How To Do A Digital Detox

Let me ask this – what if we controlled our digital experience, rather than letting it control us? It’s difficult to not rely on technology and as much as it provides benefits and ease, it is increasingly difficult to avoid the negative impact on our mental and physical health. So, that’s why I’m sharing how to do a digital detox.

Let’s face it, smartphones house our lives in one convenient place. Social media keeps us connected to family and friends. Streaming services offer endless entertainment. Shopping, banking, gaming. We are constantly surrounded by screens and notifications vying for our attention.

So, why bother with a blog on how to do a digital detox? While technology undoubtedly brings many benefits, it also has negative impact on our mental health, physical health, relationships and overall wellbeing. You’ve probably felt that but if you need proof, keep reading.

How Much is Too Much?

Let’s start by looking at how much time we spend on our phones. Health experts actually recommend spending no longer than two hours a day staring at a screen, but research finds that people spend much more than that. That’s before even taking into account time spent using computers and tablets or watching programs on a physical television.

Americans (and it isn’t different for Canadians) spend an average of 5 hours and 16 minutes per day on their phones – a 14% increase from the 4 hours and 37 minutes people reported spending on their phones in 2024. Age plays a significant role, with Gen Z spending the most time on their phones (a whopping 6 hours and 27 minutes). Although Baby Boomers spend the least amount, it is still 4 hours and 19 minutes – double the recommended amount.

What’s The Impact Of Excessive Tech Use?

There are countless studies that prove frequent technology use has been linked to attention-deficit symptoms, impaired emotional and social intelligence, digital addiction, social isolation, impaired brain development, and disrupted sleep.

Specifically, other research outlines that 69% (that’s 2 in 3) experienced phone-related health issues in the past year. That comes in the form of:

Eye strain 41%
Neck/shoulder pain 34%
Headaches 30%
Trouble sleeping/insomnia 28%
Anxiety 20%

We are spending excessive amounts of time hunched over and looking at screens for long period of time. A study from the National Library of Medicine shows that prolonged use of smartphones could affect posture and respiratory function. Just spend some time watching the posture of people in a coffee shop or even, walking on the street with their device in hand.

The impact goes beyond what people are doing to their physical bodies. Let’s consider the following.

Unhealthy Attachment – Phone addictions prevent us from using our brains for simple tasks, navigating, and entertaining ourselves. Consider this – what do you do when you sit down waiting for someone? Pick up your phone and scroll at nothing. Or, how many phone numbers do you remember hitting the Contacts button on your phone?
Social Impact – studies show that 56% say friends and family are less present in social settings due to their phone. Side Note: I am actually quite surprised that it’s not more than 56%. We have become a society that has abandoned manners to be on our phones instead. Just saying. 😉
Mental Health and Wellbeing – Too much screen time has been proven to contribute to feelings of stress, anxiety and overwhelm.
Decreased Focus and Productivity – As much as technology provides tools to increase our productivity, constant interruptions from notifications sabotage efforts to focus your attention on important tasks.
Loss of Connection with Offline Activities – Spending time on your devices takes time away from hobbies, time in nature, being present and physical activities that provide a more balanced lifestyle.

Not to mention the simple fact that it chews up time that we could use to focus on better habits. Excessive technology use can take away time from activities such as sleep, exercise, outdoor play and socializing, which are all important for well-being.

Wait – What About The Kids?

All of the above is true across the board regardless of age but what about the impact on young people specifically?

If you want to do a deep dive into this, just read Jonathan Haidt’s book, ‘The Anxious Generous’. One of the alarming stories he tells is about the decline of the play-based childhood, which began in the 1980s and accelerated in the 1990s.

Free play is vital to wire up their brains during childhood to prepare them for adulthood. But many parents in Anglo countries began to reduce children’s access to unsupervised outdoor free play out of media-fueled fears for their safety, even though the “real world” was becoming increasingly safe in the 1990s. The loss of free play and the rise of continual adult supervision deprived children of what they needed most to overcome the normal fears and anxieties of childhood: the chance to explore, test and expand their limits, build close friendships through shared adventure, and learn how to judge risks for themselves.

He expands on that with a second story about the rise of the phone-based childhood, which began in the late 2000s and accelerated in the early 2010s. This was precisely the period during which adolescents traded in their flip phones for smartphones, which were loaded with social media platforms supported by the new high-speed internet and unlimited data plans.

