Five days without my phone felt like heaven – but here's what I wish I'd done before I logged back on
'Leaving the phone in a locked drawer, I felt fully free of it after the initial day or two, and by the end of the week, it felt as though my brain had been unbroken'
Recently, I locked my phone in a drawer and didn’t take it out for five days.
It was one of the best things I ever did.
My partner and I, both of whom work in jobs that require us to be terminally online, had been feeling a mix of extremely burned out and immensely wired.
If you are someone who spends a lot of time on your phone, watch the news, or generally participate in life in the 21st century, chances are, you’ve felt similar.
Researchers looking at the effects of taking part in a two-week-long social media detox at Canada's University of Windsor rounded up just some of the negative side effects of smartphone usage in the introduction to their study; impaired mental health, decreased self-esteem and well-being, poor sleep, reduced physical activity and increased sedentary behaviour.
Then, there are the newly acquired unfavourable habits some of us have picked up thanks to our addiction to tech, like phubbing, aka snubbing other people in social settings in favour of our phone.
If you think you aren't guilty of that one, just ask your friends and family.
So, when we booked a five-day getaway in Cavan’s remote CABÜ cabins, we decided to take their ‘relax and reboot’ message to heart by doing a digital detox.
Spending five days immersed in nature, away from Instagram notifications, endless TikToks and angry Twitter/X threads was unbelievably therapeutic.
Leaving the phone in a locked drawer in our cabin, I felt fully free of it after the initial day or two, and by the end of the week, it felt as though my brain had been unbroken.
Both my partner and I headed back from our trip feeling more rejuvenated than we ever had from a week away in the sun.
Unfortunately, back in the real world, with demanding jobs, friends and family to stay in contact with, and general life admin to be taken care of, our commitment to spend less time on our phones quickly dissipated without a clear plan in place.
I went straight back into the hustle and bustle of everyday working life without a realistic plan to implement digital boundaries, and in just a few short days, the mental clarity I’d achieved during my digital detox became a distant memory.
Sucked straight back into endless emails, Whatsapp notifications and news alerts, I started to wonder, what was the point if it was just a short-term salve?
As the clock struck 12 on New Year’s Eve, my Instagram ‘For You’ page became a sea of notes app screenshots of lists of ‘in’ and ‘out’ for 2025. Somewhat ironically, almost everyone posting on the app seemed to have some version of ‘spend less time online’ on their ‘in’ list for the year ahead.
From speaking to friends, and following travel influencers, I have also noticed an uptick in people booking remote getaways that advocate digital detoxes surrounded by nature.
Cal Newport, a well-known productivity guru and author of says in his experience, "gradually changing your habits one at a time doesn't work well."
"The engineered attraction of the attention economy combined with the friction of convenience, will diminish your inertia until your backslide toward where you started," he suggests.
By that logic, a detox trip like the one I undertook and so many of us seem to be craving in 2025, seems like a great place to start. But, that's the key. It's a start.
Without taking meaningful steps to address how you engage with the digital world once you go back online, your digital detox won't be much more than a sticking plaster.
So, what does Newport advise? Well, after your break, reintroduce digital technologies "from a blank slate".
Rather than putting your phone away for a week and then simply turning it back on and carrying on as usual, you should wipe the device of apps and only add back what you feel really adds value to your day-to-day life.
For anyone considering a digital detox or declutter in 2025, my best advice is to go into your detox with a clear idea of what you want to achieve.
Then, sit down at the end of your period without a phone and come up with a realistic, achievable, plan to implement digital boundaries that will work for you in your day-to-day life.
Don't have time for a tech-free week away in a cabin? Intimidated by the idea of a 30-day digital detox? Here are three easy steps you can implement today to give you some space if you're feeling overwhelmed from your digital life.
Get an old-school alarm clock. Or, let your morning phone alarm go off outside the bedroom door so you have to jump out of bed straight away in the morning to go switch it off before your partner gives out to you (my choice).
You might tell yourself you need your phone in the bedroom, but I guarantee you don’t.
Do I miss listening to audiobooks and podcasts at night? Yes. Is it worth sacrificing so I am not seeing work emails or graphic content from war zones or people fighting in YouTube comments at 1am? Yes.
For bonus points, see how long you can go about your business in the morning before you pick up the phone.
The benefits of just a few hours away from notifications, and an endless black hole of information, are many.
It would be near-on impossible for most of us to ditch the phone during the working week, but one day at the weekend, or even a half day, is achievable.
If you share a home with others, this will work much better if everyone agrees to the same time and parameters.
The eternal struggle is trying to find a balance in getting value from all the meaningful content we have access to online, without falling down an endless pit of scrolling.
My way around this has been to put a time limit on my scrolling.
I’ve found if I tell myself I’ve 30mins to spend on TikTok, it allows me to scroll fairly guilt-free, safe in the knowledge when that timer goes off, I haven’t wasted more than a half hour of my day.
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