digital wellbeing
Digital detox
A deliberate reset of your relationship with screens — done well, environment redesign rather than temporary abstinence.
A digital detox is a deliberate reset of your relationship with screens. The popular version — a week of abstinence, then relapse — fails like a crash diet. The version that works is environment redesign: remove the feeds from the devices you carry, so restraint stops depending on hourly willpower.
Research on habit change is consistent: people who succeed do not resist temptation better, they encounter less of it. That is the entire premise of the dumbphone movement — the detox stops being an event and becomes the default state of your pocket.
Related Terms
View all →Digital minimalism
A philosophy of technology use: keep only the tools whose benefit outweighs their cost to your attention, and drop the rest.
Doomscrolling
Compulsively scrolling negative news long past the point of usefulness — a designed behavior, not a personal failing.
Dumbphone
A mobile phone deliberately limited to essentials — calls, texts, maybe maps — with no social media, feeds, or app store.
Screen time
The hours per day spent on device screens — the metric that started a thousand detoxes, averaging 4-5 hours on phones alone.