Turn off a notification. Put a limit on Instagram. Leave your phone outside of dinner, perhaps without organizing a spiritual retreat in the Dolomites. In the Eurispes 2026 survey on digital technologies and mental health, only 12.7% of interviewees declared having adopted at least one strategy to self-regulate their digital use. And the most widespread practices are much less heroic than the word suggests digital detox: turn off notifications and put a timer on apps.
That 12.7% tells one thing above all: we know that the telephone takes up our time, much less often we build a concrete boundary. In fact, 30.4% admit that they do not use any strategy even though they think they should. And just 11.2% regularly check how much time they spend online through apps or settings; 52.9% proceed by eye, 35.9% couldn’t even quantify it. Digital time, when it is made up of thirty-second checks repeated dozens of times, also has this convenience: it manages to disappear while we are spending it.
The 12.7% who have already put some boundaries
Among those who have tried to regulate themselves, the most common solution is to deactivate notifications: 27.9% do it. Close behind are timers and application usage limits, chosen by 27%. 16.7% instead establish places or moments without devices, for example during meals or during time spent with family. Further back we find periods of digital detoxadopted by 11.6%, and set times in which not to use devices, at 8.6%.
They are percentages calculated among people who have already adopted self-regulation strategies, so they do not indicate that 27.9% of the entire population have turned off notifications. The distinction matters, because it reflects the real dimensions of the phenomenon: the group that transformed the intention into a daily rule remains small.
Yet the path chosen by those who try suggests an interesting approach. No spectacular gesture, no need to disappear from WhatsApp and reappear three weeks later enlightened. Rather, we intervene on small reminders that continually bring the hand back towards the smartphone.
“Digital silence” starts with notifications
Notifications are a good starting point precisely because they arrive without being searched for. In the survey, 51.3% check the alerts as soon as they wake up and the same percentage searches for any news during the day even when the phone has not reported anything. 29.9% interrupt other activities to check notifications or updates. Among 18-24 year olds these automatisms continue to rise: 86% look at notifications when they wake up and 80.3% check if something has happened even without having received an alert.
“Digital silence,” then, can be very literal. Removing sounds, vibrations and red dots from applications that don’t need to call us immediately means deciding when to open them instead of letting them choose the moment.
The next step can be equally trivial: making time visible. Eurispes finds that 83.9% used their smartphone at least sometimes for longer than they expected and 70.8% felt they had wasted too much time online. A timer has no particular therapeutic virtues. It does something more modest and useful: it transforms “I’ve been on social media for a while” into twenty, forty or ninety minutes. And from there at least we can think about a number.
A table, a bed, half an hour: building small oases offline
Then there is the physical border. In the survey, 69.9% used the phone at least sometimes during meals; 66.7% use it in bed upon waking up or before sleeping. In the hour before sleep, 81.4% use a device at least occasionally and for 77.5% the smartphone spends the night in the same room.
To create an offline oasis you therefore don’t need to start from an entire analogue Sunday. You can choose a much smaller piece of the day: dinner, half an hour before bed, a walk, time spent with someone. It is the same logic followed by that 16.7% of people who, among those who self-regulate, have decided to establish moments and spaces without devices.
Works? The survey measures perceived effectiveness, not clinical improvement in mental health. However, among those who use these strategies, 36.3% say they have achieved their objectives and 44.4% say they have succeeded at least partially; 8.9% continue despite judging them ineffective and 10.4% have abandoned them. These data therefore do not allow us to say that turning off notifications “cures” anxiety, stress or other disorders. They say something more limited: for many of those who have tried to set limits, those limits have been at least partially useful in relation to the goal they set themselves.
The telephone must not disappear, it must stop occupying every interstice
The question becomes clearer when looking at where the smartphone has already arrived. 65.2% of those interviewed use it at the table when eating alone, 63.3% while watching television, 55% in the bathroom, 51.1% while walking and almost half during outings with friends. They are different, apparently harmless minutes, which when put together transform many moments of waiting, boredom or simple silence into opportunities to check something.
From here a fairly sustainable minimalist rule can arise: first eliminate some reminders, then make time visible, finally defend one or two moments of the day. Without declaring war on the technology we use to work, orient ourselves, talk to friends, pay a bill or read the news.
Eurispes also records data that explains why it may be worth trying: 26.6% have tried to reduce the use of the telephone without success, a share that exceeds 40% between 18 and 34 years old. Intention alone seems to have some difficulty competing with a tool we carry in our pocket from alarm clock to bed.
That 12.7%, for now, remains a minority. To reach it you don’t necessarily need to become unavailable. Sometimes all it takes is for the phone to not be able to find us for half an hour.
