Published: 6 November 2026
A short wait with three choices
Ninety participants spent seven minutes and thirty seconds in one of three conditions: freely using a smartphone, solving Sudoku without a digital device or waiting passively without a phone. Researchers measured mood, physiology and several aspects of time perception.
Clock time was underestimated
Across all three conditions, participants estimated the interval at an average of five minutes and forty-four seconds. That shared underestimate shows why retrospective duration and the feeling that time is passing quickly are related but not identical judgments.
Passive waiting felt slow
Participants who simply waited without a phone reported that time passed more slowly and that they were more bored than participants engaged in either smartphone use or Sudoku. Activity changed the experience of the interval more clearly than the digital or non-digital label alone.
Sudoku and smartphones were not equivalent
Sudoku produced more positive affect and appeared more cognitively engaging than free smartphone use in heart-rate-variability measures. Both tasks made the wait feel faster than passive deprivation, yet they did not produce identical psychological or physiological states.
Attention and memory shape duration
When attention turns toward time itself, an interval can feel prolonged. Engaging tasks redirect attention and create events that structure memory. Depending on whether people judge time during an experience or reconstruct it afterward, engagement can produce different patterns.
Why this is not a universal digital-detox verdict
The experiment was brief, laboratory-based and involved 30 people per condition. It does not establish that smartphones always accelerate subjective time or that digital detox has a single mental-health effect. Longer, repeated and real-world studies are needed.
Discussion question
When your phone is absent, does time feel slower because the device is missing—or because nothing equally engaging has replaced it?
Sources and further reading
Scientific Reports — Effect of task nature during short digital deprivation on time perception and psychophysiological state ↗Share your answer
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