Social media, technology and anxiety: finding a healthier balance

Introduction

Phones, social media and digital technology are woven into everyday life. We use them to work, keep in touch, find information, organise ourselves, relax and connect with people we might otherwise rarely see.

That makes conversations about technology and mental health more complicated than simply deciding that phones or social media are “bad for us”.

For many people, online spaces provide friendship, community and useful support. At the same time, being permanently connected can make it harder to switch off. Notifications compete for our attention, difficult news follows us throughout the day and it is remarkably easy to spend twenty minutes looking at other people’s apparently perfect lives when we only intended to check one message.

If you already experience anxiety, some of those habits can make a busy mind even busier.

It is tempting to look for a simple answer to the question: does social media cause anxiety?

The reality is much less tidy.

How we use social media matters. What we see matters. Why we are using it matters. So do our existing mental health, circumstances and relationships.

For one person, an online community may reduce isolation and provide genuine connection. For somebody else, an evening spent comparing themselves with other people may leave them feeling considerably worse.

The useful question is therefore less about whether social media is universally good or bad and more about what our own digital habits are doing to us.

How can digital life add to anxiety?

There is no single way technology affects our mental wellbeing. Often it is a combination of small things that gradually makes digital life feel more demanding than useful.

Feeling as though you’re always available

Smartphones have blurred many of the boundaries that used to exist naturally.

Work can reach us at home. Friends can see that we have received a message. News updates arrive throughout the day. Group chats continue long after we have decided we are tired of looking at them.

None of those things is necessarily a problem on its own. But the cumulative effect can create a feeling that we should always be checking, replying or keeping up.

If every notification feels like something requiring your attention, it becomes difficult to feel properly off duty.

Comparing your life with everybody else’s

We rarely see a completely representative version of another person’s life on social media.

We see the holiday rather than the argument at the airport. The new job rather than the months of applications. The smiling family photograph rather than everything that happened five minutes before it was taken.

Most of us understand this intellectually and can still find ourselves comparing.

That comparison becomes particularly difficult when we measure the ordinary, complicated reality of our own lives against selected moments from somebody else’s.

If you regularly close an app feeling inadequate, unsuccessful, unattractive or as though everybody else has somehow worked life out, it is worth noticing that pattern.

Fear of missing out

Social media gives us access to things we would once simply not have known were happening.

We can see the gathering we weren’t invited to, the event we couldn’t attend, colleagues socialising without us or friends enjoying themselves somewhere else.

Sometimes that is completely harmless. Sometimes it touches a particular insecurity and starts a familiar chain of thoughts.

Why wasn’t I there?

Do they prefer each other?

Am I missing out?

Is everybody doing more with their life than I am?

The technology hasn’t necessarily created the underlying worry, but it can provide it with an extraordinary amount of material.

Too much information

There has never been a shortage of difficult things happening in the world. What has changed is our ability to watch them unfold almost continuously.

News, commentary, video, argument and speculation can follow one another without a natural stopping point. You can read one upsetting story and immediately be presented with another.

Staying informed matters. Spending an hour scrolling through increasingly distressing material at midnight is something different.

If consuming news leaves you informed enough to understand what is happening, it is serving a purpose. If it leaves you frightened, helpless and unable to disengage, changing how you consume it may help.

Sometimes the problem is not screen time, but what happens on the screen

“Reduce your screen time” sounds wonderfully simple.

But an hour video-calling a distant friend is not necessarily equivalent to an hour reading hostile comments. Looking up directions is different from repeatedly searching symptoms because you are worried about your health. Watching a film with somebody is different from moving between apps without really knowing why.

The number of minutes alone cannot tell us whether our relationship with technology is healthy.

A more useful set of questions might be:

What am I doing online?
Why did I pick up my phone?
How do I usually feel afterwards?
Am I choosing to use this, or am I checking it automatically?
Is it replacing something I would rather be doing?
Can I stop when I want to?

Patterns are often more revealing than totals.

Notice when checking becomes reassurance-seeking

Anxiety likes certainty, and the internet appears to offer an unlimited supply of it.

Worried about a physical symptom? Search it.

Unsure whether you handled a conversation correctly? Read it back.

Concerned that somebody is upset with you? Check whether they are online.

Unsure about something happening tomorrow? Search for more information.

Sometimes checking answers the question and we move on. But anxiety can create a cycle where reassurance only works briefly.

You search. You feel slightly better. Another doubt appears. You search again.

The difficulty is that the internet can always provide one more answer, one more opinion and one more possibility to worry about.

If you notice yourself repeatedly checking the same thing without becoming any more settled, the problem may no longer be a lack of information.

Your phone can interfere with switching off

Many of us use the same device for work, news, entertainment, social contact and our alarm clock.

Then we take it to bed.

That means the thing designed to wake us in the morning is also capable of delivering emails, messages, breaking news and an endless stream of content five minutes before we try to sleep.

You don’t necessarily need an elaborate evening routine or a complete ban on screens. But if you find yourself tired while repeatedly deciding to watch “one more thing”, making the stopping point more deliberate can help.

