Filling the Brain with a Phone During Free Time is as Exhausting as Work Hours

SadaNews - Many people pull out their phones in elevators, at check-out lines in stores, and even during the ninety seconds it takes for the microwave to work. Some even use smartphones while eating or drinking. The moment a person finishes a task, before they even feel a moment of relaxation, they are already looking for the next thing to gaze at, meaning there is always something filling the gap during what should be a time for complete relaxation, enjoyment of endless entertainment, constant companionship, and a whole world of entertainment. As a result, many feel an overwhelming fatigue that is hard to describe, waking up and going to sleep feeling tired.

Blame the Work Stress

According to a report published by the bolde website, one might tend to blame work stress, but some of the most exhausted individuals aren't putting in more effort than others did decades ago. There's something else that exhausts, which is more related to what they must stop doing rather than what they do.

Walking to the bus where only nature or houses are seen, waiting in a doctor's clinic where perhaps a person would browse a magazine or watch passersby, washing dishes, driving home, or the few minutes a person spends in bed before sleeping without doing anything but letting the day calm down, those were breaks... Ordinary quiet moments between important matters, and without many noticing, all of them have been filled.

If all these activities over the day are reviewed, a person will find that they have done something they did not intend to do, as they transformed almost every moment of free time into another moment in which they receive something. So, the day appears full, but much of what fills it is not work but rather inputs. And inputs, even the enjoyable ones, are not the same as rest.

The Empty Time

Beneath all this filling lies a false assumption that an unoccupied mind is a lost mind. It seems as if empty time means the brain is in a state of idleness, meaning it gets assigned a task, but the brain does not remain idle.

When a person stops supplying it with inputs, it does not cease working, but rather moves to another task. Two decades of brain imaging research describe a hypothetical condition where the network calms precisely at the moment a person focuses on a task, and activates the moment they stop, for instance, when gazing out a window, washing dishes, or letting their mind wander in imagination, the brain is at its peak activity precisely when no external attention is being demanded. It never truly rests.

Internal Processing

It is the system that organizes the day's events, reconsiders unsatisfactory conversations, and connects what a person read in the morning to issues that have preoccupied them throughout the week. It is also the place where the brain continues to build a sense of identity and life path. In other words, the empty moments were never empty; they become so when internal processing takes place... organizing, classifying, and understanding matters that cannot be accomplished while the frontal part of the brain is busy reading headlines and responding to messages. When this processing is constantly interrupted, the day does not get organized correctly but accumulates partially ordered, which is part of the reason people feel a lag in life without precisely knowing why.

This system stops working the moment we give the brain something to look at, for example: a podcast, a news feed, or a television program, each of which is an external task, and each interrupts internal work. So, every time one fills a void, they do not add rest to a busy day but have given up the only type of processing that the day's tasks relied on.

Avoiding Solitude with Oneself

In a series of famous studies, researchers left individuals alone in an empty room for just six minutes with nothing to do but think. Most found it uncomfortable and wished for it to end.

In one experiment, the room also contained a button that delivered a mild electric shock, something the same individuals had previously said they would pay money to avoid, yet a significant portion of them, especially men, pressed it anyway, seemingly preferring mild pain over a few minutes of solitude with their thoughts.

The common version — that people prefer shock over thought — exaggerates the matter; many were completely satisfied, but the key result remains consistent, which is that idleness is harder than expected, and a person will grasp at almost anything to escape it.

Continuous Partial Attention

There is a condition some call "continuous partial attention," where a person neither focuses entirely on a task nor completely disconnects from it but always keeps half an eye on what’s coming. It feels like they are always connected. It is like a program running in the background that never shuts down, consuming a little energy every second of the day. The low and continuous consumption is a source of fatigue, where one needs some breaks without seeking to completely rid themselves of these applications, allowing for choices such as walking paths while avoiding earbuds, or spending wait times anywhere without using the smartphone or browsing the internet.

One Meal Without the Phone

The brain does not need hours of enforced silence; it can organize thoughts in short periods, which are themselves the same durations one spends in front of screens. There are two important things to know before trying this; the first is that there will be a feeling of discomfort, potentially longer than seems reasonable. It is the same anxiety that drives some to social media, but this feeling will gradually diminish when the void stops being a problem that needs solving.

The second is that this will not solve everything. If a person is exhausted from too many tasks or sadness or has exceeded their energy limits, then walking without a podcast is not the solution, and the more important reasons deserve serious attention.

Gradual Dissipation of Fatigue

As for the slight ordinary fatigue many feel nowadays, which sleep does not remedy, the solution often simply lies in leaving the next free moment as it is. No podcast while walking, no phone on the table, and no internet browsing while waiting in lines.

Initially, a person will not feel comfortable; they will feel as though something is missing, but after a week of small free moments, they will notice that the fatigue begins to fade, even if just a little.