5 June, 2026

We are delighted to celebrate the launch of our long-standing client Virgin Media O2’s Digital Wellbeing Strategy. It defines digital wellbeing as a feeling of control over your digital life: using your phone with intention and protecting yourself from harmful content and misinformation. As such, it isn’t anti-tech, it’s pro-tech that works for you – building digital control, confidence and healthy habits individually and systematically. It is a mission we are completely behind, and we are excited to be a part of evaluating the strategy’s impact.

It is built on research suggesting that people spend on average 1 hour and 26 minutes using their phone unintentionally, or a shocking 22 days each year. And , importantly, the research suggests that those who show higher unintentional use on their devices also demonstrate a higher degree of adverse effects such as poor sleep (41%) and a reduction in presence in important real-life moments (61%). Beyond this, this group are more likely to be served harmful or unpleasant online content (24%) than their peers.

Virgin Media O2 will continue to research, raise awareness of and work towards increased digital wellbeing through multiple partnerships. The company has a longstanding partnership with the charity, Internet Matters, supporting parents and guardians to understand children’s online safety. To continue learning, they have newly partnered with the University of Cambridge in a major initiative, the Digital Wellbeing Observatory. This is an exciting initiative which will monitor, over five years, the impact of generative AI on wellbeing, informing policy and shaping positive change.

If you want to understand your own unintentional phone use, see how well you score in their intentionality quiz, designed in collaboration with Seyi Akiwowo, a digital wellbeing expert.  If your score is lower that you’d like, the quiz gives handy tips for reducing your unintentional phone use, which we know we will be using – let’s get those 22 days back!

By Anna Heis