Make bedtime less interesting to your phone

Simple changes might include:

turning off non-essential notifications
using Do Not Disturb or a similar setting overnight
keeping work email out of sight after a particular time
charging your phone away from the bed
deciding when you want to stop checking news
using an ordinary alarm clock if the phone itself is the problem
removing an app from the home screen if you open it automatically

You do not have to make your phone unusable.

The aim is to reduce the number of times it successfully asks for your attention when you would rather be doing something else.

Take control of what you see

One of the advantages of social media is that we are not entirely passive.

We can choose who we follow, mute accounts, leave groups, switch off notifications and decide that certain conversations are not worth participating in.

If an account repeatedly leaves you angry, anxious or inadequate, you are allowed to unfollow it.

That remains true if the person is nice.

It remains true if the account is popular.

It remains true if everybody else seems to be following it.

Your social media feed does not need to represent a balanced cross-section of the entire internet. It is something you interact with repeatedly, so there is nothing unreasonable about making that environment more useful to you.

Be particularly careful when you’re already struggling

The content we seek out can change with our mood.

When anxious, we may search for reassurance. When feeling low, we may find ourselves drawn towards material that reinforces how we already feel. Algorithms can then continue showing us similar things because we have spent time looking at them.

That is one reason to notice not just what appears in your feed, but how you are responding to it.

If something is repeatedly making you feel worse, you do not have to keep consuming it simply because the platform keeps offering it.

Build boundaries that fit your life

A healthier relationship with technology does not require disappearing into the woods and throwing your phone into a loch.

For most of us, that would be inconvenient fairly quickly.

What helps is finding a few boundaries that address the things actually causing difficulty.

Decide what deserves a notification

Not every app needs permission to interrupt you.

A message from someone important may be worth knowing about immediately. A shopping app announcing a sale probably isn’t.

Go through your notifications and decide which things genuinely need to reach you rather than accepting the defaults chosen by the app.

Create some places where the phone isn’t automatic

You might decide not to use your phone while eating, during a walk, when talking to somebody or for the first few minutes after you wake up.

It does not need to be a rigid rule.

The point is to rediscover moments where reaching for a screen isn’t the automatic next step.

Make work boundaries visible

Technology can be particularly difficult when work follows us everywhere.

If your job allows it, decide when you are contactable and when you are not. Managers can help by being thoughtful about when messages are sent and what expectations they create.

An email sent at 9.30pm may take ten seconds to write but leave someone else wondering whether they are expected to answer it.

Workplace wellbeing includes thinking about these small digital habits too.

Don’t forget what technology does well

It would be strange to write about digital wellbeing without acknowledging why we keep using all this technology in the first place.

It can be genuinely helpful.

Online spaces can help people find communities they cannot easily access locally. That can be particularly important for people who feel isolated, live rurally, have a less common experience or condition, or simply find it easier to make an initial connection online.

Technology can also help us:

keep in touch with distant friends and family
find reliable health information
access support
work flexibly
learn new things
join groups and communities
find people with shared experiences
organise activities in the real world
use tools that support relaxation, sleep or mental wellbeing

The goal is not to recreate life before smartphones.

It is to keep the useful parts while becoming a little more deliberate about the parts that aren’t helping.

Try a digital check-in rather than a digital detox

The idea of a “digital detox” can make technology use sound as though it is something we need to cleanse ourselves of.

For most people, technology is simply part of life. What may be more useful is checking in with our habits occasionally.

Ask yourself:

What do I enjoy online?

Keep that.

What is useful?

Keep that too.

What repeatedly makes me feel worse?

Can you reduce it, change it or remove it?

What am I doing automatically rather than deliberately?

Try interrupting that habit and see what happens.

What has my phone gradually displaced?

Perhaps it is sleep, reading, exercise, conversation, being outside or simply having a few minutes when nothing is happening.

You don’t necessarily need dramatic changes. Sometimes removing one notification, leaving one group or keeping your phone out of reach for half an hour is enough to change a habit.

When online life is affecting your mental health

If social media or technology is adding to your anxiety, changing some digital habits may help.

But if anxiety is becoming persistent, difficult to manage or affecting your ability to work, sleep, maintain relationships or do everyday things, don’t assume the answer is simply to spend less time online.

The technology may be contributing to what you are experiencing without being the whole explanation.

Talk to your GP or another appropriate health professional if you are concerned about your mental health or feel you need more support.

Aim for useful, not perfect

Our relationship with technology will keep changing because the technology itself keeps changing.

New apps arrive. Platforms change. Work becomes more connected. The boundaries between online and offline life continue to blur.

That means there probably isn’t a perfect set of rules that everybody can follow.

What we can do is pay attention.

Does this help me connect, learn, organise or enjoy myself?

Or am I scrolling because I am anxious, bored or avoiding something else?

Can I put it down when I want to?

Do I generally feel better, worse or simply numb after spending time here?

Those are much more useful questions than trying to decide whether technology itself is good or bad for us.

Sometimes looking after our mental health in a digital world is not about disconnecting completely.

It is simply about making sure we still get to decide when to connect.