Globally, social media has become a meaningful part of life for billions, and it’s easy to see why. Social media can make it easier to connect with loved ones, catch up on the daily news, or network with companies when life gets too complicated or busy. Additionally, online relationships with friends and family can often alleviate the feeling of loneliness while fostering the feeling of closeness despite their inability to be physically with you.
While social media contributes positively to daily life, scientists are questioning whether these positive contributions outweigh the negative impacts on mental health. Avid social media users are often vulnerable to addiction, sleep disruptions, and desensitization, which encourages unhealthy habits. Scientists and users alike have observed that daily social media use is increasingly associated with anxiety, depression, and shorter attention spans.
The Addicting Nature of Social Media
If you’ve ever felt like you fell down the rabbit hole of social media for what felt like a couple of minutes, but was in reality a couple of hours, you’re not alone. Social media is designed to keep users interested. As a result of social media’s engineered design to trap users, they face implications such as addiction and shorter attention spans.
Why It’s So Hard to Stop Scrolling
If you’ve ever felt like you just can’t stop scrolling, that’s not a personal failing; it’s embedded in the system. With companies paying social media platforms to advertise their products and services, platforms engineer their programs to be as addictive as possible to ensure the user views the most amount of advertisements. Features like infinite scrolling and the variable reward system mimic the same sensation as playing a slot machine.
Further, short videos instill the thought “just one more video,” which maximizes profits from the platform’s point of view. For instance, Meta, owner of Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and Threads, reportedly gains approximately 99% of all revenue from advertisements (Johnston, 2024); this means that keeping your attention is literally their business model.
What This Does to Our Focus
It’s more likely that you’ll retain the short information on a billboard rather than a boring, lengthy 500-paged textbook, and platforms use this to their advantage. Short videos and clips are effective to make the user want to see more videos, deliver that dopamine-driven hit, and keep the user on the platform for the longest possible time. Scientists began to wonder the impacts this would have on mental health and focus. In an interview with Dr. Gloria Mark, Chancellor’s Professor of Informatics at the University of California, Irvine, she noted that the average attention span in 2004 was around two and a half minutes, but in recent years, that number has dropped to just 47 seconds (Mark, 2023). To put that in perspective, a three-month-old puppy has an attention span of roughly three minutes (Kleszynski, 2022); it seems we have some competition.
How Social Media Disrupts Sleep
In addition to boosting memory and learning, supporting heart health, and improving the immune system, sleep is a crucial part in resetting and recharging for the next day (Cultivating Health, 2023). Usage of devices during the winding-down hours can impair your ability to sleep well for the night and further impact mental health and well-being. Specifically, the stimulating effects of blue light emitting from digital devices such as mobile phones can interfere with the 24-hour internal clock, known as the circadian rhythm. Blue light emitted from mobile devices mimics the same wavelengths as those emitted by the sun, which triggers the brain to feel alert when it should be calming down in preparation for bedtime (Silvani et al., 2022).
How Poor Sleep Affects Mental Health
Most of us know that a bad night’s sleep leaves us feeling off, but the connection between sleep deprivation and mental health runs much deeper than just feeling groggy the next morning. In fact, a study found that sleep deprivation can make it increasingly difficult to manage and process emotions, trouble with focusing and remembering, as well as intensifying anxiety and depression (Cleveland Clinic, 2022).
Constant Exposure and Its Impact on Mental Health
Social media acts as a news outlet for many individuals to gain a quick understanding of current events. While the 24-hour news cycle constantly brings new content into users’ feeds, a term coined “doomscrolling” has resulted in detrimental effects on mental health. The term “doomscrolling” became popular in 2020, considering the significant amount of tragic events and how heavily users relied on social media. Researchers investigated the relationship between social media and decreasing quality of mental health among avid users and found that avid doomscrollering was a predictor of future conditions such as depression and anxiety (Scammon, 2025).
The Emotional Cost of Constant Exposure
Along with anxiety and depression, desensitization has become a popular topic, having effects on mental health and emotional reciprocation. Desensitization is the result of overexposure to tragic or violent events and has impacted users globally as a response to the current increase in cross-continental and domestic conflicts. A surprising study showed that despite their intended purpose of being empathetic, findings revealed a direct correlation between high social media usage and a decline in empathy levels in nursing students (Shaista et al., 2024).
