At a quiet retreat in Tennessee, a handful of people read on the porch or simply sit and talk. Beyond them, donkeys drift through a fenced field.
No one reaches for his or her phone.
Many arrive seeking a break—not just from work, but from the constant pull of digital life—to escape the phone calls and notifications that, like a shell to a turtle, have become a permanent carapace fused to one’s shoulders.
Only when they step away do they notice the lift.
Valerie Sloan knows that feeling well. She spent more than two decades in academia, teaching in a windowless computer lab. The work was relentless, technical, and always in front of a screen. So were her students’ lives. They would leave class and immediately look down at their phones as they stepped into the sunlight.
For Sloan, the strain deepened in a workplace shaped by stress and, at times, hostility—conditions she said took a lasting toll. Time started narrowing around her, a sense that life was closing in.
However, academia, she said, makes leaving difficult. Positions are scarce, and most of her colleagues were staying long past the point of asking whether they should leave.
“I knew I couldn’t stay,” she told The Epoch Times. She had to leave before it was too late.
Sloan did what many only dream of. Eight years ago, she left her tenured position and moved to a place where cell service is spotty and the pace is unhurried.
“I had the urge to live a bit simpler, and to create a space that would allow for others to take what we now call the digital detox break,” she said.
Her retreat offers more than a break from screens. It’s rooted in what Sloan herself needed: a way to reconnect with nature and give her mind room to reflect and create.
Most people have difficulty slowing down, she said.
“Here, it’s rare to see someone walking around on their phones,” she said.
Why Your Vacation Isn’t Working
With nearly half of U.S. adults—and two-thirds of those aged 18 to 29—saying that they’re online almost constantly, many people aren’t just craving a break from work. They need a break from the digital world itself.
Research supports why unplugging, especially in nature, helps people feel calmer, think more clearly, and experience a deeper sense of presence and meaning.
“People underestimate how important it is to take real breaks from technology,” Gloria Mark, a psychologist and attention researcher at the University of California–Irvine, told The Epoch Times. Without them, she noted, the brain never fully rests and stress lingers.
The mechanism is straightforward. When notifications, social feeds, and work emails keep arriving, the brain’s stress response stays elevated—the fight-or-flight system never fully powers down. As a result, sleep suffers, focus fragments, and even simple decisions can stall.
Over time, the brain stays locked in a kind of constant task mode—always scanning, responding, and shifting attention rapidly—leaving little room for the mental downtime that helps people feel restored.
“When stress is high, attention fragments,” Mark said. “When you remove some of those digital demands, people can actually stay with a task long enough to feel a sense of calm again.”
Without that constant pull on attention, the stress response eases, and the conditions for deeper sleep and clearer thinking fall back into place.
Early research on digital detox breaks suggests the same. In a 2025 clinical trial, participants who limited smartphone use to two hours per day for three weeks reported lower stress, fewer depressive symptoms, and better sleep compared with those in a control group who used their phones as usual.
Even shorter detoxes—two-week programs in which mobile internet is blocked entirely—showed reduced anxiety and attention improvements that researchers likened to reversing a decade of age-related cognitive decline.
Younger people, often the heaviest tech users, may notice the shift most. In programs for people aged 18 to 30, dialing back devices for just two weeks can move anxiety and depression scores from moderate to mild. The changes were enough to be felt in everyday life: sleeping through the night, staying present in conversations, and sinking into a book without reflexively reaching for a screen.
Why Nature Matters
Stepping away from screens is only part of the reset. Research—and practitioners such as Sloan—suggest that where you unplug matters just as much. Time in nature engages a different kind of attention.
Walking among rustling leaves, feeling the wind, hearing birdsong, or watching light shift across a meadow offer a kind of natural “attention clinic,” capturing attention without effort and letting the mind and nervous system recover.
Mark’s own research has shown that even 20 minutes in nature can help people feel less stressed and think more creatively.
“We see people come up with more and better ideas after a short walk outside,” she said.
