this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
227 points (95.6% liked)

Technology

63134 readers
3467 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
L3s@lemmy.world
enu@lemmy.world
technopagan@lemmy.world
L4s@lemmy.world
227
When You Block the Internet on Your Phone, Something Astonishing Happens Mentally (futurism.com)
submitted 22 hours ago by whydudothatdrcrane@lemmy.ml to c/technology@lemmy.world
23 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

A specialized iPhone app was used to block internet access, recording any time that the feature was disabled.

In numbers, nearly all the participants — 91 percent — improved on at least one of the three outcomes, while around three-quarters reported better mental health by the end.

The findings even suggest that the intervention had a stronger effect on depression symptoms than antidepressants, and was roughly on par with cognitive behavioral therapy.

What's driving all this? Ward suggests that the simplest explanation is that the experiment forced participants to spend more time doing fulfilling things in the real world.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Eldritch@lemmy.world 47 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

The internet is what you make it. I've never spent much time on overtly corporate media social or otherwise. Combined with largely avoiding the most politically toxic places both maga or ML.

Most of my time online is spent visiting places focused on retro Computing, Retro Gaming, music or some other hobbies. The internet hasn't changed drastically in 30 years. Just the way average people use it.

The corporate sites will never respect your time or privacy. They're just endless treadmills to keep you busy and engaged. We've always been able to hop off.

[–] daddy32@lemmy.world 4 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

While I agree with the sentiment of your post - you can tweak your own Internet usage and you should - this part is just ridiculously untrue:

The internet hasn't changed drastically in 30 years.

In the last 30 years, we saw coming of google, facebook, amazon and others as a major forces on the Internet, deploying Skinner boxes for billions of people and shaping what internet is to vast majority of users...

[–] Eldritch@lemmy.world 1 points 5 hours ago

Those are services etc on the internet. Not the internet itself.

[–] balder1991@lemmy.world 5 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago)

Yeah definitely. I just heee to disable social media and anything that’s based on addictive behavior, algorithmic feed etc. and I automatically start doing more interesting things online, such as read Wikis of subjects I like, play with programming etc.

The problem is everything that’s driven by engagement and made to keep you scrolling artificially is toxic by consequence.