The amount of time we spend on screens can have a negative impact on our mood and well-being. Reducing screen time can support good mental health.
Phones Can Be isolating
The availability of a smart phone in everyone’s pocket has led to an increase in social isolation, for both kids and adults.
You can see it plainly in the hallways of school between classes. Rather than smiling and waving or saying hi to classmates as they pass in the halls, everyone is stuck in their phones. Kids aren’t really having conversations, or making friends and sharing experiences. It can be lonely – even among all those people.
We see this echoed in the experiences of our adult patients – when they are in the company break room and everyone is on their phone and no one is making small talk, for example. They can feel isolated during the eight hours or more they spend at work. Often, they go home to their partner who is on their phone too, and may not be even having those “Hi honey, how was your day?” conversations, let alone longer conversations.
The constant presence of every book ever written, every song ever created, and every movie ever filmed available at your fingertips makes it too easy to opt out of small and important moments of socialization, and causes us to be very isolated from other people even as they surround us. This can be detrimental to mental health – particularly as healthy relationships are one of the things that bring people out of themselves and helps improve mental health more than almost any other lifestyle change we can recommend.
Notifications Can Be negative
With phones come notifications. These notifications, particularly for the news and social media, alert us to negative and discouraging information at random moments, at all times of the day, and in a way that is largely out of our control.
Whether you’re receiving an alert with the latest headline, or scrolling through social media or Reddit, we are constantly inundated with negative information. News is presented in a way that is designed to grab and hold your attention, creating a sense of righteous indignation with stories that sound extreme and frightening, regardless of how concerning the facts actually are.
This negativity is present in social media, too — with a constant source of comparison for your life versus the lives of others. It’s keeping up with the Joneses, except they aren’t the people who live next door, they’re the one-in-a-million and living halfway across the country and only showing you a fraction of their lives through a sparkling filter. Social media brings negativity into our lives by fostering unrealistic expectations, and offering comparisons that we can never hope to match.
What now?
Schools across Texas are implementing rules that restrict the presence of phones in the day-to-day lives of our kids. From the point of view of mental health providers, we wish there was a way to implement this into our lives as adults, too. Most people would likely be happier and healthier if they were able to stay away from their phones for long periods of each day.
An excellent 2018 study – supported and extended by a recent meta analyses – showed that an association between time spent on screens – including TV, video games, computer screens, and smart phones – and symptoms of poor mental health. After around an hour or two, every increasing increment of screen time, across all screens, led to increasing markers of mental health for depression and anxiety.
We encourage everyone to look across all of your screens and try to limit non-essential screen time – ideally targeting an hour or two each day.
It is almost certainly better to experience the pain and frustration of boredom than solve it with more screen time. From boredom grows creativity, the desire to learn a new instrument, or to write a song, read a book, or learn a foreign language. From boredom grows the desire to reach out and contact others, such as a friend that you haven’t seen in a long time…
Boredom brings its own challenges, but it can bring great rewards and it is better for our health. It is too easy to never be bored with a screen constantly at your fingertips.
We encourage you to reduce your screen time and embrace the challenge of boredom, and to search for other ways to find meaning and connection in your life.
References
Islambouli R, Ingram S, Farah JC, Charlesworth Z, Aouad R, Delabays A, et al. Exploring the Negative Impact of Smartphone Usage on Students’ Digital Wellbeing: A Systematic Review of Empirical Studies. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction. 2025;1–23. doi:10.1080/10447318.2025.2499943
Makhdum Muhammad N, Schneider M, Hill A, Yau DM. How the Use of iPad and Smartphones Creates Social Isolation. Advancing Social Emotional Learning. 2019.
Robertson CE, Pröllochs N, Schwarzenegger K, et al. Negativity Drives Online News Consumption. Nature Human Behaviour. 2023;7:812–822. doi:10.1038/s41562-023-01538-4
Twenge JM, Campbell WK. Associations between Screen Time and Lower Psychological Well-Being Among Children and Adolescents: Evidence from a Population-Based Study. Preventive Medicine Reports. 2018;12:271–283. doi:10.1016/j.pmedr.2018.10.003
Silva Santos RM, Ventura S, Nogueira Y, Mendes C, de Paula J, Miranda D, Romano-Silva M. The Associations Between Screen Time and Mental Health in Adults: A Systematic Review. Journal of Technology in Behavioral Science. 2024;9:825–845. doi:10.1007/s41347-024-00398-7
About Us
Wells Medicine is a Houston-based practice designed to provide meaningful care for mental health. Providing targeted interventional treatments for Depression, Anxiety, OCD, PTSD and other conditions, with Ketamine Treatments, Stellate Ganglion Blocks, TMS, and Nitrous-Oxide Treatments. Focused on comprehensive care and integration with Psychiatry, Psychology, and Support Services. We are evidence-based, patient-focused and mission-driven.
The content here is for informational purposes and should not be relied upon for medical decisions. For the details of your specific medical conditions and treatments consult your doctors or other qualified healthcare professionals.
