A surprising study out of Germany found that people who cut back on using their smartphone for just a week saw lasting health benefits. Reducing screen time by just an hour daily helped study participants improve their lifestyle and well-being.

The study author, Dr. Julia Brailovskaia, a psychologist from the Mental Health Research and Treatment Center at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, said smartphones are both a “blessing and a curse,” pointing out the many studies linking their use to less physical activity, obesity, neck pain, impaired performance and addiction-like behavior, according to a university release.

The average adult spends about three hours daily on their smartphone, checking social media, news feeds, endless video games and an endless array of apps, says Study Finds. The German researchers set to find if cutting back, and even cutting out, the use of smartphones can influence our health.

They divided 619 participants into three groups. The first group of 200 were told to avoid using their smartphones altogether. The second group of 226 reduced daily use by an hour, and 193 remaining study subjects continued to use their phones normally. After one week the researchers questioned the participants about their overall lifestyle habits and well-being. They repeated the questionnaire four months later. Specifically, the participants were asked about their exercise and smoking habits, and if they felt depressed or anxious.

“We found that both giving up the smartphone and reducing its daily use by one hour had positive effects on lifestyle and well-being,” said Brailovskaia, according to the university release. “In the group who reduced its use, these effects even lasted longer and were thus more stable than in the abstinence group.”

The one-week intervention changed the participants usage habits in the long term. Even four months after the end of the experiment, the members of the abstinence group used their smartphones on average 38 minutes less per day than before. The group who spent one hour less daily on their phones during the experiment used it as much as 45 minutes less daily after four months.

At the same time, life satisfaction and time spent doing physical activity increased. Symptoms of depression and anxiety as well as nicotine usage decreased.

“It’s not necessary to completely give up the smartphone to feel better,” Brailovskaia said in the release. “There may be an optimal daily usage time.”