Benefits Of Digital Detox: Two Weeks Offline Might Slow Down Ageing, Study Finds

The internet connects us to the world, but it has some consequences, as there is growing concern that constant use of smartphones could adversely impact cognitive functioning and mental health. Striking findings of a study on digital detox, published earlier this year, can be our mantra in 2026 for a better balance in life.

The study, published in PNAS Nexus, reveals that participants who spent two weeks without mobile internet showed attention spans comparable to someone a decade younger. A huge majority of 91% felt better after blocking the internet. The participants were allowed to maintain mobile connection through texts and calls, and could access the internet through desktop computers.

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"What we found was that people had better mental health, better subjective well-being and better sustained attention," Adrian Ward, a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin, said as quoted by NPR news.

A total of 467 people, aged between 18 to 74, took part in the month-long study, which was aimed at testing a theory that constant connection to everything has some unintended consequences.

"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," the authors said in the study.

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The researchers analysed mood and attention at the beginning, middle and end of the four-week study. The authors noted that the intervention improved mental health, subjective well-being and objectively measured ability to sustain attention.

The study stated that 91% of participants improved on at least one of these outcomes; on the other hand, 71% reported better mental health after the break, compared to before. And 73% reported better subjective well-being.

"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," the authors said.

"The size of these effects are larger than we anticipated," Noah Castelo, the study's first author and an assistant professor at the University of Alberta in Canada, said as quoted by NPR. 

"The effects on attention were about as large as if participants had become 10 years younger."