step and have set limits to the time you spend on your mobile phone or tried to go device free for a certain period of time you will start to experience some of the following benefits:

Feeling more calm and in control.
Feeling more content within yourself. Increased happiness.
Mental clarity. Stronger connection to your own intuition and inner wisdom.
Feeling more grounded. Opposite of feeling airy and up in your head all the time which is a sign of an over-active and over-stimulated mind.
Less over-thinking.
Increase emotional stability, resilience, and confidence.
Improved sleep.
Ability to relax more without engaging into any form of media consumption.
Higher productivity and getting more done with better focus.
Physcial well being and less tension.

A digital media fast is not as easy as just putting your phone away.

If you have read any of the popular articles that have been written about on how to do a digital detox, you will have noticed that they make it sound very easy and simple to do. The ideas these articles mention (I listed some of them below) are a good starting point. but I think in order to get some long-term benefits and behavioral changes one has to go further than that:

Just put your phone away for a certain amount of time.
Set limits on your how long you spent each day on your mobile devices.
Turn off notifications for 30 minutes at a time.
Remove any distractions and set your phone on FOCUS mode.
Don't pick your phone up right after you get up.
Don't check your phone before you go to bed.
And on, and on, and on....

What most articles don't mention and what I consider being crucial is the neurological effects that the over-consumption of digital media and over-use of digital devices have. We need to understand what the continuous starring at blue light screens and the continuous desire to discover and find some satisfying piece of information does to our brain on our mental health in order to make a conscious choice to help ourselves.

What is Dopamine? What role does it play in internet addiction disorder?

The key to understand why we are so addicted to our devices and the apps we use is to understand the role of dopamine in the body. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter that is released every time we pick up our device and receive a new piece of information. It's like a quick hit that makes us feel good for a very short period of time. The more we do it the more we reinforce the addictive behavior and the more we become dominated by these unhealthy stimuli. It will become a compulsion. Anybody who has the slightest bit of self-awareness notices some kind of compulsion when they use their digital devices. Although, for most people it's not enough to address it. Because they think that on the other side of that compulsion lies boredom and loneliness. And that's the exact reason why digital detoxes are not popular. The problems are not obvious enough - like addictions to food, drugs, gambling - to do something against it, even though it has the same effects on our mind and body. A new trend that has emerged is called Dopamine Fasting and you can learn more about it in my video.

How to get started with a Digital Detox?

In my experience the first step is not even to do a digital detox. At first it's important that you observe your tech use behavior. Without a certain level of self-awareness you won't be able to just stay off your device or change the way you use it. This self-awareness or mindfulness will enable you to observe the emotions and feelings, resist the impulse to constantly pick up your phone and then address them in the next step.

How do you became aware of your tech use behavior?
I recommend to enable your devices screen time monitoring feature. For iOS devices it's a feature called Screen Time and for Android it's call Digital Well-being. Once enabled, I suggest your review your time spent on screen at the end of your day. Give yourself 5 minutes and reflect how many times you picked up your phone, how many notifications you've received, and how many times you opened a certain app, f.e. Instagram. With your new knowledge about dopamine now think how many different dopamine hits you got on that day and how you reacted and how many different emotions you've experienced from all the information you've consumed. I think it works best if you use a paper journal to log all that. If you develop a habit reviewing your screen time daily you will see certain patterns and you will notice how certain pieces of information affect you emotionally. After that, it will become easier to consciously decide to put your device away for let's say a morning, afternoon, or a weekend day. At the end of every device-free period do the same review and log how you felt. These are the first steps on how to get started with a digital detox. I will write another article that will go more into detail and layout a program in the future.

If you want to learn more watch this video: Digital Detox vs Digital Well-Being