Getting off the phone and back to real life

Week one: Digital detox 

Dr Colin O’Gara says phones act on the brain in a similar way to slot machines.

It’s high summer, and life feels a little easier. Most of us are moving to a slower rhythm as holidays free us from the rigid routine of work, and long evenings give us more opportunities to relax and reconnect with the people and world around us.

This slower rhythm allows us to reset. A reset that can restore our energy levels while also prompting us to consider how we live during the rest of the year and question whether we might cultivate healthier habits as we move into autumn and the busy final quarter of the year.

Starting today and continuing every Friday throughout July, we will look at five aspects of modern life where many of us would benefit from making changes.

This week, the focus is on phone detoxing.

According to the latest Deloitte Digital Trends report, our relationship with our phones is not a good one. The report surveyed 1,000 adults in Ireland in 2025, and 70% said they spent too much time on their phones. Some 34% checked their phones at least 50 times daily, while 15% did so at least 100 times.

Colin O’Gara, a consultant psychiatrist and head of addiction services at St John of God Hospital in Dublin, isn’t surprised so many of us struggle to manage our phone usage.

Dr Colin O’Gara says phones act on the brain in a similar way to slot machines.

“The applications we have on our phones have been programmed in a way that hijacks our neurochemistry, causing massive dopamine surges and neurochemical changes in our brains and bodies, which are addictive by nature,” he says. “In the same way we won’t always win on the slot machines; we won’t always be excited by every video or post we see as we doomscroll. But we get a [dopamine] hit now and then, and that irregular hit keeps us caught in a loop of endless scrolling.”

We pay an emotional toll for this scrolling. Hilda Burke, a psychotherapist and the author of The Phone Addiction Workbook, says that “heavy phone usage compromises our ability to focus”.

“It affects our ability to be present for what is happening around us, and more than anything, it steals time. It diverts and distracts us from doing other potentially more nourishing activities,” she adds.

Dr Mark Griffiths is a professor of behavioural addiction at Nottingham Trent University in Britain and a leading expert in gambling, gaming and internet addiction. He points out that research such as a 2023 Australian study also shows that excessive smartphone use is associated with higher rates of depression, anxiety, stress and poor sleep.

Phone watch

How can you figure out if you are using your phone excessively? Griffiths recommends checking your screen time in your phone settings, as “being aware of the problem is often the first step in enabling behavioural change”.

Burke encourages you to delve deeper than your overall screen time. “Look at the breakdown,” she says. “Phones are tools and everything depends on how you use them. If your screen time is spent on work or catching up with friends or selling your old clothes on Vinted, these are all beneficial uses of your time. They are not the same as hours spent scrolling through social media.”

Hilda Burke: Face-to-face time or a call ‘nurtures our hunger for connection’.

To check, search for the Screen Time tab in your phone settings. Click on it, and it will reveal the amount of time you spend on your phone as well as on your apps.

Another way to determine whether your phone usage is problematic is to ask yourself the question O’Gara asks his patients: Are you using your phone to the extent that you are neglecting other aspects of life? Is it stopping you from going out and meeting people or spending time on hobbies and activities that give you a sense of wellbeing?

If it is, there are steps you can take to break the habit.

It may not be easy. O’Gara recognises that “we have all fallen into the trap of opening our phone to check something quickly, noticing a social media update, and then finding ourselves 10 or 20 minutes later, wondering where the time went. These apps are hard to resist.”

Step by step

Griffiths believes the best approach to digital detox is gradual. Just as you would with an exercise programme, focus on building up your tolerance over time.

“Start by setting a target of 15 minutes without looking at your phone and then increase that target incrementally until you can spend a few hours every day without feeling the need to be online,” he says.

If you think you will struggle to meet this target, O’Gara says there are tools to help resist the lure of your phone, such as “lock boxes you can place the phone in for certain lengths of time, timers you can set to limit your use of particular apps or brick devices that block apps from your phone”.

“It’s also possible to disable push notifications or turn the volume setting to silent on devices to reduce the urge to constantly check in,” says Griffiths.

Another tactic he suggests is defining periods of self-imposed non-screentime, such as mealtimes and bedtimes. This may be more difficult if you use your phone as an alarm clock or if you wear a smartwatch. “You run the risk of noticing you have received a text, email, or notification when you check the time,” he says. “Avoid that temptation by doing what I do — wearing a wristwatch and using an old-fashioned alarm clock.”

Burke points out that it’s normal to experience some withdrawal symptoms as you decrease your phone usage.

“Checking the phone and logging into social media is a way for many people to feel involved in the world and included in a community. Stepping away from that will leave a void, which will make you feel a certain twitchiness. Overcome that twitchiness and fill that void by creating a new sense of community,” she says.

You could do this by spending more time with family and friends. “A catch-up face-to-face or over the phone creates much deeper bonds with the people we care about than liking their posts on social media,” says Burke. “It nurtures our hunger for connection.”

Other options to replace screen time include spending time on activities such as taking the dog for a walk, participating in sport or fitness, or enjoying arts and crafts — all of which are next to impossible to do while on the phone.

Choose green time

Swapping screentime for green time may be particularly beneficial. A 2019 British study involving 19,806 participants

found that people who spent at least 120 minutes a week in nature reported significantly higher levels of health and wellbeing. That’s only 17 minutes a day, and those 17 minutes don’t have to be spent in bucolic countryside.

The study also found that any garden, park, or area of greenery had the same positive effect. These positive effects are likely to further motivate you to decrease your dependency on your phone, says Burke.

“Whatever it is you do with the time you previously devoted to your screen — whether it’s moving your body, having more conversations with loved ones, or getting stuck into a good book — as long as you’re enjoying it, you’ll want more of it.”

In his clinical work, O’Gara sees people struggling with issues relating to phone usage.

“Gambling, gaming, and porn are the big ones, but we’re seeing problems with the likes of shopping and scrolling too,” he says. “We expect phone addiction to follow the general pattern of addiction, whereby 20% of people will have a problem managing their usage. That 20% needs to know there are services and supports that can help.”

As for the other 80% of us, he believes we will “be able to identify when we are adversely using technology and make appropriate changes so that we use phones and devices in ways that add to our lives rather than taking from them”.

That’s your challenge for the rest of the summer. Come back next week to find out what other healthy habits you can cultivate.

It affects our ability to be present for what is happening around us, and more than anything, it steals time