About this project
An independent reading of the research on attention, screens, and disconnecting.
What this is
Terminally Offline is an independent, non-commercial project attempting to read the research on attention, phone use, and disconnecting, and to say in plain English what it actually finds. It is deliberately small. There are a handful of essays, one monthly email, and a short set of practical suggestions grounded in the literature.
The premise is straightforward. Over the past fifteen years, a substantial body of work has accumulated on what happens to attention, sleep, memory, and mood when a large part of waking life is mediated by a screen. Much of that work reaches uncomfortable conclusions. Most of it has never reached the people it describes.
There is no shortage of commentary on this topic. Most of it is either alarmist, commercial, or both. The aim here is neither: just a careful reading of what the studies actually say, where they disagree, and what a reasonable person might do about it.
Who writes this, and how
Kev. An independent writer based in Australia. Not a neuroscientist, not a clinician — someone who has spent a long time reading people who are, and who writes about what that literature says.
Research on this site is AI-assisted. Each month, Claude (Anthropic's language model) runs a literature search across PubMed, Semantic Scholar, Europe PMC, and other academic sources, reads the papers it finds, and produces a first draft of the monthly flagship essay with a structured bibliography. That draft is then reviewed, fact-checked, edited, and in places rewritten by hand before publication. Every citation is verified against the original paper. The editorial judgement, the voice, and the final text are human.
This is disclosed plainly because the project would lose its reason for existing if it were not. A site that asks readers to take the research seriously owes them an honest account of how the research gets onto the page.
More at kev.earth. This project is separate, and the two should be read on their own terms.
Four principles
Evidence, read plainly
Everything here is grounded in peer-reviewed research. Claims are cited. Where the evidence is weak or contested, that is said plainly, not glossed over.
No programme, no product
There is nothing to buy, nothing to sign up for beyond a monthly email. No courses, no coaching, no affiliate links. The only revenue model is that there isn't one.
Independent, not anonymous
This is a one-person project, written by Kev. That is not hidden, but it is also not the point. The work is meant to stand on its own merits, not the author's.
Minimal data, no tracking
No cookies, no third-party tracking, no pixel. Privacy-respecting analytics for basic traffic counts, and Resend for the monthly email. That is all.
One email a month.
A single monthly email: a long-form piece of writing and a short summary of the research it draws on. Nothing else. Unsubscribe in one click.
The newsletter infrastructure is being set up. Come back in a few days to sign up for the monthly essay.