Blocking mobile internet on smartphones improves sustained attention, mental health, and subjective well-being - PubMed
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Abstract
Smartphones enable people to access the online world from anywhere at any time. 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. We conducted a month-long randomized controlled trial to investigate how removing constant access to the internet through smartphones might impact psychological functioning. We used a mobile phone application to block all mobile internet access from participants' smartphones for 2 weeks and objectively track compliance. This intervention specifically targeted the feature that makes smartphones "smart" (mobile internet) while allowing participants to maintain mobile connection (through texts and calls) and nonmobile access to the internet (e.g. through desktop computers). The intervention improved mental health, subjective well-being, and objectively measured ability to sustain attention; 91% of participants improved on at least one of these outcomes. Mediation analyses suggest that these...