Phone Addiction, Withdrawals, and Reset

When CNET writer Nelson Aguilar turned off his phone notifications, the first thing he noticed was the silence. When he rose in the morning, there was literally nothing waiting for his attention, and he could gather his thoughts to start his day.

The lock screen on his cellular device was completely blank, and he understood; this was different. His phone simply had nothing to say, and he says it felt wrong.

Aguilar painstakingly went into his cell’s settings and disabled the notifications for each app the night before. Aguilar expected relief. Instead, he felt anxiety. He felt as if he was missing out. Was someone texting him? Did work need him? What if there was a story to cover? A package being delivered?

He reports that by the end of the week, he was detached from the urgency and the disruption. He could set his phone down without concern, and he was in control of when he looked at it.

Distractor or Director?

The purpose of notifications is to create urgency. To remind the user something is waiting for attention. Sometimes, it is important, but more often it is really nothing. Apps make money when users open them, use them to make a purchase, scroll through them, engage with them in some way. That alert is a fishing line designed to pull the user in hook, line, and sinker.

Americans check their phones 186 times a day, 11.6 times per hour awake, according to a 2026 Reviews.org survey. Half of the survey respondents sleep with their phones, and 41.3 percent feel anxiety when their device’s battery drops below 20 percent.

Aguilar says, “Notifications remove the need for curiosity.” If something has happened, the phone sends an alert each time there is an event and continues to do so until the user looks at it. It will send an alert when the user is sleeping, working, eating, talking, or walking; it does not matter the task.

The interruptions cause greater inattention and hyperactivity symptoms, according to a 2016 study conducted at the University of British Columbia and the University of Virginia.

A separate study conducted in 2022 by PLOS One found that people slowed slightly in their cognitive task when they heard their phone’s notification sound. This suggests that an unanswered alert pulls at one’s attention.

A 2026 study showed that social media notifications disrupt cognitive processing, which can last several seconds.

The device does not have to be in hand to be a distraction.

Aguilar did not desire to live without his cell, but wanted to break the control, prevent his phone from deciding when it could interrupt his day. He says, “My phone had become the thing that briefed me on reality before I entered it.”

Physical Response to Silence

At first, Aguilar was checking his cell more frequently. He reports his brain acted as if it was a “matter of national security.”

A study conducted in 2019 found that batching notifications three times a day improved productivity, focus, mood, and one’s sense of control over their devices. However, when notifications were completely disabled, anxiety increased, and there were fewer benefits to the user.

Professor Emeritus of psychology at California State University, Dominguez Hills, Larry Rosen says that reaction makes sense as alerts have become part of the reward cycle offered by the phone.

“When you wake up, and there’s nothing there, or very little there, you then slip into the anxiety system, because you’re not being fed all this dopamine anymore,” Rosen says.

He adds, “If you find yourself kind of ping-ponging between the dopaminergic system and the anxiety system, that’s really tough on your brain and your body. It’s exhausting.”

Phone Addiction

Neurologist TJ Powers specializes in phone addiction. He says, “Our brains are extremely overstimulated, and it’s burning out our dopamine receptors.”

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain that is linked to reward, pleasure, and motivation. Dr. Anna Lembke is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine and author of “Dopamine Nation.” She warns people that they will feel worse before they feel better when they change the alerts on their phone.

Withdrawal symptoms include feeling anxious, low mood, and feeling tired without the stimulation of the phone.

Lembke suggests a 30-day absence trial, also referred to as a “dopamine fast.” It takes four weeks to reset the brain’s reward pathways.

When asked if exhaustion was linked to the break from the phone, he replied, “Dopamine … it has a cousin in our system called adrenaline.

“It might not be that you’re suddenly more exhausted; it might be that you actually were pretty exhausted, but the phone was masking it. We don’t realize how exhausted we are until some of the external stimulation stops.”

Sources:

ONET: I Turned Off All My Phone Notifications for a Week. Here’s Why I’m Not Going Back
Make Tech Easier: People who turn off phone notifications aren’t avoiding connection – they’re protecting the last parts of their attention that still belong to them
CNN: The pros and cons of smartphone withdrawal

Featured Image Courtesy of Nicolas Nova’s Flickr Page – Creative Commons License