We’re addicted to our phones. This is my experiment to break free. •‿•
A month without a phone in my pocket. Here’s why & how.
The freest I’ve felt in the past year were moments when I was separated from my phone. I’ve felt this way in dance workshops. I’ve felt it on nights when my battery was so low that I had to switch off for hours so I could use my phone to get back home in the wee hours. I’ve felt it in Berlin nightclubs that make you check your phone in the cloakroom for privacy reasons.
One night, while I was out, my phone acted up, losing connection with my SIM card. A friend was considering joining me at an event. I messaged them using the WiFi connection of a train station that I was about to be offline and until what time I was planning to stay out. Then, I left the station and went completely offline for hours. I’m never offline. It felt more adventurous. Would my friend show up? When would they find me? Initially, I kept my eye on the entrances, but eventually brought my full attention into the moment. If they join, they’ll find me. If they don’t, I’d rather not spend the evening only half present.
I use my phone too much—more than I have to. I’ve known this for years, and it’s one of the reasons why I’m diligent about social media notification schedules. For emails, I don’t get notifications at all. I check my inbox throughout the day anyway.
In addition, I’ve managed the socials of music entertainment brand COLORS for the past year or two. This meant that on top of my social media life and the rest of my job, I’d be attached to my phone during the evenings to roll out new shows to our audience of millions, and to monitor comment sections for trolls. It was amazing, but I felt ‘too online’.
The Brain Drain Effect
During this time, a 2017 study from the University of Texas kept lingering in my mind. In the study, the researchers had participants perform a series of cognitive tasks, including tests of working memory and problem-solving ability.
The first group left their phone in another room.
The second group kept their phones in their pockets or bags.
The third group had their phones on their desk.
Those who left their phones outside of the room performed significantly better on tasks requiring focus and problem-solving. The group with phones on their desk performed the worst, even though all phones were set to silent and did not vibrate.
In a separate experiment, researchers tested whether it made a difference if the phone was face up or down on the desk or even turned off. It didn’t.
“The mere presence of one’s own smartphone may occupy limited-capacity cognitive resources, thereby leaving fewer resources available for other tasks and undercutting cognitive performance.”
The published study’s title was aptly led by the words: Brain Drain.
Before I go on, a 2022 meta-analysis found mixed evidence for the brain drain effect. The science isn’t settled, but the idea that my phone might be reshaping how I think has stuck with me. And it’s not just about focus. It even impacts the way we remember things.
The Google Effect
“Life imitates art. We shape our tools and thereafter they shape us. These extensions of our senses begin to interact with our senses,” wrote American media scholar John M. Culkin, disseminating Marshall McLuhan’s ideas of media theory in 1967.
Few ideas illustrate this better than the Google Effect, a phenomenon identified in a 2011 study by psychologists Betsy Sparrow, Jenny Liu, and Daniel Wegner, published in Science. The study found that when people expect to have access to information in the future, such as by looking it up, they are less likely to remember the info itself and more likely to remember how to find it again. In other words, the internet has become an external memory system.
In an experiment from that study, participants typed trivia statements into a computer and saved them into folders. These included facts like “an ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain” or “The space shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry over Texas in Feb. 2003.” Afterwards, participants were divided into two groups:
One group was then told the information would be saved and could be accessed later.
The other group was told the information would be deleted and they wouldn’t be able to access it.
Immediately after entering the trivia, they got a surprise test: those who thought it was saved remembered less but were better at recalling where it was stored.
This suggests that we don’t just forget things; we outsource memory, much like we do in social relationships through transactive memory. This brings us to the next topic: our phones change how we experience being alone and together.
The loneliness epidemic
One consequence of the everyday technologies in our lives has been social separation. We put on our headphones when we’re out and listen to music. If we’re waiting for someone at a bar, we look at our phones. When on our phones, we get personalised feeds of content that are unique to ourselves, which means we have less of a shared media experience than back in the TV and magazine era.
We are more connected than ever, yet more alone in our own worlds.
A 2012 study found that simply having a phone on the table makes conversations less engaging and reduces feelings of closeness—even if the phone isn’t being used. We think of our phones as passive objects, but they actively shape our interactions.
One place that, perhaps unexpectedly, taught me about this is Berlin’s nightlife. In many clubs here, taking photos can get you thrown out, and even pulling out your phone near the dance floor can be frowned upon. It has taught me to keep that thing in my pocket. And when everyone else does too, you’re actually in the same moment together. No screens between you, no distractions pulling you apart.
Going out without my phone forces me to open up to my surroundings. It makes me notice who’s actually there with me.
The internet as a place
While I was already planning my experiment, I stumbled upon this screenshot by Instagram user abortedfetus133 of an exchange on the website formerly known as Twitter (you can follow me on Bluesky now btw).
For those who can’t see the image, it’s a photo of a 90s PC in the classic computer furniture from that era with the caption:
sorry for being nostalgia baited but it was kind of nice where the internet was a single, solitary, unmoving place instead of a terror that extends to everywhere. you went to this specific spot to go to the internet. when you left the spot, you left the internet. it was a place.
