Our brains are being fried — here's why (and what to do about it)

Daily Maverick

22-04-2025

You sit down to read a book. Two pages in and your eyes are moving but your brain is somewhere else. You're having dinner with someone you love, but your mind keeps flitting back to emails, calendar invites and that buzz in your pocket that wasn't actually a buzz.
Congrats: you've entered the great brain fog of the 21st century.
In 2012, German neuroscientist Manfred Spitzer coined the term digital dementia.
It sounds a bit like something out of a Black Mirror plotline, but this phenomenon is real and rising. Today, the term digital dementia is used by researchers all over the world to describe the forgetfulness, mental fatigue and chronic inability to focus that results from tech overuse. In plain speak: our brains weren't built for this much screen time.
We're living in a state of partial attention, constantly switching between tabs, chats and apps. Never going deep, always skimming the surface. Our phones aren't just stealing our attention, they're actually making changes to our brains and rewiring how we think, feel and connect.
This is your brain on phones
Scientists have found mounting evidence that frequent smartphone use takes a toll on our brain's ability to think clearly and flexibly. A review in Frontiers in Psychology shows that media multitasking (common when we're switching between apps, messages and tabs) disrupts working memory, shortens attention spans and reduces cognitive flexibility. This happens because our brains are fundamentally bad at multitasking, yet our devices constantly demand it. Each ping or vibration yanks our attention in a new direction, interrupting focus and pushing us into what researchers call a state of 'continuous partial attention', a fragmented mental mode that has been directly linked to decreased cognitive performance.
These constant interruptions don't just break concentration, they activate our stress response repeatedly, creating microstressors with no physical outlet. It's like preparing to run from a tiger over and over again… but never actually running. Over time, this invisible mental load builds up, leaving us foggy, irritable and on the brink of burnout.
The cognitive consequences don't stop when we put our phones down either. A study in the Journal of the Association for Consumer Research found that even the sound of a notification (without checking the phone) reduced people's ability to stay focused on demanding tasks. And in a separate experiment from the University of Texas, participants with their phones placed in another room significantly outperformed those who had their phones nearby, even if the devices were turned off. Follow-up research confirms that merely having an electronic device in sight can drain working memory and diminish attention. One Athabasca University (Canada) study found that in-class multitasking with a laptop is negatively correlated with academic performance, not just for the user, but for all others within sightline of the screen.
How to reclaim your brain
Okay, deep breath. We're not here to fearmonger, we're here to problem-solve. If digital dementia is the enemy, here are a few small but mighty ways to push back.
1 Out of sight, out of mind
Leaving your phone on silent clearly isn't enough. Studies show that even seeing someone else's phone on a table is enough to tank your focus. We've trained our brains to see that glowing rectangle as the epicentre of everything: work, social life, entertainment, responsibility. Even when it's doing nothing, it's screaming everything.
Try this: when you want to focus, put your phone in another room. Out of sight, out of temptation's reach.
2 Stop charging it in the bedroom
The bedroom is ground zero for bad phone habits. Most people charge their phones on their bedside tables. That means easy access to late-night reading, doomscrolling and waking up to a blaring notification instead of a calm morning.
Want to sleep better, stress less and maybe even wake up in a good mood? Plug your phone in somewhere else and get yourself an old-school alarm clock. It may feel like an inconvenience, but your brain will thank you.
3 Take a digital sabbath
Pick a day and go completely device-free. Yes, it'll feel weird at first, like reaching for a phantom limb. But eventually it becomes a reset button. Studies show that even short breaks from tech – especially when spent outdoors – can restore focus and boost cognitive function in very little time.
Call it a digital detox, or just call it Saturday. Either way, give your mind a break.
4 Train for depth
If reading a book feels impossible right now, don't despair. Attention is a muscle. All it needs is reps.
Start with 10 minutes of deep reading a day – ideally a real book, not an article with 17 pop-ups and a cookie warning. At first, your brain will squirm, but stick with it, and you'll notice that it gets easier. Deeper focus leads to deeper thinking, and that's a skill worth rebuilding.
5 Spend time in your head
Remember when being bored was just… normal? Waiting in line, sitting in traffic, staring out the window? Not anymore.
Now every micro-moment gets filled with a scroll, a tap, a podcast, a refresh. We've replaced daydreaming and quiet with constant input. But if we never let ourselves just be, then our inner world starts to feel unfamiliar, even uncomfortable. The more uncomfortable we feel in these quiet moments, the more tempted we will be to reach for our devices to fill the void.
Try reclaiming those small windows instead. A walk without a podcast. A drive without Spotify. A wait without the feed. Let your mind wander – after all, that's where ideas live.
Don't aim for the moon, just put in some boundaries
Look, we're not aiming for digital purity here. Nobody's throwing their phone in the ocean. For better or worse, we are part of a connected world and we need to be reachable. We just need better boundaries.
Right now, our phones are winning, dictating how we spend our time, how we focus, even how we feel. But we can fight back, one habit, one choice and one new boundary at a time.
You don't need a complete lifestyle overhaul. You just need a little more intention. And maybe an alarm clock that isn't also a pocket-sized casino. DM