Why Your Constant Phone Checking Is Digital Self-Harm

Compulsive Phone-Checking

Source: Marjan Grabowski/Unsplash

We love to hate our phones. We curse them during distraction- and interruption-spiked workdays 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 of our growing sense of digital despair, their mission is to hook us into compulsive cycles of social-media checking. In the process, they erode our mental health. What is more, they do so at scale.

We already know all this. 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?

Habit Formation by Design

Designed to be compulsive and to hijack our attention, smartphones exploit and manipulate the reward centres of the 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 all can activate the brain’s dopamine system, which constantly reinforces our compulsive checking behaviours. In other words, we are not operating on an even playing field.

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 habit formation.

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 30. Yet despite this widespread unease, a 2018 survey found 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 eroded your 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, getting off our phones has a stronger beneficial effect than going on 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, smartphones are more like food than alcohol or drugs. Most of us cannot just permanently abstain. Instead, we have to learn to develop a healthier, sustainably balanced relationship with our devices.

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.

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. Remember, having a phone strategy is not trivial. It is essential for our mental, physical, and social well-being.

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1. Try low dopamine mornings. Avoid screens for the first 30 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 screentime 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 they begin to interrupt the constant drip of updates and likes, most people find they become 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 automatic, can work wonders.