There’s something peaceful about being offline. About knowing that when you close your laptop, the internet stays there instead of following you around in your pocket.
What would it feel like to step out of the internet again? To have a clear boundary between being online and offline?
Over the past couple of years, I’ve come to understand my brain better. I know that my ADHD makes me reach for my phone compulsively for a quick dopamine hit to fix the deficit. The cost of that dopamine is stress; it’s looking down at my phone a million times a day, which messes with posture, and perhaps it messes with my eyes too, as I don’t end up looking off into the distance nearly as often.
I’ve gotten good at managing that. A big part of that is exercise. I also usually keep my phone away from my bed, so it’s not the first and last thing I see in a day. I’ve trained myself to reward tiny steps toward things that are hard.
Now, I want to see what happens when I step outside without a phone at all.
How is this going to work?
The rules:
I do not take my phone out of the house. Not even switched off, because I suspect that having my phone will somehow impact me, just like the turned-off phones on the table in the Brain Drain study did.
If friends have phones and we need to look something up, that’s ok. This is not an experiment about being offline completely. It’s just about leaving my phone at home.
I’m not allowed to take my laptop with me as a phone replacement. It’s tempting to think, “maybe I can bring my laptop so I can check my emails later,” but if that’s something I’d normally do from my phone, then that’s a no.
I’m leaving my fitness tracker at home, too. It’s been a great tool for my fitness journey, and despite being offline while I’m out, when I’m home, it connects and stores the collected data online automatically. So, in fact, I’m not quite ‘disconnected’ when I carry that with me.
Sounds simple, but I already found some challenges:
I book fitness classes through a platform that requires a QR code check-in. I’ve cancelled my membership and will just go to a school where QR code check-ins aren’t necessary.
I get discounts in my local supermarket by, you guessed it, scanning a QR code. Bye savings, but hello privacy!
If I stay over at someone’s place, it means I’ll be unavailable for a period of time that falls outside of many social norms. If there is a family emergency, I might only learn about it after 12-16 hours or maybe longer. Unfortunately, that’s how it will have to be for this month. This was normal not that long ago, and I’ll just have to deal with it.
What if friends are late? I’ve already let people around me know about my experiment, but I’ll always send a reminder of how long I’m going to wait and where. After that, I’m off. I supposed if I’m meeting at a cafe, they could always call the place and ask them to let me know they’re later than the agreed-upon time. I don’t want to put my friends through that, but a month should be okay (and if anyone doesn’t like it, we can always meet next month).
What if I am late? I’m going to avoid planning back-to-back meetings that require me to move around the city a lot. There are just not enough phone booths around the city these days. In any case, my rule of thumb is that if I’m more than 15 minutes late, assume I’m not coming. I usually am more than 10 minutes early to meetings, so I don’t expect this to be an issue.
I’ll have to print event tickets or coordinate with friends to have my ticket on their phone. I already know of one event where the QR code needs to be presented digitally, so if anyone I know is going to see Finnish techno, IDM & ambient-producer Aleksi Perälä in Berlin this month, give me a shout.
Will bouncers in Berlin’s no-photo policy clubs believe I don’t have a phone when I need to show I have stickers on my phone’s cameras? We’re going to find out.
No music outside! This is a big one. I’ve been listening to music on the go since I was 12, when I’d cycle for 30 minutes to school in the next town every day. Are the long walks I go on going to be as interesting without music? What about a day trip on my bicycle? Should I get a portable music player?
No photos or videos. This one makes me a little sad. I expect the month to be a wonderful adventure, but I’ll only be able to document it if I bring my old school digital camera out with me, though I think it’s broken. I don’t even know if I can be bothered. What a luxury it is to just have one device that does it all.
What if I lock myself out? This is the biggest fear. Especially if it’s very late in the evening. My friend who has spare keys just moved, and I don’t quite know their address yet, and I definitely haven’t memorized their phone number.
Do it for the plot
Yes, it’s partly a post-social media management detox. It’s partly a personality quirk of going all-in on stuff I’m curious about. One thing I’ve learned in the past years through consistently pushing myself out of my comfort zone through sports, dance, yoga & pilates classes, is that that’s where improvement happens. Repeatedly. It makes you stronger, more flexible, more resilient.
If anything, this month is going to provide interesting stories. I’ll do a ton more research on these topics and will speak to experts. And I’ll be sharing all of that with you, directly in your inbox. So, if you don’t want to miss that, then star this email, move it to your primary inbox, mark it as priority, etc.
Let’s see what happens. I’ll report back soon. Thank you for following!
Love,
Bas
This experiment was launched in March 2025 and has since concluded. You can read all the posts related to the experiment in the related archive by clicking the ‘Read more’ button below.
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Such a well written post! I have been trying to minimize my internet usage for the past year and it hasn’t been easy but posts like this encourage me to keep going