Digital health
We built Preznt on a simple belief: the people in the room deserve more of us than the phone in our pocket. The research agrees.
When a phone is merely present during a conversation — face-down, untouched — people report feeling less close, less trusting, and less understood by the person across from them.
Przybylski & Weinstein (2013); Misra et al., “The iPhone Effect” (2014)At a shared meal, diners who kept their phones on the table enjoyed the time with friends and family less than those who put them away.
Dwyer, Kushlev & Dunn, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology (2018)People who reached for their phones to photograph an experience remembered it worse than those who simply watched it happen. The act of capturing a moment can quietly cost you the memory of it.
Tamir, Templeton, Ward & Zaki (2018)The mere presence of your own smartphone reduces your available cognitive capacity — even when it’s off. Part of your mind stays with the device.
Ward, Duke, Gneezy & Bos, “Brain Drain” (2017)Interruptions carry a real cost: work broken up by distraction is completed faster but with more stress, and refocusing after a break takes far longer than the interruption itself.
Mark, Gudith & Klocke (2008)None of this means phones are the enemy. They’re the best tools we’ve ever carried. But the evidence points somewhere clear: for the moments that matter most, the phone is better set aside than kept close. Not taken away, not forced off — simply, gently, out of the way, by choice.
That’s the whole idea behind Preznt.
Join the waitlist and we’ll tell you when Preznt is ready.
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