New Study: Blocking Mobile Internet Improves Attention, Mental Health & Well-Being

What the Study Found

A study published in PNAS Nexus did something rare in psychology research: instead of just asking people how they felt about their phones, it took their mobile internet away and measured what actually happened to their minds.

Researchers ran a preregistered randomized controlled trial with 467 iPhone users across North America. Half the group blocked mobile internet access for the first two weeks of the study, then had it back for two more. The other half did the reverse. Compliance wasn't self-reported — it was tracked with the Freedom app, so the researchers knew exactly who actually stayed offline.

Here's what two weeks without mobile internet did:

• Daily screen time dropped from 314 minutes to 161 minutes — cut nearly in half.
• Subjective well-being rose significantly — better mood, higher life satisfaction.
• Mental health symptoms (depression, anxiety, anger) improved by an amount the researchers compared to the effect of antidepressant medication.
• Sustained attention improved on an objective cognitive test, by a margin the researchers likened to reversing about ten years of age-related attention decline.
• 91% of participants improved on at least one measured outcome.

The gains weren't just about having a lower screen time number. Participants slept better, felt more connected to the people around them, and spent more time on things that actually restore them. Take away the bottomless scroll, and people rediscover what to do with their hands and their attention.

The Detail That's Easy to Miss

Here's the part worth sitting with: participants didn't turn off their phones. They didn't even lose calls or texts. The researchers blocked one specific thing — mobile internet — and left the rest of the phone alone.

That's the whole insight. The harm was never the phone itself. It's the bottomless scroll that mobile internet makes possible. Remove that one layer, and the phone goes back to being a tool instead of a leash.

Most of us already sense this. Almost nobody sets out to spend three hours a day inside an app. It happens because the pull is stronger than the intention, every time, unless something outside our own willpower steps in. A study that had to build an entire two-week research protocol just to get people offline tells you how hard that is to do alone.

"Be still, and know that I am God."

Psalm 46:10 (NIV)

Why a Tap, Not Another App

We didn't want to build one more app that asks you to trust your own discipline against a phone engineered to outlast it. So Be Still Card isn't software you have to remember to open. It's a physical card. You tap it to your phone, and your distracting apps pause. A verse appears. You're in a focus session — tracked, timed, and yours.

Tap it again when you're done.

That's the whole mechanism, and it's deliberately simple. A tap is a ritual, not a setting. It's something your hands do, the same way opening a Bible or bowing your head is something your hands and body do before your mind catches up. The friction is the point — it's the same reason the study's researchers had to build a whole tracked protocol around getting people offline instead of just asking nicely.

Stillness Was Always the Point

Where the study found that stepping back from constant connectivity opened room for better sleep, deeper attention, and more time with people who matter, Be Still Card was built around an idea that's a lot older than any research protocol: stillness isn't just the absence of distraction. It's the space where something better gets to happen — a conversation with your kids, an actual prayer, a Sabbath that isn't half-watched through a phone screen.

Be Still Card gives you four ways into that space — Family Time, Sabbath, Deep Work, and Church Mode — each with its own Scripture and its own shape. No subscription. One card, one tap, one time.

The research now backs up what a lot of families already felt in their gut: two weeks of less phone can change more than a screen time number. It can change how present you are. Be Still Card just makes that easier to choose, one tap at a time.

Source: Castelo, N., Kushlev, K., Ward, A. F., Esterman, M., & Reiner, P. B. (2025). "Blocking mobile internet on smartphones improves sustained attention, mental health, and subjective well-being." PNAS Nexus, 4(2). Read the full study →