Researchers call this attention restoration: soft, undemanding stimuli such as trees and rivers replenish the mental resources drained by the demands of constant notifications and feeds. That’s why many digital detox retreats intentionally weave nature into the stay.
At Sloan’s retreat, Camp Wonder Wander, that process is intentional. Guided walks, rooted in “shinrin‑yoku,” or forest bathing, lead guests through woods, meadows, and quiet riverbanks.
It’s about reengaging that childlike curiosity with the things around you, said Sloan, who is certified in forest therapy.
“It’s focusing on colors, touch sensations, smelling things, looking up at the sky, and trying to be a kid—literally sitting on the ground, touching and looking at what’s right in front of you,” she said.
For Miles McPherson, an avid kayaker who already spends much of his free time outdoors, the experience pushed him to engage with nature on a deeper level. Unlike his usual hikes or outings, during which the focus is on moving forward, he had to learn to keep his gaze open and slow down.
Taking the time to see, feel, and experience the world around him also meant sitting patiently with the part of his mind that wanted to name and understand everything—every mushroom, every insect.
“My curiosity was so deeply piqued—why is this here?” he told The Epoch Times. “What is that?” However, the answers were no longer at his fingertips.
McPherson described something many people have lost: moments of wonder that arise when absorbed in the natural world—the chance to notice fully, without a goal or the need for immediate answers.
Digital life pulls attention in every direction. Immersed in nature, the mind starts to move differently, toward curiosity and meaning.
He said that shift was especially visible in his children. He said he saw them go on the forest walk and be content in nature—”not waiting to get back to their phones.”
“Now I try to absorb the nature around me, as part of my hikes,” he said.
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Different Ways to Step Away
There are many different ways to step away into nature.
Some find that in activity—working the land, feeding animals, or following the rhythm of a farm.
Florida’s Westgate River Ranch Resort keeps guests moving from dawn to dusk: horseback riding, airboat tours, archery, and a weekly rodeo leave little idle time.
“Once you’re here, you’re here,” Kynlie Allred, a team member at the resort, told The Epoch Times. The schedule itself becomes part of the detox.
Some people need a place where indulgence is part of the unplugging.
At The Horse Shoe Farm, a mountain retreat in western North Carolina, guests can enjoy luxurious foods and spa treatments, including soaking in saltwater pools while gazing at expansive mountain views.
Still, others seek a challenge. At the summit of Mount Le Conte in the Great Smoky Mountains, visitors hike at least five miles to reach the highest guest lodge in the eastern United States.
Without road access, electricity, or reliable cell service, guests step fully into simplicity at LeConte Lodge. Supplies arrive by helicopter at the start of the season, and pack llamas carry food along the same trails hikers take.
“Many visitors value the simplistic and rustic experience,” John Northrup, the general manager, told The Epoch Times in an email. Sitting down for a shared meal or being unable to check a phone “forces one to disconnect and embrace the here and now.”
What Stays With You
For many, the shift doesn’t end when the trip does. The real question is what carries over and lingers once the phone is back on and daily life resumes.
You don’t need to remain in a retreat to disconnect from your devices. Even small changes—setting limits on screen time, stepping into quieter environments, or spending time outdoors without devices—can begin to recreate the conditions for focus and rest.
Sloan sees a retreat that way, too.
“I kind of consider my place like a little shift and pit stop for people,” she said. “They come here to decompress, but also to figure out what’s next.”
She’s seen guests use their time to reconsider careers, return to creative work, or finally take the first steps toward a long-delayed change. One visitor is planning a month-long stay as a kind of personal sabbatical—time not just to rest, but to think through what the visitor wants in life.
Sloan chose not to lose more time to a life that didn’t feel like her own.
“I kind of came to the conclusion that if I wanted to change my life, I needed to do it before I was, like, super old,” she said. “I just said, listen to yourself.”
For many, that’s the shift a digital detox makes possible—not a complete escape, but a pause long enough to hear what often gets drowned out.