Why I’m paying to lock myself out of the internet

First comes disbelief that I have done something so extreme, followed by denial as I pick up my phone repeatedly to check it’s not just a bad dream. But no – it's really happening. Panic segues into frustration; then, finally, I arrive at acceptance. For the next three hours I will not be able to log on to social media or my favourite websites, and there is nothing I can do about it.

In a last-ditch attempt to stop myself compulsively scrolling, I have spent £70 on a lifetime membership of the internet blocking software Freedom. When activated, it prevents access to specified sites across my devices until a set amount of time has elapsed. Paying to lock yourself out of the internet may sound extreme, but after being distracted by one cute Instagram puppy picture and political Twitter scrap too many, it felt like my only option was to physically cut myself off.

The strategy is one Dr Anna Lembke, professor of psychiatry and addiction medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, describes as ‘self-binding’ in her recent book Dopamine Nation, where she argues that willpower is not enough in an age of constant temptation. Instead, she says, we have to ‘intentionally and willingly create barriers between ourselves and our drug of choice in order to mitigate compulsive overconsumption’.

For alcohol and junk food dependence, barriers can be created by removing booze and crisps from the house. Our addiction to smartphones, which Dr Lembke describes as the ‘modern-day hypodermic needle’, is altogether more complicated, of course, now everything from banking to parking is controlled online and throwing the dastardly things away is not an option.

My smartphone dependence had escalated to the point where I was checking my phone every minute – Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, repeat – hating myself for doing so but feeling embarrassingly powerless to stop. Turning notifications off and deleting apps didn’t make enough difference – I could always use my desktop computer. I tried imposing daily screen time limits using my iPhone settings, but simply ignored the warning when I’d exceeded it. I tried keeping my phone in a separate room, but spent more time walking around retrieving it than I did working. As a writer, my productivity had plummeted. Drastic action was needed.

There are, in fact, various ways to self-bind from the internet. Jonathan Franzen, author of the ironically titled Freedom, seals the ethernet port on his computer to prevent himself logging on to the web while writing. Physical lockers such as kSafe, which has a seal on the lid that can keep your phone stashed away for up to ten days, are another low-tech solution.

Hellish as it might sound, self-binding has proved a viable business ploy – earlier this year Kent restaurant Spice Fusion offered 20 per cent off the bill to customers who agreed to lock their phones in a ‘jail’ in the centre of their table to enliven conversation.

Then there’s Unplugged, a digital detox retreat launched in 2020 and held in the London and Manchester areas, where guests’ phones are locked in a box in their cabins for the duration of their three-day stay. Co-founder Ben Elliott said: ‘If you really can’t cope without your phone, we do allow people to smash that box open. But so far the box has remained intact.’

But none of this is very helpful if you need to be contactable by phone and email to do your job, as I do. Which is how I found myself trying Freedom. Founded in 2011 by former student Fred Stutzman, who had grown frustrated that he was spending too much time on Facebook, the software acts as a type of VPN – Virtual Private Network – that sits on top of your existing network when activated.

With two million users worldwide, it is one of the best-known internet blockers. Other popular versions include Stay Focusd, which blocks users from specific websites after they have surpassed their daily time limits, and RescueTime, which also tells you how much time you spend on each site overall.

Used by authors including Nick Hornby and Zadie Smith, Freedom costs around £7 for a month's access and is simple to navigate. You type in when you want your ‘session’ (i.e. lockout) to start and end, and the sites you want to block – I ban Amazon and all social media – and the instruction is communicated across all your devices.

The psychological ramifications are more complex, however. Working alone, I find that social media is my lifeline to the outside world, and WhatsApp (which I block because of the endless scrawl of group conversations unfurling on my phone at any given time) my preferred method of communicating.

In the minutes before my first lockout begins, my heart beats anxiously. What gossip will I miss out on? What if I need emergency stationery supplies from Amazon? What if Mum tries to get hold of me on WhatsApp and thinks I’ve died? To mitigate potential damage, I frantically message my nearest and dearest to warn them I’m going incommunicado, and then brace for withdrawal. It takes around 20 minutes before the restlessness subsides and the benefits kick in and then – joy! – I finally start to focus.

Freedom is now part of my life. Depending on my schedule, I block myself for between one and six hours at a time. Although I turned to it to help me concentrate on work, among the most rewarding sessions have been those when I’m not working. Without my nose glued to the screen I’ve stopped ignoring my children and even manage to speak to my husband every now and again.

There are pitfalls – I have been late to pick up my daughter from school after missing a WhatsApp group update and had to dash to buy a last-minute birthday present from the supermarket because I couldn’t get on to Amazon. I’ve resorted to texting friends, as if it were 2001, and when I tried, unthinking, to access LinkedIn to find out where Stutzman went to college for the purposes of this piece, I was greeted by the green screen that appears when illicit access is attempted, alongside the passive-aggressive strapline ‘You are free from this site’.

They mean it, too. In ‘locked mode’ you can’t end your session early without assistance. Each Freedom account holder has three get-out clauses to do so before they need to contact the support desk – which will hopefully always prove too much of a humiliating faff for me to find out if Elon Musk is trending.