Solitude and brain health — choose a focused life in a noisy world

Cognitive 'canaries in the coalmine'? Studies of people born since 1995 — the first group to enter their teens with smartphones, tablets, and persistent connectivity, have found that teenagers were consuming media, including text messaging and social networks, for an average of nine hours a day. 

Studies have shown that if you suffer from solitude deprivation, the quality of your life suffers too

For two years of his presidency, the American president Abraham Lincoln lived in a rural cottage, three miles from the White House. It was there he drafted the Emancipation Proclamation. He also recorded scraps of ideas that he would sometimes store in the lining of his top hat as he wandered the grounds at night. Living in the cottage gave him the solitude he needed to organise his thoughts in a way that was impossible in the frenzied White House environment.

In a modern world that values connectivity above all else, solitude and loneliness are frequently bundled together and the value of being alone with your thoughts is lost. Cal Newport, in his book Digital Minimalism (2019) argues that everyone benefits from regular doses of solitude — and equally importantly, that anyone who avoids this state for an extended period, will suffer.