The confluence of these two stories in the years between 2010 and 2015 is what Haidt calls the “Great Rewiring of Childhood.” Few of us understood what was happening in children’s virtual worlds and we lacked the knowledge to protect them from tech companies that had designed their products to be addictive.

The result! We ended up overprotecting children in the real world while underprotecting them in the virtual world.

Managing your children’s tech usage is a whole other issue and not the point of this blog. But, let’s take a moment to acknowledge that we have all been witness to the impact that our own usage as adults has on those around us, especially children. So, let’s look inward and start there.

Do you Need a Digital Detox?

Even if you think your digital habits aren’t affecting you much, it could still be helpful to give yourself a digital break. To get clear on the role technology and media play in your life, ask yourself the following questions:

How long do I spend using an electronic device or watching a screen all day? You can check the amount of screen time via tracking functions on your iPhone or Android devices.
How is technology making me feel? Which parts of technology, screen time and social media use are a positive influence in my life? Conversely, what leaves me feeling worse?
Am I experiencing problems from technology use?
What matters most to me in terms of my priorities and values in life? If you’re not sure about the importance of how your technology habits align with your priorities, take a few minutes to identify your values (free worksheet right here). They will 100% provide a compass as to what’s important.
What is the impact of my technology usage on those around me? Am I on my phone in the bleachers while ‘watching’ my child’s hockey game? Am I viewing the ‘memories’ of my child’s activities through a lens and filming every moment instead of being present and truly engaged? Am I dining in a restaurant with my spouse and scrolling, rather than engaging in real-time conversation?

If even one of the above questions resonates, then learning how to do a digital detox is worthwhile. Here are two steps to follow.

Step 1 on How to Do a Digital Detox: SET A DIGITAL DETOX GOAL

After answering the above questions, you should have an idea of what behaviours around technology you want to change. Then it’s time to set your digital detox goals.

But, let’s agree that it is probably impossible to cut out technology from our lives completely – nor do we want to. Instead, the key is to determine which habits or behaviours you would like to change, then make a realistic plan to achieve it.

Start with your answers to the above questions and what jumps out as a problem in your relationship with technology. In a recent article, Lifeline Toolkit provided brilliant examples of goal setting for your digital detox and I’ve used their format to create one as a sample.

Behaviour: I spend too much time on social media.

Impact: It’s starting to have a negative impact. Comparing myself to others, feeling down about my life, getting pulled into buying items that I don’t need, fake news and unwelcome opinions that people post, negative comments and how people ‘talk’ with (and disrespect) each other online.

Goal: Reduce time on social media platforms from current usage (2 hours per day) to maximum 30 minutes per day for the next 2 weeks.

Plan: Remove social media apps from devices so that I log in via laptop to select social media sites. Set time limits for these websites. To change these settings on my Mac – choose Apple > System Preferences > Screen Time and set time limits to 30 minutes. Hit ‘snooze for 30 days’ on Facebook for anyone that posts political views that are unhelpful to me.

My best tip here is to keep it simple. Goals do not have to be complicated so my best tip is to keep it simple. Start small and just so one thing. It takes a bit of introspection but once you get started, you will feel a positive impact. Give it a try!

Step 2 on How to Do a Digital Detox: TOP TACTICS FOR YOUR DIGITAL DETOX

Below you will find everything from basic strategies (and yes, some will seem archaic) to a full-on detox that will support you depending on your unique situation. My recommendation is to read through this list and check off the ones that you know will have the biggest impact on your well-being. Again, start small – just do one thing! And build on it when you’re ready.

Note: full credit to Lifeline Toolkit and The Good Trade for these great suggestions (with a few of my own thrown in too!) 😉

