About No Distractions

What this site is

No Distractions publishes evidence-checked guides, research explainers, and curated resources for people who want a healthier relationship with their phones and screens. The focus is on what actually works in daily life: concrete settings changes, habit swaps, and a plain account of what the research does and doesn’t support.

Who writes it

Articles are researched, written, and edited by the No Distractions editorial team and published under the site’s name rather than individual bylines.

How to tell what an article is

Every article opens with a label saying what its claims rest on, because “one person tried this” and “forty studies say this” support very different decisions and shouldn’t have to be told apart by tone:

• First-hand account: a member of the team describing their own experience. A single case, not a controlled study.
• Research synthesis: built from published studies and reporting rather than personal experience, with every factual claim sourced below the article.
• Practical guide: steps checked against the current version of the software described.

This used to be a convention kept by hand, and it had drifted: ten first-person articles carried no label. It is now a required field on every article, and the build fails if a piece that reads as a personal account is labelled as anything else, or if a research synthesis cites no sources. The rule enforces itself rather than depending on anyone remembering it.

How we research

Where an article cites a statistic, a study, or a specific claim about health or behaviour, we link to the primary source so you can check it yourself. Where evidence is mixed or preliminary, we say so instead of rounding it up into a confident number. If you find a claim on this site that isn’t sourced, or that you believe is wrong, please tell us. We correct errors and note substantive corrections on the page.

What we check, and how you can tell

Rather than asking you to take “well researched” on trust, the checks are built into the site itself, so a lapse breaks the build rather than quietly reaching you:

• Each article carries a list of the sources behind its factual claims: publication, year, and where it matters, the sample size, so you can weigh a study of 143 undergraduates differently from a national survey.
• Where a popular claim rests on thin, contested, or failed-to-replicate evidence, the page says so in place rather than repeating the confident version.
• Prices on tool and comparison pages record the month they were last checked against the vendor’s own pricing page. Where a vendor publishes no figure we can read, we describe the pricing model instead of guessing a number.

The three dates on an article

They mean different things, and only one of them is a reason to trust the page. Published is when it first went up. Updated means someone edited the copy, which may be nothing more than a rewritten sentence. Checked means someone went back to the sources and re-verified the claims on that date. An article that has been updated recently but not re-checked has not been verified recently, and we don’t backfill the checked date from either of the other two to make it look otherwise.

How we make money

This site is supported by advertising. Ads are clearly labelled and are served by third-party ad networks; we do not choose the individual ads shown to you. Advertising has no influence on which tools, books, or apps we recommend or how we describe them. See our Privacy Policy for details on advertising cookies.

This is not medical advice

Nothing on this site is medical, psychological, or clinical advice, and reading it does not create a professional relationship of any kind. Screen use can interact with sleep, mood, anxiety, attention, and existing health conditions in ways that vary a great deal between people. If screen use is significantly affecting your wellbeing, or that of someone you care for, please talk to a qualified health professional.

Get in touch

Corrections, questions, and suggestions are all welcome via our contact page.