The Experiment I Kept Putting Off
For two years I thought about doing a digital detox. I knew I was using my phone too much — the screen time reports confirmed it with a specificity I found both embarrassing and unsurprising. But the prospect of deleting the apps I relied on felt simultaneously dramatic and inadequate. Dramatic because of how disorienting it seemed. Inadequate because I suspected I’d just reinstall them after three days and feel worse about myself for having tried.
What I ended up doing instead was less extreme and more permanent: I deleted Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and LinkedIn from my phone — not my accounts, just the apps — and waited to see what actually happened. This is the account of the six weeks that followed.
The First 72 Hours
The first three days were uncomfortable in a way that felt disproportionate to what I’d done. The apps were gone, but the muscle memory remained — an almost involuntary reach for my phone during any pause in activity. Waiting for coffee, standing in a lift, sitting in the first thirty seconds after a meeting ended. The habit was so ingrained that the absence felt like a phantom limb.
What replaced the phone reach was mostly nothing. Actual stillness. Looking at things. Waiting without distraction. It felt uncomfortable in a way that was revealing — I’d apparently been using the phone not because of the content it delivered but as a mechanism for avoiding the mild discomfort of unoccupied moments. That discomfort, I discovered, fades within about a week.
What Cal Newport’s Research Actually Shows
Newport, whose book Digital Minimalism frames this territory better than anything else I’ve read on it, distinguishes between the technologies that add value to your life and the technologies that have colonised your life without a clear value proposition. The question he suggests asking about any digital tool is not “does this provide any benefit?” — almost everything provides some benefit — but “is this the best way to use this part of my life?”
The research Newport cites is sobering. Studies on social media usage consistently show that passive consumption — scrolling, reading, watching without interacting — correlates with decreased wellbeing, while active use — direct messaging, creating content, maintaining specific friendships — correlates with wellbeing roughly equivalent to in-person interaction. Most people’s phone use is overwhelmingly passive.
What Actually Changed After Six Weeks
The changes I noticed weren’t dramatic in the way I’d hoped — no sudden burst of creative productivity, no transformation of my social life. They were quieter and more durable. The most significant: the quality of my attention during conversations improved noticeably. Without the background anxiety of unread notifications, I was simply more present. People noticed, though I didn’t tell them what I’d changed.
I also read more. Not because I scheduled reading time but because the gaps that had been filled with scrolling were now available for something else, and reading was the most immediately available alternative I found rewarding. In six weeks I read four books. In the previous six months, I’d finished two.
The Apps I Didn’t Delete (and Why)
The exercise was clarifying precisely because it required me to distinguish between the apps that were genuinely serving me and the ones I was serving out of habit. Maps, messaging apps with specific people I wanted to stay connected to, a podcast app, a reading app — these stayed. Their presence in my life was connected to a clear purpose I could articulate.
The deleted apps, I realised, had no such articulated purpose. I was using them because they were there, because I was bored, because the slot machine mechanics of the feed made them compelling in a way that had nothing to do with any outcome I was trying to achieve.
A Practical Framework for Your Own Audit
- List every app you’ve used in the past week and write a one-sentence description of the value it provides
- Separate apps by type: tools (serve a defined purpose), communication (maintain specific relationships), and entertainment feeds (infinite scroll, algorithm-driven)
- For entertainment feeds specifically: ask whether the time spent there is proportionate to the value returned, compared to alternatives
- Delete for 30 days, not permanently — the goal is to recalibrate, not to become a digital monk
- After 30 days, consciously choose what to reinstall rather than defaulting back to everything
Key Takeaways
- The discomfort of deleting apps fades within a week — it reflects habit strength, not genuine need
- Passive social media consumption correlates with lower wellbeing; active use does not — most phone use is passive
- The question to ask about any app isn’t “does it have value?” but “is this the best use of this time?”
- The gaps left by deleted apps fill with whatever you consciously choose — including nothing, which has its own value
- A 30-day deletion is more informative than a permanent decision made in theory
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Sources
- Newport, C. (2019). Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World. Portfolio/Penguin.
- Twenge, J. et al. (2018). Decreases in psychological well-being among American adolescents after 2012. Emotion.
- Shakya, H. & Christakis, N. (2017). Association of Facebook Use With Compromised Well-Being. American Journal of Epidemiology.