1 year, 0 screens, 100s of biomarkers | Nov '26 – Nov '27 | @Function Partner
SF ⇆ MIA
Joined February 2018
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One week of sleep without screens
During baseline, on screens, I averaged 6 hours a night and went to bed around 2am.
Like I said, I've always slept like hell.
Week 1 without them:
+ 51 more minutes of sleep per night
+ bedtime over 2 hours earlier
+ more REM and deep sleep
Maybe I'm not a "night owl" after all?
The catch: it took me 3x longer to fall asleep. The withdrawals are ongoing but hit hardest on days 4-6. I felt physically ill and couldn't stay asleep.
My body is recalibrating. Let's see what week 2 brings.
Sent from my screenless phone
Day 8 without screens.
I asked Dr. @AbudBakri what changes most after a year without screens.
His top 3 predictions:
+ sleep
+ mental state
+ hormones
We covered this question, hormones, melatonin, and a LOT more.
S/o to team @function for letting us use the lounge at Eudemonia.
Sent from my screenless phone
Stop right there.
You're invited to Screenless Saturday.
Put away your phone. Your Claude subscription. Smash your TV.
Get outside. Go spend time with people you care about.
Screenless Saturday number one out of 52.
If you can't do the whole day, do less screen Saturday instead.
Sent from my screenless phone
It feels like removing a dagger from my leg.
Headache. Dysphoria. Flatness. Hearing phantom iPhone dings in my sleep.
Days 1-3 were more of a rush. I felt light and free.
On day 4, the withdrawals began. I've never had to kick something like this before.
Screens are a legit addiction.
I'm curious to see if the month 6 PET scan shows enhanced metabolism in regions that improve in drug addicts who quit like the thalamus, frontal cortex, and striatum (reward circuit).
There are no PET studies of people quitting screens, so Dr. Eber and I are breaking new ground.
Image attached is baseline PET (F18 tracer). That's one of a few scans I'm tracking.
Day 6/365
Sent from my screenless phone
Day 5/365 - it's an avalanche
Endless thoughts, endless ideas, fears, doubts
Take 11 hours of screen time per day away, and this is what happens
I'm starting to feel the "withdrawals"
we use the screens to numb the extremes- good and bad
P.S. Next comprehensive blood draw is scheduled for end of month. Same with next set of brain scans.
Sent from my screenless phone
Day 4 without screens - an early signal
I sleep like hell. Always have. My average sleep duration in the baseline period was 6 hours.
And on night 3: Best night so far. Highest HRV. Longest REM. Highest sleep score.
What if your sleep "issue" is a screens issue?
I'll keep monitoring the data. This is encouraging, but we'll see what a year does.
Sent from my screenless phone
This is my brain before a year without screens.
Can't wait to share PET and fMRI too.
Two days left.
Sent from my screenless phone
I'm scanning my brain the way researchers scan people quitting meth
4 days left on screens, then I'm off for a year
PET scan is today with radioactive sugar
It shows how much fuel each part of the brain burns
What I'm watching:
+ Prefrontal cortex: attention and impulse control. Prediction: shifts
+ Striatum: the reward loop every feed is built to hit. Prediction: dampens
+ Thalamus: the brain's relay station. In meth users it recovered after a year clean (Wang et al., 2004). Prediction: shifts
Monthly fMRI scans will track the default mode network, where the mind wanders. Prediction: shifts
Repeating this scan at 6 and 12 months
Scan noise alone can be ~10%, so a real change has to beat that
I just wired something up so I can upload videos to Twitter without looking at a screen. If you're seeing this, it worked.
Sent from my screenless phone
Nobody takes it seriously because they feel completely helpless to do anything about it
Cell phone addiction is an absolute thermonuke to the brain and nobody 'takes it seriously' because it is not clear that there is any solution in a world where the revealed preference of everyone across the globe, regardless of income, race, age, any factor whatsoever, would rather be on their phone than do *anything* else. Deciding "I use this too much" and meaningfully altering one's behaviour doesn't seem to have much success for any of the very small minority of people with the sentience or self-reflection to realize how bad it is. Most people seem to think of it as an unproductive habit at most, rather than an addiction. Any attempt to speak seriously about this is met with derision, accusations of pretentiousness. There is no real solution to it. The future of human cognition fifty years down the line is horrifying if you stop and think about it for even a moment.
I won’t see a single frame of my own videos for a year that get posted to 300k+ people
So how do I film?
+ Camera sits on a tripod with colored alignment marks for screen-free setup
+ I hit record and say the title out loud
+ I use a special keyword to delete
Then I pull the SD card and put it in a box with no screen
It names every clip from what I said, files it, and I get a receipt to confirm
Press one button and it all goes to my editor
Editor then edits and posts for me
I never see a frame
16 days until I’m off the screens for a year
Sending this sample to the lab to check melatonin and cortisol
PhD-level intelligence and labs are so cheap now, we’re going to have a new scientific renaissance
The future is bright
Just had my blood drawn before I spend a year without screens — with @function (partner)
Doctors expect brain scans and cognitive tests to change a lot
But whether hormones like testosterone will change a lot, there's some disagreement
All the data will be public: monthly blood draws covering 100+ biomarkers, brain scans, sleep data, etc.
It starts in 17 days
My job today = spit in four tubes
It’s for cortisol and melatonin: morning, noon, evening and night
These two hormones work in opposite directions to regulate your wakefulness and sleep
What you want to see:
• Morning = cortisol higher, melatonin low
• Noon = cortisol declining, melatonin low
• Evening = cortisol low, melatonin rising
• Night = cortisol lowest, melatonin high
A healthy curve is a descending cortisol slope that hands the baton to rising melatonin so you feel alert by day and sleepy at night
Blue light from screens is a classic way to interrupt that evening melatonin rise and disrupt your sleep
I’ll publish how these curves change over a year without screens (down from ~10h screentime per day)
I go off screens in 18 days
19 days until I quit screens for a year - finally
Every month my blood gets drawn to see what changes:
+ testosterone
+ cortisol
+ vitamin D
+ and a lot more
Two findings I keep coming back to:
+ 4 hours on a glowing e-reader before bed cut melatonin 55% and pushed it 1.5 hours later (12 adults, Brigham and Women's)
+ 1 week of 5-hour nights cut daytime testosterone 10-15% (10 young men, U Chicago)
Nobody has shown screens lower testosterone, but the sleep link seems obvious
Maybe this is part of the fertility crisis
The data gets uploaded to the dashboard on my site
First draw is Thursday
Sent from my screenless phone
I couldn't live without this box during the screenless year
Every day, it gives me:
+ Bank balances
+ Weather report
+ Birthdays & calendar Items
I can also pop in an SD card from my screenless recording setup and it goes to my editor
Just 29 days to go, and a screenless phone is my only phone
