You don’t need to be a biohacker spending $2million per year on a routine to boost your brain.
That’s according to a Canadian study that found someone can reverse their brain age by 10 years by turning off their cellphone’s internet for two weeks.
In a study on 400 people — students and working-age adults — researchers asked participants to download an app that blocked their smartphones access to the internet. They could still make calls and send texts.
Participants completed surveys before and after the study to measure their brain function and mental wellbeing.
Results showed their sustained attention — ability to focus on one subject — was boosted so much it became equivalent to the attention span of someone 10 years younger.
Ninety percent of people also reported improvements in their mental health, on a magnitude greater than that expected from taking antidepressants for two weeks.
And participants said they had improvements in their personal well-being and feelings of life satisfaction.
Researchers said the shift in the brain was likely due to a change in how people spent their time, with individuals now spending less time on the internet and more socializing in person, exercising and being in nature.
The above graph shows how sustained attention ability – the ability to focus on one task for a period of time – and mental health improved over the one-month. It shows the group that blocked access to the internet from their phone for the first two weeks (blue) and for the second two weeks (red)
Researchers also found over the study period, screen time nearly halved — dropping in one group from five hours and 14 minutes to two hours and 41 minutes a day on average.
In the study, the team from the University of British Columbia said: ‘Despite the many benefits mobile internet offers, reducing the constant connection to the digital world can have large positive effects.’
They added: ‘Our results provide evidence that blocking mobile internet from smartphones for two weeks can produce significant improvements for [well-being], mental health and the objectively measured ability to sustain attention.
‘Even those who did not fully comply with the intervention experienced significant, though more modest, improvements.
‘These findings suggest that constant connection to the online world comes at a cost, since psychological functioning improves when this connection is reduced.’
In the experiment, published in the journal PNAS Nexus, researchers recruited participants from America and Canada via an online portal.
Participants were aged 32 years old on average, while 63 percent were female, and 29 percent were students and 42 percent were employed full-time.
They were asked to complete three surveys measuring their cognition over the course of one month, each two weeks apart.
They were split into two groups, with the first group downloading an app that completely blocked all internet access — called the Freedom App — to block internet access from their phone for the first two weeks.
The second group used their phone as normal for the first two weeks, and then downloaded the app to block internet access for the second two.
Analysis was carried out to calculate their scores for sustained attention, mental health and subjective well-being.
Out of the 467 people who enrolled in the study, 266 downloaded and set up the app. Of these, 119 blocked the internet for at least 10 of the 14 intervention days.
In the group that had internet blocked first, screen time dropped from 314 minutes a day to 161 minutes a day — or down by almost half.
Ninety percent of participants reported improvements in their mental health after disconnecting their smartphones from the internet for two weeks
It then rebounded to 265 minutes in the following two weeks when they could freely access the internet, but remained 15 percent below the levels before the start of the experiment.
In the other group, screen time dropped from 336 to 322 minutes in the first two weeks when they had not blocked their access to the internet.
It then dropped from 322 to 190 minutes in the second two-week period, or down 41 percent compared to the previous periods.
About 90 percent of American adults own a smartphone, or a phone that can connect to the internet, spending four hours and 35minutes on them per day on average.
Yet nearly half of Americans — and about four out of five people under 30 — express concerns over their regular use.
Young adults are said to be concerned that constantly being online is making it harder for them to connect with real people and to be meaningfully engaged with their family.
And the concerns are reaching schools full of young developing children, with at least nine states — including California, Florida and Ohio — now banning mobile phones from classrooms.
Schools in the UK, which called for a ban on smartphones in classrooms in February last year, teachers say they are seeing improvements in attainment and behavior.
Several US states are moving to ban cell phones, claiming the devices have greatly contributed to cyberbullying, poor mental health and a lack of learning
Researchers also echoed the concern, saying humans had evolved in a world where information and social contact was hard to come by.
This suggested the constant stimulation offered by being connected to the internet could make it hard to control thoughts and behaviors.
The intervention blocked all internet access, but in the future the researchers said they would like to only block particular applications — such as only social media sites.
They would also like to investigate whether reducing the use of other internet-connected devices, such as laptops or tablets, could have a similar effect.
Limitations included that the sample included mostly people who were motivated to reduce smartphone use.
The study was funded by the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the largest foundation in the silicon valley.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook is its largest donor, which gave $1.75billion to the charity in 2010 and another $200million in 2018.
