Two Weeks Without Mobile Internet: What a Randomized Trial Found

What happens if your phone stops being a smartphone for two weeks? Calls and texts still work, but there's no browsing, no feeds and no apps that need the internet. A team of researchers in the US and Canada tested exactly that, and the results are among the strongest evidence so far that cutting back on the phone can change how you feel and how well you focus.

What the researchers did

The study, published in PNAS Nexus in 2025, recruited 467 adults who agreed to install an app (Freedom) that blocked all mobile internet on their phones, over both Wi-Fi and mobile data. They could still call, text and use the internet on a computer.

Participants were randomly split into two groups. One blocked mobile internet for the first two weeks. The other carried on as usual for those two weeks and then blocked it for the next two. Everyone was measured three times: at the start, after two weeks and after four. The researchers looked at three outcomes they had registered in advance: subjective well-being (life satisfaction and mood), mental health, and sustained attention, measured with a computer task rather than a questionnaire. Because the app tracked whether the block was on, they also knew who actually stuck with it.

What they found

Blocking mobile internet worked on all three outcomes. Well-being, mental health and the ability to sustain attention all improved compared with the group still using their phones as usual, and 91% of participants improved on at least one of the three. The authors estimate the gain in attention was about as large as the difference made by being ten years younger.

Screen time fell by half: from 314 to 161 minutes a day in the group that blocked first. When the block ended, it rose again to 265 minutes, still below where it started, and that group's well-being and mental health stayed higher than at baseline two weeks after the block was lifted.

The most useful finding may be why it worked. The improvements were partly explained by how people spent the time they got back: more socializing in person, more exercise and more time in nature.

What the study can't tell you

Sticking with it was hard. Of the 467 who signed up, 266 set up the block and only 119, about a quarter, kept it on for at least 10 of the 14 days. The main results count everyone who stayed in the study, whether or not they kept the block on, so they show what happens when people try; the benefits were larger in those who kept it on.

Participants also knew the study was about phones and well-being, which may have colored their answers about mood. The attention task is harder to fake, and it improved too. And the volunteers were paid, came from the US and Canada, and blocked the whole mobile internet, not a few chosen apps, so the study can't say how much of the benefit you'd get from blocking only your worst apps.

What it means for your phone

You don't have to turn your phone into a brick to use this. The study points to two things that matter: less easy access to the online world, and something better to do with the time.

• Block what pulls you in, not everything. A total block was so hard that three in four people didn't keep it up. Blocking the few apps that take the most time should be easier to live with.
• Plan the time you get back. Friends, movement and time outside did part of the work, so put them on the calendar, or write a dopamine menu of better things to reach for.
• Expect the rebound. Screen time crept back once the block ended, so a limit you keep beats a two-week challenge.

That last point is what Unrotten is built around: you choose the apps that eat your time, and Less scrolling gives them a daily limit, after which Apple's Screen Time shield locks them until the day resets, while calls, maps and everything else keep working. For the bigger picture, read our guide to phone addiction.