Welcome to this edition of The Digital Detox Guide, full of practical tools and insights to help you create a healthier and more sustainable balance with technology.
This article is taken from the March 2026 edition of The Digital Detox Guide, a free monthly article on Substack. You can access all the latest articles here.
Not all AI is the same. Under the single label ‘AI’ sits everything from rigorously validated life-saving medical systems to lightly engineered companions optimised for engagement and distraction. We talk about AI as if it’s one thing, but it isn’t and the difference matters.
🔎 Here’s what’s inside this issue:
- The Hidden Cost of AI Convenience
- Are we Losing Our Human Identity to Technology?
- A Perfect Storm: Will AI Break Human Connection
- What is an AI Detox?
- Cognitive Offload: The Long View
- Your AI Digital Detox Challenge
- The Digital Detox Guide
The Hidden Cost of AI Convenience
We are living in an age where artificial intelligence is quietly shaping nearly every part of our personal and professional lives. It drafts our emails, writes our posts, edits our documents, and even generates our images. But this convenience comes with an unintended cost, one we may not notice because it accumulates slowly over time. And it’s this:
AI makes it too easy to find answers.
While AI can significantly enhance productivity, over reliance can lead to cognitive fatigue and a loss of agency. Over time, our capacity for independent, deep and critical thinking may decline in favour of heuristic shortcuts. The more we trust AI, the less we bother to think for ourselves.
We are increasingly outsourcing knowledge and skills to machines instead of thinking, learning and remembering for ourselves. This changes how we learn, solve problems and recall information. When knowledge isn’t embedded in our own minds, we become less capable of acting independently.
Emerging research supports this concern. A joint study by Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft found that problem-solving ability can diminish when people become overly reliant on AI. [1] Similarly, research by Gerlich identified a significant negative correlation between frequent AI use and critical thinking ability.[2]
If we don’t use AI purposefully, especially when we are young, we risk building a deep dependency on it. Instead of strengthening our knowledge and skills, we may weaken them, relying instead on tools to think on our behalf. Over time, this reduces our ability to engage meaningfully with other people and the world around us.
The old adage “use it or lose it” applies not only to our physical health, but to our cognitive abilities too.
Technology doesn't stand still and neither can we. The challenge is not to reject AI but learn how to live purposefully and sustainably with it. Maybe it’s already time to think about an AI detox, but it’s not going to a simple one-off reset; it’s a mindset shift that helps preserve what makes us human throughout our lives.
Brain rot: a perceived decline in intelligence and critical thinking caused by excessive reliance on AI tools and low-quality, unchallenging content, particularly online and on social media.
Are we Losing Our Human Identity to Technology?
Ana Smith and I opened our TEDx talk Are We Losing Our Human Identity to Technology? in March 2023 with an invitation future: [3]
*We want you to imagine sometime in the future. You’re sitting in a comfortable chair in your house or apartment. You're online and connected to some amazing immersive technology which you have come to rely on. It monitors your home, your health, does your shopping, enables you to be educated and to work. It provides you with whatever information, news and entertainment you may want. Where you can connect with anyone and anything in the world.
Now imagine also that everything you've ever said and done, everyone you’ve ever met, and everywhere you've ever been since the day you were born, has been recorded and processed as online memories.
You have Artificial Intelligence assistants helping you with whatever task you might want to do. And maybe, over time, you’ve come to depend on them and even think of them as your friends.
Your AI assistants will also know so much about you, that they can even look and sound just like you online. And maybe, even be you, or a better version of you in the virtual world. So convincing that not even your friends will be able to tell the difference.
You’ll be sharing this world with AI celebrity avatars, with perfect looks, hundreds of thousands of followers, and producing great videos, podcasts, music, and much more. And if you’re lonely there are AI companions and virtual partners to support you. You’ll share your inner most thoughts, dreams and desires and in return they’ll always be there for you.
Imagine how easy it would be just to sit back and let the technology take care of almost everything for you.
To all external appearances, who you are becomes your online identity and the technology that inhabits this virtual world will work on this assumption too.
As we imagine this future, I wonder, if like me, you feel a sense of unease that for all the advantages technology brings, are we slowly losing our human identity to technology?*
We conceived the talk in the summer of 2022 a few months before the launch of ChatGPT that November.
A Perfect Storm: Will AI Break Human Connection?
Before long, many of the messages that move us, comfort us, or persuade us may not come from people at all. We may not even know whether the email, message, image, or even voice call we receive comes from another human at all? And if we cannot tell, how can we trust? What will happen to human connection then?
In his book Love Machines: How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Our Relationships, James Muldoon explores the rapidly expanding world of AI companions. In a society where it has become normal to communicate via text rather than in person, where increasing numbers of people spend large parts of their lives online, and where loneliness is rising [4], it is perhaps unsurprising that an unregulated market of AI assistants, friends and romantic companions is flourishing. In 2025 alone, AI companion apps were downloaded over 220 million times [5].
Humans are predisposed to anthropomorphise, that is to attribute human characteristics or behaviour to other animals, objects and technologies, even with the shallowest of signals. With the rapid advances in AI, this evolutionary trait, which helps us bond and relate to one another, can be easily manipulated and commercialised.
As far back as 1966, some of the users of ELIZA, an early natural language processing computer created by the MIT artificial intelligence labs, surprisingly attributed human-like feelings to it even though they knew it was a computer program. [6] Today’s Large Language Models (LLMs) are far more advanced. They generate language that feels fluent, attentive and emotionally aware in ways that would have seemed implausible even a decade ago.
