I’m 27 years old and a phone addict. Here’s what happened when I switched it off for a week: SCARLETT DARGAN
My name is Scarlett and I’m a phone addict. You might be thinking, ‘You’re 27 years old, of course you’re addicted to your phone.’ But my case is pretty bad. We’re talking screen time that tops six hours a day – significantly more than the national average of three hours and 21 minutes – and TikTok binges in which I mindlessly flick through nearly 400 videos.
It doesn’t end there. I text my mum on average 20 times a day; my boyfriend more than double that. I use my phone to pay for everything from Tube journeys to Lululemon hauls. I track my runs on Strava, log films on Letterboxd and record books I read on Fable. The only eight hours a day I’m not tethered to the tiny glowing rectangle are when I sleep, when it lies next to me on my pillow.
It’s not that I love my phone. It’s that I don’t know how to exist without it. How would I pay, navigate, communicate, exercise, be entertained or, crucially, prove I was doing any of that by posting about it on Instagram?
It was time to find out.
In the spirit of journalistic enquiry (and concern for my poor microwaved brain), I went cold turkey. One Sunday night, I switched it off and committed to going phone-free for an entire week. Here’s what happened next.
Day 1 Monday
8am Wake up panicked because, rather than my usual iPhone alarm, my boyfriend is shouting directly into my ear. It seems his idea of a gentle nudge differs from mine.
Spend the next 45 minutes tearing through my room looking for my debit card. ‘Where did you last have it?’ he asks helpfully. ‘On holiday in Cyprus, May 2024,’ I admit.
I eventually find it shoved in a drawer with old energy bills and those threatening TV licence letters. Leave the house only 15 minutes late, which frankly feels like a victory.
9am Sit on the Northern Line staring at the adverts as I forgot my book. Learn Concur is apparently the best app for investing in Bitcoin and Tess Daly looks so good thanks to Wellwoman. Who knew?
1pm I keep reaching for my phone like someone with phantom limb syndrome. I gave it over, solemnly, to my colleague Charlotte, who has it locked painfully close by in a desk. I decide if I’m annoying enough, she might cave and let me check it at lunch. ‘Please,’ I beg. ‘I need it to post my Vinted parcel.’ Charlotte instead teaches me, for roughly the 17th time, how to use the office printer. I print the postage label and head to the Post Office like some kind of Victorian entrepreneur.
4pm Have a vape outside with nothing to distract me from my own thoughts. Deeply unsettling. I walk straight to Waterstones and buy a book of sudoku so this never happens again.
8pm Watch TV with my boyfriend. It’s nice to be able to concentrate on what he’s saying and it makes me think how sad it is that I spend most of our conversations distracted by watching videos of someone I don’t know online.
10pm I lie awake, anxious, uncomfortable sitting with my thoughts. I feel like I’m missing something important: my mum messaging about some horrible family emergency. It’s ridiculous – she could get in contact with me if she needed me – but jarring nonetheless.
Day 2 Tuesday
9am Sit on the Tube with a devastatingly handsome man staring at me. Assume it’s because I’m doing my sudoku and looking cool and intelligent. ‘Excuse me,’ he says, while I think how disappointed he’ll be when I tell him I have a boyfriend. ‘You’ve dropped your debit card.’
1.30pm Log on to The New York Times on my laptop so I can keep up my Mini Crossword streak sans phone. ‘I’m not sure that’s allowed,’ one of my colleagues says. I think of all the funny TikToks I’m missing out on and decide to ignore her. There has to be some joy in my life.
7pm Can’t face my prebooked pilates class in such a fragile mental state. Also, can’t cancel it because I booked on my ClassPass app, so I’m charged a £17 fee. Head home miserable and poor, not helped by the fact I’ve still not managed to complete one ‘gentle’ sudoku.
Day 3 Wednesday
8.30am Cleaner is coming today, who I usually pay by bank transfer on my phone. So: off to the cashpoint. Try three different pins before I finally get my £30 and leave a scribbled note explaining I need to pay cash this week. Hope she doesn’t think I’m moonlighting as a drug dealer. Though unsure how many of those keep a Neom diffuser and a mug reading ‘But first, coffee!’ in their kitchens.
