Dr. Sahar Yousef, neuroscientist, on the benefits of digital detox: “We’re already seeing decreases in depressive symptoms "

It seems almost impossible to get by these days without having your smartphone within arm’s reach. In fact, most of us have our smartphone in our hand just about every waking moment. However, recent studies have shown that this constant use of technology is causing harm to our brains.

“We’ve known for quite some time now that the more psychological negative effects of dooms scrolling and excessive use of screen time and social media use, those psychological negative side effects are again depressive symptoms, anxiety, higher levels of stress, loneliness, feeling disconnected, a lack of belonging,” says Dr. Sahar Yousef, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California Berkley. “But they’re also cognitive side effects. And those are decreases in one’s attention span, memory, potential fluid intelligence.”

But what is most frightening to her that is showing up in data from recent research is “actually seeing both functional changes to certain kinds of neural networks.” Additionally, “decreases in brain areas. So that’s brain atrophy,” she pointed out. “We’re losing brain tissue in areas of the brain related to self-awareness cognitive control.”

9-week digital detox helps reduce harms of social media addiction

Yousef conducted a nine-week digital detox with over 400 students at Berkley in which they were put in the driver’s seat and tapping into their own values about what kind of deal they were getting out of social media, their phone, and technology.

“We had them really ask themselves what intentions and what amount of scrolling makes sense for me,” she told NBC Bay Area News. “And then the name of the game was stick to your intentions and then have social accountability. And in a community that helps you do that.”

She is very excited from the initial results that are coming out of the data collected from the experiment. “What we are already seeing is significant decreases in depressive symptoms, anxiety, and loneliness,” she shared. “And also, significant increases in two variables mindfulness and life satisfaction.”

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