Like all convincing illusions, even when we know that we are talking to a machine, it’s surprisingly difficult not to project human characteristics onto it. As more of our communication shifts online, and as we increasingly collaborate with AI systems rather than in-person, that illusion may become part of the texture of everyday life.
What might the unintended consequences be for our sense of connection? How will we give meaning to communication generated by something that has no lived experience, no embodiment or sense of self, or sense of us?
Humans have evolved as social animals. Our wellbeing depends on shared presence, mutual recognition and embodied interaction. I suspect that if we are to live sustainably with technology, and with AI in particular, we need to become more intentional about protecting the spaces where real human connection still happens. That means asserting our right to disconnect, making time to be fully present with one another, and simply spending more time in, as well as being part of, the natural world.
As AI becomes woven into the fabric of everyday communication, I wonder whether the real question is not just what it can do for us, but what it quietly replaces.
I’d be really interested to hear how others are thinking about this. Where do you draw the line between real connection and convenience?
Cognitive Offload: The Long View
On 4 January 2013, the US Federal Aviation Administration published a safety alert titled Manual Flight Operations. [8] Its message was simple: pilots should still fly manually when appropriate. After analysing flights, incidents and accidents, the FAA had identified a worrying trend, a rise in human error.
Modern aircraft are typically flown using automated systems. But over-reliance on automation can erode pilots’ knowledge and manual skills, reducing their ability to recover quickly in an emergency.
The lesson isn’t confined to the cockpit. As we increasingly outsource thinking to machines, what knowledge must we retain if we are to critically question what those machines tell us?
What is an AI Detox?
Whereas a Digital Detox is simply a period of time when you disconnected and go offline, an AI Detox is a conscious choice to step back from using AI tools where possible online, choosing instead to undertake selected tasks using your own knowledge and skills, learning new ones and collaborating with other people to complete a task.
Taking regular Digital Detoxes helps to support what we need as biological humans to thrive and be at our best. An AI Detox is an investment in developing and practicing deliberate, effortful thinking, what Daniel Kahneman called “System 2 thinking”[7], in the areas that matter most, personally and professionally. One that provides resilience against the erosion of skills that comes with AI use, without which our value in the workplace diminishes.
An AI Detox is not a one off event, rather a lifestyle change, one that supports your sense of autonomy and wellbeing and becomes part of your daily life.
Why not protect the skill or area of knowledge that matters the most to you with an AI Detox?
Your AI Digital Detox Challenge
Why not protect the skill or area of knowledge that matters the most to you with an AI detox?
The 3 step AI Detox Challenge
We often frame the future as a divide between people who use AI and people who don’t. That’s probably wrong as most people will use it. Perhaps the more meaningful divide may be between people who retain core cognitive capabilities and those who gradually outsource them entirely.
Where you have the choice, incorporate these 3 steps to help you be more intentional with AI tools. Write them out and place them somewhere where you can see them when online.
1. The 1 minute pause and think rule
Try not to automatically refer to AI tools out of habit.
Before asking AI:
- Take at least 1 minute to form your own content, opinion or answer first.
- Think about the context, what you want to say and your own voice.
- Decide whether you even need AI assistance at all.
- If required, use AI to refine, not replace your thinking.
2. AI-free breaks
Schedule AI-free breaks in your calendar where you rely on your own thinking. This could be online or combined with an offline Digital Detox rest and recovery break
3. What you see is not all that there is
When reviewing AI output, bear in mind that AI creates an illusion of confidence and knowledge but may contain errors, affectionally called hallucinations. Where the impact of these errors are significant, schedule time to prioritise evaluating the content.
The Digital Detox Guide
This article is taken from the November 2025 edition of The Digital Detox Guide, a free monthly article on Substack. You can access the latest articles here.
🧡 Stay present. Stay human.
About the Author
Colin Corby is a Digital Wellbeing & Human Performance expert, keynote speaker and coach helping people reclaim time, energy and focus in an AI-powered world. He has been guiding individuals and organisations since 2018 to build healthier, more intentional relationships with technology.
References and Further Information
[1] Lee, H.-P., Sarkar, A., Tankelevitch, L., Drosos, I., Rintel, S., Banks, R., & Wilson, N. (2024). The impact of generative AI on critical thinking: Self-reported reductions in cognitive effort and confidence effects from a survey of knowledge workers. Carnegie Mellon University & Microsoft Research.
[2] Gerlich, M. (2025). AI tools in society: Impacts on cognitive offloading and the future of critical thinking. Societies, 15(1), 6.
[3] ‘Are We Losing Our Human Identity to Technology?’, (Recorded 22-Mar-22), TEDx LSSU, https://youtu.be/oEMf-y7KqTc?si=XoSn-5GW_uw21HSQ
[4] ‘Love Machines: How Artificial Intelligence Is Transforming Our Relationships’, (2026), James Muldoon, Faber & Faber Limited
[5] ‘AI Companion Apps on Track to Pull in $120M in 2025’, (12-Aug-25), Sarah Perez, Tech Crunch. https://techcrunch.com/2025/08/12/ai-companion-apps-on-track-to-pull-in-120m-in-2025
[6] Epstein, J. “From Eliza to Internet: a Brief History of Computerized …” Computers in Human Behavior, vol. 17, no. 1, 2001, pp. 53-60.
[7] SAFO 13002, (04 Jan-2013), U.S. Department of Transport Federal Aviation Administration, https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/other_visit/aviation_industry/airline_operators/airline_safety/SAFO13002.pdf), Accessed 23 Feb 2026.
[8] ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’, (2012), Daniel Kahneman, Penguin books