Rebuilding a Healthy Relationship with Social Media
Social media isn’t going to leave any time soon, but it doesn’t have to be the enemy. Finding ways to properly address the negative impacts is crucial to understanding and fostering a healthy relationship with social media. Despite the negative effects such as addiction, sleep deprivation, and desensitization, learning to unplug from social media can be significantly beneficial to fit lifestyle needs as well as personal mental health needs.
If you have been feeling overwhelmed with the pressures of the outside world, you don’t have to face it alone. Talk therapy and medication management can help alleviate these feelings of anxiety and depression as well as setting you on a track for success. For those whose relationship with social media has already taken a toll, support is available. At Aloha Integrative Health, we strive to provide holistic care in supporting patients on their journey to recovery.
Q&A:
Q: What are some warning signs related to overusing social media?
A: Some warning signs to watch out for are:
- Mood swings depending on social media status: how many likes, views, or comments you have received.
- Feeling FOMO (fear of missing out) when you are not online.
- Ignoring in-person relationships (family gatherings or dinner with friends) for digital relationships (texting a friend, checking their posts, commenting on their content).
- Neglecting outside responsibilities (postponing or procrastinating)
- Compulsive scrolling (usage of social media platforms without an intended purpose)
Q: Is there a “safe” amount of screen time?
A: While there is no set rule for a “safe” amount of screen time, it may vary depending on the profession and exposure to digital devices. Overall, some suggestions to keep in mind are to:
- Prioritize your sleep by avoiding screens for at least 1 to 2 hours before bed to prevent blue-light disruption.
- Take eye breaks such as following the 20-20-20 Rule: every 20 minutes, look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds to prevent digital eye strain.
Q: How can I create a healthy relationship with social media?
A: Having a healthy relationship with social media may be difficult, but it is possible. Some techniques you could use are:
- Turning off unimportant notifications from social media platforms.
- Setting time limits on social media to avoid the rabbit hole of endless scrolling.
- Creating phone-free zones. This could be avoiding phone usage in your bedroom, during meals, or dedicating hours of phone-free activity.
- Regular check-ins: Are you feeling overwhelmed by social media? Do you feel anxious when you are away from it? Would taking a short break improve your relationship with social media?
Sources Cited:
Amirthalingam, J., & Khera, A. (2024). Understanding Social Media Addiction: A Deep Dive. Cureus, 16(10), e72499-e72499.
Cleveland clinic. (2022, August 11). Sleep Deprivation: What It Is, Symptoms, Treatment & Stages. Cleveland Clinic; Cleveland Clinic. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/23970-sleep-deprivation
Cultivating Health. (2023, March 15). Better sleep: Why it’s important for your health and tips to sleep soundly. UC Davis Health. https://health.ucdavis.edu/blog/cultivating-health/better-sleep-why-its-important-for-your-health-and-tips-to-sleep-soundly/2023/03
Datareportal. (2025, July). Global Social Media Statistics. DataReportal – Global Digital Insights. https://datareportal.com/social-media-users
Johnston, M. (2024, June 29). How Does Facebook Make Money? Investopedia. https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/120114/how-does-facebook-fb-make-money.asp
Kleszynski, B. (2022). How Long Is a Dog’s Attention Span? | Chewy. Chewy. https://www.chewy.com/education/dog/training-and-behavior/dog-attention-span
Mark, G. (2023, February). Speaking of psychology: Why Our Attention Spans Are shrinking, with Gloria Mark, PhD. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/news/podcasts/speaking-of-psychology/attention-spans
Poles, A. (2025). Impact of social media usage on attention spans. Psychology, 16(6), 760-772.
Scammon, C. N. (2025). The Relationships Between Doomscrolling and Anxiety, Depression, and Coping (Doctoral dissertation, Northwest University).
Shaista, Mazharullah, Ali, S. B., Adil, M., Asadullah, Muhammad Adeel, & Ahmad, D. (2024). Quantifying the Influence of Social Media on Desensitization and Empathy among Undergraduate Nursing Students, A Cross-sectional Study in Mardan Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. NURSEARCHER (Journal of Nursing & Midwifery Sciences), 4(4), 38–42. https://doi.org/10.54393/nrs.v4i04.123
Silvani, M. I., Werder, R., & Perret, C. (2022). The influence of blue light on sleep, performance and wellbeing in young adults: A systematic review. Frontiers in physiology, 13, 943108. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2022.943108