Why your Constant Phone-Checking is Digital Self-Harm

How to Stop Compulsive Clicking and Scrolling

Anna Katharina Schaffner | Psychology Today

A shorter version of this article was originally published on 18 April 2025 on Psychology Today/The Art of Self-Improvement

Phone Addiction

We love to hate our phones. We curse them during distraction- and interruption-spiked work-days and sleepless nights. We blame them for stealing our time, fraying our attention spans, destroying connection and presence, and making us buy stuff we don’t need. Convenient symbols for our growing sense of digital despair, their mission is to hook us forever into addictive cycles of social media checking. And in the process, they erode our mental health. What is more, they do so at scale.

We already know all this. None of this is news. And yet, we continue to reach for our phones compulsively, literally hundreds of times a day. A classic case of common sense, uncommon practice, there is a painful gap between what we know to be true and our actual daily behaviour. The scary truth is that the relationship we have with our smartphones and social media is often nothing less than a form of daily self-harm.

Doom-scrolling, algorithmically generated rage, carefully curated envy, and endless disruptive notifications that promise cheap dopamine hits are not glitches of the digital experience. They are its constitutive features. Why can’t we stop?

Addiction by Design

Engineered constantly to hijack our attention, smart phones are designed to exploit and manipulate the reward centres of our brain. Think slot machines for our brains to which we respond like Pavlovian dogs. The buzz of a notification, the allure of a red heart, the promise of a funny animal video, an aggravating headline, and the sense of affirmation from strangers activate our brain’s dopamine system, which constantly reinforces our compulsive checking behaviours. In other words, we are not operating in an even playing field. Phones are designed to be addictive.

And the statistics are sobering. Americans now spend on average between three and five hours per day on their smartphones. Among younger adults, that figure rises to six or seven hours. We check our devices an estimated 205 times per day—a number that suggests less a conscious choice and more a kind of reflexive, automatised tic. In psychological terms, it is a behaviour straddling compulsion and addiction.

A 2022 Gallup poll revealed that 58% of Americans believe they use their phones too much. That number climbs to nearly 80% for those under thirty. Yet despite this widespread unease, a 2018 survey showed that only 17% of people felt they could go a full day without their smartphones. Alarmingly, 8% said they’d last less than an hour.

What It’s Doing to Us

The psychological toll of all of this is becoming harder to ignore. Essentially, our phone habits amount to acts of constant digital self-harm. Our phone usage is not just aggravating our states of exhaustion, overwhelm, burnout, and restlessness. Research from the University of Pennsylvania found that limiting social media use to just 30 minutes a day led to significant drops in anxiety, depression, and loneliness. Another study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, linked heavy social media use to double the risk of perceived social isolation. We would not ignore such striking numbers in any other life domain. Would you eat a food each day that you know will make you tired, more anxious, depressed, and erode connection with other people?

Perhaps most strikingly, a recent study led by Adrian Ward at the University of Texas asked 467 participants to install an app that blocked their mobile internet access for two weeks. Nearly three-quarters (71%) reported improved mental health, with the average reduction in depressive symptoms exceeding that of some antidepressant trials. Participants reported sleeping better, feeling more socially connected, and experiencing a greater sense of autonomy over their time and decisions.

In other words, hundreds of times each day, every day, we are engaging in behaviours that decrease our wellbeing and increase anxiety, depression, and social isolation. Getting off our phones has a stronger effect than antidepressants.

So What Can We Do?

The idea of giving up smartphones entirely may seem way too drastic – if not downright impossible. We do after all need them for various practical tasks and for connecting with others in a convenient way. In that sense, smart phones are more like food than alcohol or drugs. Most of us cannot just abstain for life. Instead, we have to learn to develop a healthier, sustainably balanced relationship to our phones.

Digital minimalism, a concept popularized by Cal Newport in 2019, offers a gentler, more realistic alternative. Rather than renouncing technology altogether, Newport invites us to be intentional about how, when, and why we use it. It is worth remembering and reconnecting with Newport’s teachings.

A simple and effective strategy is to limit our social media time to 30 minutes a day. During those 30 minutes, engage intentionally and with purpose. Enjoy it. Concentrate on it. Slow down your scroll and digest what you see. Do this guilt-free, have fun with it, and stop after half an hour. If you struggle with this, try activating the power of your subconscious mind to help you change your unhealthy, self-harming phone habits. I have created a 'Digital Detox' hypnotherapy audio recording to help you overcome compulsive clicking and scrolling.

Here are 10 additional practical tips for fostering a healthier relationship with your digital devices. At their core is a simple premise: use your phone consciously, not compulsively. And remember, it really matters. Having a phone strategy is not trivial. It is essential for our mental, physical, and social wellbeing.

1. Try low dopamine mornings – Avoid screens for the first thirty minutes after you wake up. Set the tone and your intentions for the day.

2. Turn off non-essential notifications – Silence the digital noise.

3. Switch your screen to grayscale – A small change that reduces the sensuous seductiveness of our phones’ visual stimulation.

4. Put your phone away during meals, sleeping, focused working time, and conversations with friends – Out of sight, out of mind. Remove temptation from your eyeline. You wouldn’t have a sumptuous chocolate cake on your desk when you were trying to diet.

5. Create physical barriers – Place your phone in a drawer or bag to make access less easy.

6. Use a password instead of face ID – Introduce friction and difficulty to habitual fast unlocking of your apps.

7. Track your usage – Awareness is the first step to change. Set app limits. Many phones have screen time features and tracking. There are also third-party apps that help you limit time on your phone.

8. Pause before you pick up your phone – Ask: What am I feeling? What am I seeking? Which psychological itch exactly am I seeking to scratch by scrolling?

9. Reach out in other ways – Often we simply seek connection. Call, write, or meet in person if what you long for is contact.

10. Swap out your habit: Replace social media scrolling with something healthier and more positive. Whatever works for you.

    
    

Rediscovering Our Agency

When we begin to interrupt the constant automatic drip of updates and likes, most people find they are more present, more productive, and calmer. Even three days without social media can significantly improve mood and focus. A week brings tangible drops in stress. You probably know this serene and anchored feeling from your holidays.

And this is the hopeful takeaway from all of this: Small, deliberate shifts can generate genuine benefits. We can take back control – not by waging war on our devices, but by changing the terms of engagement. Simply devising a phone strategy that works for us and committing to it, and being intentional rather than automatically driven, can work wonders.

As a species, we have often struggled to manage our tools wisely. From fire to the printing press to television and email, each new technological invention has reshaped us. Alongside great benefits, our tools often bring new stressors into our lives. The smartphone is no exception. But we are not powerless. We need to remember that these tools are tools, designed to serve us, and not the other way round. With intentionality, we can choose where we want to place our attention, and what kind of phone users we want to be.

References

Noah Castelo, Kostadin Kushlev, Adrian F Ward, Michael Esterman, Peter B Reiner, Blocking mobile internet on smartphones improves sustained attention, mental health, and subjective well-being, PNAS Nexus, Volume 4, Issue 2, February 2025, pgaf017

Hunt, M. G., Marx, R., Lipson, C., & Young, J. (2018). No more FOMO: Limiting social media decreases loneliness and depression. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 37(10), 751–768.

Primack, Brian A et al. “Social Media Use and Perceived Social Isolation Among Young Adults in the U.S.” American journal of preventive medicine vol. 53,1 (2017): 1-8.

Image: Marjan Grabowski @Unsplash