Short read: ‘Digital detox’ is now a booming business but it won’t do much to reduce your screen time

We have all read long articles and books on how we can kick our addiction to all things digital. We learn from Quynh Hoang that this is now a booming industry:

“People are increasingly willing to pay to escape the technology they feel trapped by. The global digital detox market is currently valued at around US$2.7 billion (£2bn), and forecast to double in size by 2033.”

There are premium phones, subscription websites and special hotels to help you with your digital detox by Mr Hoang tells us that this is all in vain:

“However, my new research, with colleagues at Lancaster University, suggests this commercialised form of abstinence rarely extinguishes digital cravings – instead merely acting as a temporary pause.

We carried out a 12-month netnography focusing on the NoSurf Reddit community of people interested in increasing their productivity, plus 21 in-depth interviews (conducted remotely) with participants living in different countries. We found that rather than actively confronting their habits, participants often reported outsourcing self-discipline to blocker apps, timed lockboxes and minimalist phones…

Philosopher Slavoj Žižek defines this kind of behaviour – delegating the work of self-regulation to a market product – as “interpassivity”. This produces what he calls “false activity”: people thinking they are addressing a problem by engaging with consumer solutions that actually leave their underlying patterns unchanged.

Several of our detoxing participants described a cycle in which each relapse prompted them to try yet another tool, entrenching their dependency on the commercial ecosystem.”

So what is to be done? How can rid ourselves of the need to peer into our phones for more than 3 hours each day? Like with many other things in the modern world, Mr Hoang believes that the answer lies in Asia:

“In Asia, we also see some examples of community- or country-level, non-commercial responses to the problem of digital overload.

In central Japan, Toyoake has introduced the country’s first city-wide guidance on smartphone use. Families are encouraged to set shared rules, including children stopping device use after 9pm. This reframes digital restraint as a community practice, not a test of individual willpower.

In western India, the 15,000 residents of Vadgaon are asked to practise a nightly, 90-minute digital switch-off. Phones and TVs go dark at 7pm, after which many of the villagers gather outdoors. What began during the pandemic is now a ritual that shows healthy tech habits can be easier together than alone.

And in August 2025, South Korea – one of the world’s most connected countries – passed a new law banning smartphone use in school classrooms from next March, adding to the countries around the world with such a rule. A similar policy in the Netherlands was found to have improved focus among students.”

Mr Hoang ends the piece that it is this society-level solutions that are the only way forward rather than the expensive digital detox solutions that are being offered to us.

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