Questions, and the answers to them

You’re making a personal commitment to try making Mondays phone-free. The aim is the whole day. If a morning, afternoon, or evening is what you can manage, start there.

It’s not a petition, and you don’t need to prove you’ve done it. For anyone who’s picked up their phone to check the time only to resurface forty minutes later, it’s a chance to choose more intentionally what gets your attention.

No. Taking part, making the pledge, and using the campaign resources are free. You don’t need to buy a lockbox, an app, or a collection of replacement gadgets. Start with what you already have.

If you’d like to support The Dead Good Club with a donation, that’s more than welcome, but you don’t have to donate to take part.

You don’t need an app to take part. You can simply put your phone away and make a few arrangements beforehand.

If you’d like help leaving distracting apps alone, try the controls already on your phone, such as Screen Time or Digital Wellbeing. How to Do It also includes suggestions for app blockers. Check that essential calls, alerts, and tools still work before using restrictions.

Monday is the shared day, and we’d love you to join us then. Having a regular day gives you something to plan for and makes it easier to try with other people.

If Mondays genuinely don’t work for you, a different day can still be your own way to practise using your phone less. You don’t need our permission. If only part of Monday is possible, that counts too.

Put the phone away again when you’re ready. A quick check doesn’t have to become the rest of the day, and a difficult Monday doesn’t cancel your pledge.

Ask what got in the way and change what you can before the next one. There’s no streak to protect and no report to submit. There will always be another Monday.

No. You can leave it on for selected calls, medical alerts, or other essential uses while muting the rest. Keep it charged and somewhere you can hear it if you need to be reachable.

If you choose to switch it off or leave it behind, sort out urgent contact and access to essential tools first.

Yes. Keep the access your job requires. That might mean using a work phone while putting your personal one away, or blocking distracting apps on the phone you use for both.

Agree any changes to work calls or response times with your manager and colleagues first. You can also start with lunch, a meeting, or time outside work. Taking part shouldn’t mean neglecting a responsibility or leaving someone else to cover it without agreement.

Related page: Workplaces

Make a plan with anyone who may need you urgently. You might allow calls from selected contacts, use a landline, or agree another reliable route. Tell people how to reach you and test it before Monday.

Keep medical alerts, caring arrangements, and accessibility tools working. If you’re leaving calls on, check they get through your settings and that you can hear the phone from wherever you put it. Phone-free shouldn’t mean unavailable to someone who needs you.

Try to move as much as you can to your laptop or smartwatch. You could have your bank card ready, print a ticket where that’s an option, or check your route beforehand. But you don’t need to make an ordinary errand difficult just to avoid touching your phone.

Use it for the job, then put it away again. Checking a delivery time doesn’t have to turn into checking every other app.

The invitation is about phones, not a ban on every screen. You can still work at a computer, read on an e-reader, or watch a film.

It’s worth noticing what you’re doing instead, though. Moving the same scrolling to a laptop might not give you the break you wanted. Choose what you’d like your Monday to include rather than treating every screen as the same thing.

Talk the idea through together rather than announcing a confiscation. Ask what they need their phones for, what they’d miss, and what they’d enjoy doing instead. Agree when you’ll try it and what stays available for homework, travel, health, or staying in touch.

Adults should take part too. Keep the arrangements appropriate to your children’s ages and needs, and let teenagers tell friends if they’ll be slower to reply. A shared phone-free evening can be a place to start.

Related page: At home

You don’t have to push through a whole day. Try a shorter period, keep important contact available, and talk about what’s making it difficult.

If you or someone in your household becomes very distressed, or phone use is affecting sleep, school, work, or everyday life, speak to your GP or a qualified mental-health professional for advice. For parents, that may mean getting support for your child rather than insisting on a phone-free Monday. This campaign isn’t treatment or a substitute for professional care.

Yes. Start small and agree a trial that suits the setting. Keep essential access working and explain the invitation before you begin. An organisation taking part doesn’t automatically pledge on behalf of students, families, employees, or customers.

We have separate guidance for Schools, Workplaces, and Cafés, pubs, and clubs, with suggestions for introducing the idea and practical questions to consider.

Mobile Free Mondays is a campaign by The Dead Good Club.

The invitation is simple: on Mondays, we ditch the phones. Keep what you need, leave the non-essential use aside, and see what you make of the day.

No. We don’t ask for screen-time reports or proof that you completed a phone-free day. The pledge records your commitment to try, not a record of completed Mondays.

If you choose to appear on the public pledge wall, your name shows support for the idea. It isn’t a badge certifying how little you used your phone.

We use the email address you give with your pledge to avoid counting a pledge twice and you can opt in to receive campaign emails too.

Your email address won’t appear on the public wall. The Privacy notice explains how your information is handled, who handles it, and how long it’s kept.

If you’re introducing Mobile Free Mondays at home, school, work, or your venue, the campaign materials are there to help. Use the supplied files for their intended purpose and check any instructions that come with them.

For a different campaign, a redesign, a commercial product, or a use not covered by those instructions, contact us first. Please don’t assume a free download means unrestricted reuse of the artwork or branding.

Use the unsubscribe link in a campaign email to stop email updates. That doesn’t cancel your pledge or automatically remove a name you’ve chosen to share publicly.

Texts and public visibility are separate choices. If you’d like your name on the public wall changed or taken down, please email us and this will be sorted swiftly.

We’re not promising a particular result from Monday. The research discussed on Why It Matters looks at changes in phone use over different periods, not a trial of this campaign.

It gives us reasons to consider using our phones less. Try a version that works for you and notice what, if anything, changes.

Not precisely. The time result adds up the phone-use hours left aside in your chosen scenario. The carbon result is an illustrative estimate of the footprint associated with those hours, not a measurement of emissions avoided.

Actual savings depend on changes in energy use, what you do instead, and other factors. Putting a phone away for a day doesn’t undo the emissions from manufacturing it.