Welcome to the nineteenth edition of Airplane Mode, where less is more and the WiFi is always off.

Every week, we curate 3 impactful ideas for you to stop and ponder, taking you away from the algorithm and putting you back in control of your most valuable resource: your attention.

Use this newsletter as a signal to pause, breathe, and think, helping you realign with your purpose and clear out the ‘scroll pollution’ that clouds our brains every day.

Thank you for flying with 99 Lives 🐆✈️

This study is fascinating. As everyone becomes more addicted to their phones and screens, we all seem to be developing a bit of ADHD these days.

And as someone who has struggled with ADHD most of my life, this one hits even harder.

Most of what we hear about ADHD in Western society tends to focus on the negative aspects of the disorder: the lack of focus, feeling all over the place, not being able to get basic things done.

But the truth I’ve come to learn over the last few years is that people with ADHD have a lot of superpowers; we just have to become aware of these superpowers first to shift our perspectives.

Using a questionnaire to assess more than 50 adults, researchers in Norway were determined to figure out how ADHD impacts adults on a daily basis, both the good and the bad.

And sure enough, the data and responses showed exactly what was mentioned above: ADHD is not inherently good or bad, but depends heavily on context, environment, and how individuals learn to work with it.

The study found that ADHD brought unique strengths in 3 key areas:

The conclusion: The stories we tell ourselves inside our heads are one of the most important aspects we can change to shift our reality and perception of ourselves. This study about ADHD proves just how much the past negative opinions about the disorder don’t serve us or our personal growth anymore.

ADHD traits are not inherently flaws or gifts, they are raw traits that can become strengths or liabilities depending on context, support, and self-understanding. It’s up to us to ensure we keep leaning into the strengths, while doing what we can to regulate and limit the negatives of ADHD.

Purpose has always been one of the key pillars of 99 Lives, as a life without purpose is truly no life at all.

A study published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research decided to take this a step further and test this idea scientifically.

In this comprehensive study, researchers interviewed almost 3,000 teenagers between the ages of 17 to 19 about their life’s purpose, then followed them for a decade to assess the impact of that purpose on their mental health.

The results were a mic drop moment.

The study found that each increase in feelings of purpose that someone had was linked to a 35% reduction in future depression risk.

While this metric is extremely impressive, what’s even more impressive here is that these results held across all controlled variables like genders, races, socioeconomic status, or mental health history.

The combination of this study’s robust sample size, the fact that researchers followed participants for 10 years, and that the results were consistent regardless of the background of each participant, make these findings tremendously potent and valid.

No matter how old we are, the power of purpose is truly undeniable, and strengthens our mental health in a variety of ways:

The conclusion: Humans who feel their lives have direction are much less likely to become depressed in the future, making purpose a powerful and universal mental health buffer. The challenge is finding ways for all of us to be exposed to the ideas and impact of purpose in our daily lives, something we will focus much more on at 99 Lives in 2026.

The world is getting more weird every day, and I think we all know why…**it’s the phones.

Humans and our ancient brains are simply not built to have a TV in our pockets that allows us to talk to anyone, anywhere, at all times.**

It feels like we are at a crossroads moment these days, where more and more people are realizing how sucked into their phone and social media they’ve become, and are openly rejecting this and moving into the direction of more phoneless, IRL experiences. (Like Airplane Mode Lisbon 😉)

But a recent study published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior has found something even more interesting in my opinion…the more we use our phones, the more reactive we become, especially to social pain and exclusion.

Using a unique study setup involving participants playing a game with each other but without the ability to see each other, researchers were able to determine exactly how this dynamic works.

Participants who had a higher smartphone addiction score all exhibited heightened brain responses to social exclusion, meaning the areas of their brain that felt this pain were larger and more active. Simply put, they were more sensitive and felt more pain at being excluded socially.

Additionally, the more addicted we are to our smartphones, the more we feel FOMO. And I know all of us hate feeling FOMO.

The worst part of all of this is that it generates a negative feedback loop.

Many of us are unknowingly using phones like drugs these days, to numb our feelings and stop us from sitting with our thoughts. Those with higher smartphone addiction and thus more social exclusion pain, were more likely to use their phones even more to cope with those negative emotions.

This is literally no different than a drug or alcohol addiction.

On the other hand, those who used their phones less were much better able to regulate and cognitively manage being excluded socially.

The conclusion: People who overuse smartphones appear to experience social exclusion as more emotionally painful at the brain level, leading to more feelings of FOMO, which may drive compulsive phone use as a way to avoid or soothe social distress.

(I know a lot of us have struggled with this addiction, and this is something I have worked on a lot myself in the last couple of years. I’m still not perfect, but I think I’m developing a good protocol for both smartphone and social media use that has really been helping me improve in these areas. If it’s something you’re interested in, please reply to this email telling me a bit about how you struggle here too, and I can share my protocol with you!)

In today’s hectic world, what things are you doing daily or weekly to keep yourself grounded and prevent the external chaos from messing too much with your internal peace?

Thanks for reading the nineteenth edition!

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