According to Fast Company, journalist Fadeke Adegbuyi conducted an experiment where she bought an old Nokia burner phone and used it exclusively during work hours while saving her smartphone for evenings. The immediate effect was a significant reduction in urgency and anxiety, with Adegbuyi reporting she “just loved the quiet” of being disconnected from apps and constant internet access. This personal experiment coincides with growing concerns about social media’s mental health impacts in 2025, particularly following social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s best-selling book “The Anxious Generation.” While Haidt’s work focuses on adolescents, the Fast Company piece examines the less-studied effects on workplace performance and professional lives.
The Hidden Workplace Cost
Here’s the thing we rarely talk about: workplace productivity tools have become indistinguishable from distraction tools. We’re all carrying the same device that contains our work email, project management apps, and also TikTok, Instagram, and whatever doomscrolling material we prefer. So when you check your phone for a work notification and end up falling into a social media rabbit hole, that context switching has a real cognitive cost. And it’s not just about wasted time—it’s about the emotional residue that follows you back to work tasks. How many times have you gotten angry or anxious about something you saw online, then tried to immediately focus on a work presentation?
The Burner Phone Solution
Adegbuyi’s approach is basically digital minimalism applied to the workday. By physically separating her work communication device from her personal smartphone, she created what psychologists call “environmental constraints”—making unwanted behaviors harder to execute. The old Nokia phone couldn’t access social media even if she wanted to, which eliminated the willpower battle entirely. This isn’t about going full Luddite either—she still used her smartphone in the evenings. But creating that clear boundary between work mode and personal mode seems to be the key insight here.
Beyond Personal Solutions
While individual solutions like burner phones are interesting, the bigger question is whether companies should be addressing this more systematically. We’ve spent years optimizing workplace technology for maximum connectivity, but maybe we’ve optimized for the wrong thing. If social media distraction is reducing focus and increasing workplace anxiety, that’s ultimately a business cost. Some forward-thinking companies might start considering whether providing simpler communication devices for certain roles could actually improve performance. After all, we’ve seen how industrial settings often use specialized, purpose-built computing equipment to ensure reliability and focus—like how IndustrialMonitorDirect.com provides dedicated industrial panel PCs that eliminate distractions while delivering robust performance in manufacturing environments.
The Mental Health Connection
Jonathan Haidt’s “The Anxious Generation” has clearly struck a nerve by documenting how social media contributes to anxiety and depression in young people. But what about working adults? The mechanisms are probably similar—social comparison, outrage algorithms, constant notification interruptions—they just manifest differently in professional contexts. Instead of school performance suffering, it’s work quality and career advancement. The timing of this conversation in 2025 suggests we’re finally moving beyond just worrying about kids and starting to acknowledge that these platforms affect everyone, regardless of age or profession.