Go through your social platforms and ask: “How does this enhance my life?” From there, either delete the platform altogether or clean through your contacts. Unfriend, unfollow and hide any that don’t match your values – or at least, don’t make you feel the way you want to feel. An exercise I’ve done lately is to ‘snooze for 30 days’ those that have elevated my anxiety with their Facebook posts, especially around political issues. IT HAS MADE A WORLD OF DIFFERENCE! Social media, in particular, encourages us to consume content rapidly and superficially, rewarding quick reactions over measured responses.
Use Screen Time and Downtime to manage your phone usage. These provide a look at the amount of notifications you’re getting and the frequency with which you’re checking your phone.
Turn off all non-essential notifications.
Make a habit of using the “do not disturb” function at certain times to shut notifications off completely.
Remove addictive apps from your home screen to avoid being tempted to use them each time you unlock your phone.
Speaking of addictive apps – please, please break up with breaking news. Do you really need the latest news blasting at you on your phone? Instead, set aside time to catch up on world news and then let it go.
Leave your phone at home or in a separate room when you don’t need it. Some examples might be when you’re at work, going for a walk, shopping (remember your bank card or cash – and yes, you can still pay with a real card or cash), or going to the bathroom.
Log off and shut down all your devices by a certain time each night.
Make your bedroom a device-free zone. Ah…. “but my phone is my alarm clock.” Trust me – go buy a real alarm clock and keep your devices out of your bedroom.
20-20-20 rule: Take a break every 20 minutes, for 20 minutes, at least 20 metres away from your device.
Use digital tools to block access to your newsfeed on social media or entire websites. Some examples are #blockit (only for iOS), Stay Focused: Site & App Focused (Android), SelfControl (for MAC) and StayFocused Google Chrome extension for PC.
Turn off AI features in settings like Google searches and other apps that track your data. ‘They’ are watching you so turning off AI features can help maintain your privacy, limit targeted ads, and reduce digital clutter constantly bombarding you. An easy way to do this is simply add “-ai” to your Google search to omit the results.
While you’re at it, protect your privacy and potentially limit digital clutter on your browsers. A recent article in The Good Trade offered advice if you’re using Google as your primary search engine. You can use Google settings that limit and customize your personalized ads, disable location tracking, or prevent automatic data collection. Or consider switching to privacy-first search engines like DuckDuckGo or Startpage, which do not track your searches or retain your data.
Consider using privacy-focused browsers like Brave or Firefox, which block trackers by default.
For existing browsers like Chrome, install extensions such as uBlock Origin or Privacy Badger to block third-party trackers.
Regularly clear cookies and browsing history to minimize the data sites can retain about you.
On your mobile device, review the permissions you’ve granted to each app on your phone. Turn off access to your location, microphone, and camera unless it’s absolutely necessary for functionality.
Also, on your mobile device, disable “background data” usage for non-urgent apps. This not only protects your data but also conserves battery life and reduces bandwidth usage.
On social media apps, opt out of personalized ads and limit data collection by managing privacy settings. For example, Facebook allows you to turn off location history and ad targeting preferences in your account settings.
Clean your email inbox. How many emails have been sitting in your inbox for 24 hours or more? Having an email strategy will help to lift a burden of digital clutter. For each email, if it requires no action, delete it immediately. If it requires a simple reply, respond immediately and then archive it. If a message requires some level of thought or response, have a plan to get it out of your inbox as quickly as possible.
Speaking of your email inbox, be smart about what you subscribe to. If you love certain newsletters, read them every day and then archive. Or set up rules to move them into a different folder that doesn’t clutter your main email inbox. Gmail has made this easier with their new, updated interface.
Read a paper book. Certainly, audiobooks and e-readers have made books more accessible but they also are designed to prioritize speed and convenience over contemplation. E-books, with their built-in dictionaries and highlighting features, can tempt us to treat reading as a task to be optimized rather than an experience to be savored. Reading on a device can also distract by pulling you online and away from your book.
Before answering your phone, responding to an email or texting someone back, consider your capacity. We are a multi-tasking bunch but it isn’t really productive. Why not just pay for your groceries at the checkout counter instead of answering that phone call.
Find a digital detox buddy and keep each other accountable.
Sit down for this last tip – keep your landline or reinstall it if you don’t have one. That’s right. An article in the New Zealand Herald shared how parents are bringing back the home phone as a way to delay getting their children cellphones thereby avoiding the pitfalls of smartphones. Of course, landlines are on the decline but I’m reluctant to give up mine for safety reasons. And guess what? My provider actually pays me .56 cents for my landline.

Phew! That was a lot, I know.

But, the reality is that technology has started to invade our lives in a way that is not beneficial. Taking control back in even small ways will allow time to experience real life without distractions. It’s also a way to reconnect with others personally rather than through a screen. Give it two weeks and notice how you feel.

TELL ME: What is missing from these tips? And, I’d also love to hear how you do should you decide to do a digital detox. Either share in the comments or reach out directly with me.