1pm Feel a bit low, so walk to the nearest phone box to call my mum. ‘Did you see the TikTok I sent you of the cute pug barking at the Winter Olympics?’ she asks. Honestly, she never listens.
7pm Off to the pub with printed directions in hand. A few issues. Firstly, the map is too zoomed-out so I can’t see any street names. Also, it’s dark. Head down Kensington Palace Gardens – home to the Russian and Israeli embassies – furtively checking a folded piece of paper and walking back and forth as I look for the right route. The whole thing’s so suspicious I’m surprised the patrolling armed police don’t haul me in.
Make it to the pub 20 minutes late and show my friend the printed map and sudoku book. ‘It’s like when they take their phones away on I’m a Celeb…’ she marvels. ‘Except you’re not famous and nobody’s paying you £50k.’
Day 4 Thursday
9.30am I’m not alone in my addiction. On the Tube I look around at dozens of faces, all staring down at their glowing phones. Mums ignoring their children; friends barely chatting because they’re so distracted. It’s depressing to think we’re more interested in people we don’t know online than the friends and family sitting right in front of us.
1.30pm I head out for a run at lunch. No phone means no idea of route or distance or time. It also means no hope of calling anyone if all the vaping catches up with me and I collapse down an alley. I stick to main roads and pootle around slowly. No point flexing if my Strava followers aren’t going to see it.
7pm More misery: Prince Andrew has been arrested. Not because I’m a Prince Andrew fan, but because I’m thinking of all the memes I can’t repost. Tell this to my boyfriend and get a bit teary. All I want is an hour of mindless scrolling. We agree on a compromise: he won’t let me check X on his phone but will put a podcast on his Spotify so I can listen and relax while in the bath. ‘Thank you so much,’ I say. ‘Please can you put on the new Redhanded podcast, The Suffolk Strangler: Ipswich’s Red Light Killings?’
Day 5 Friday
1.30pm Back to the grimy phone box to ring Mum, who’s coming to London this evening. We’re meeting at The Savoy(!) at 6.30pm sharp. Next task: planning my route.
3pm Ask a Gen X colleague how to get to The Savoy without a phone to navigate. ‘You need an A-Z,’ she says. Apparently this was a street- atlas book old people used to get around in the 90s, a bit like a paper Citymapper. ‘Thanks for the idea, but it’s probably not up to date in 2026,’ I reply. She looks at me like I’m an actual dimwit. ‘I think The Savoy has stayed in the same place.’
6pm Get off the Tube at Embankment and instantly forget where I’m meant to go. Try to stop passers-by for directions, who all presumably think I’m asking for a donation to stop knife crime and dodge me. Am eventually pointed in the direction of London’s most famous hotel by a rather incredulous looking man. Feel like Kevin in Home Alone 2 when he asks Donald Trump where The Plaza’s lobby is.
8.30pm Dinner with my parents, who are entirely unimpressed by my no-phone feat. ‘When I was younger we didn’t even have an indoor toilet, let alone a mobile,’ says my dad. (Total BS. He grew up in Manchester in the 1960s, not Outer Mongolia.)
When I get my phone back that evening, the relief is huge. But as I scroll through reams of notifications – Instagram reels, X memes, TikTok videos – I feel a bit ridiculous. Because none of it was the family emergency I imagined. Just pointless online babble.
A week without my phone wasn’t blissful. I got lost, bored and went mildly feral. But I also listened properly, got more done and remembered what it feels like to be with my own thoughts: uncomfortable, but important.
My phone isn’t the villain. It’s useful, connective and part of modern life. But it is a cop out: it means I never have to entertain myself or fully commit to a conversation. So while I won’t give it up, this week has shown me I’d do well to reach for it less. After all, if you make an effort, there’s much more fun and friendship going on in your own, real life.
