You’re standing in line at the grocery store or waiting for an elevator. You have no more than a minute to kill. And yet, before you’ve even processed what you’re doing, you’ve pulled out your phone and have begun to mindlessly scroll through TikTok or Instagram.
Sound familiar? It does to Adrian Ward, an associate professor at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin who studies people’s relationships to technology. “It’s not even an urge,” he says. “There’s no intention.” In his experience, checking your phone is often automatic.
Research suggests plenty of people do the same thing. Maxi Heitmayer, a teaching fellow who studies human-computer interaction at the London School of Economics and Political Science, found in a small 2022 experiment that only 11% of people’s smartphone checks were in response to a notification. The other 89% of the time, they checked their phones totally unprompted, often without thinking through why they were doing it.
The call of your phone
Why? Heitmayer thinks that, in our ultra plugged-in world, we’re so used to constant stimulation that we feel uncomfortable when we’re not doing anything, even for just a few seconds.
Phones are so good at relieving such discomfort that Shiri Melumad, an associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, calls them “adult pacifiers.” Much as a child totes around a toy or blanket to feel safe, adults draw comfort from the constant, familiar presence of their phones, Melumad says. You may lean on your digital pacifier deliberately—when you’re alone at a party and feeling awkward, say—or simply because you’ve become accustomed to always having something to occupy your brain.
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Ward, meanwhile, calls smartphones a “supernormal stimulus,” or something “beyond anything [we] evolved to deal with or make decisions about.” Our brains are hardwired to seek out rewards like knowledge, entertainment, and social connection, all of which were much harder to find before we had tiny computers at our fingertips, Ward says. Now that we do, our phones are basically 24/7 all-you-can-eat buffets for our brains, endlessly and easily serving up the things they want. Of course our minds can’t help but gorge themselves.
Never mind that some studies suggest mindless scrolling, and smartphone use in general, can actually increase boredom; reaching for the phone gives us something to do, and a feeling that that “something” is more rewarding than whatever is happening to us in the real world. “Unless what you’re doing right here, right now, is the most interesting thing you could possibly be doing, your phone at some level”—perhaps not even a conscious one—”represents a better alternative,” Ward says.
Is that a bad thing?
The answer is complex, Melumad says.
“It’s a little bit alarmist to say that smartphones are addictive and they’re [all] bad,” she says. Smartphones can certainly connect us to troubling content, whether we seek it out or not, and there are valid arguments about the downsides of losing the ability to do nothing, Melumad says. But some aspects of smartphone use can also be beneficial. It’s not necessarily problematic to self-soothe by texting a friend or watching a funny TikTok video after a stressful work day, for instance.
A quick phone check probably isn’t doing your brain any real harm, Heitmayer agrees. But to Ward, it’s also worth considering how all those little checks add up.
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Over time, constant scrolling could have a negative effect on your job performance, relationships, sleep, and possibly even physical safety, if you’re doing things like checking your phone while you walk or drive. There’s also a mental-health element to consider. Although not all researchers agree, many believe that heavy smartphone and social-media use harms psychological well-being. Even beyond that, Heitmayer says, people tend to beat themselves up about their screen time. As of 2022, about 60% of U.S. adults, and 80% of those under 30, said they were on their phones “too much.”
When you give into your urges and check your phone, then feel guilty about it, “the feeling of failure adds insult to injury,” Heitmayer says.
How to keep your phone-checking habit in check
If you want to break the habit of constant checking, you’ll have to work at it. The more you’ve trained your brain to expect constant diversion, the harder it will be to kick the compulsion. But it is possible.
Part of that process—as you can probably guess—is getting used to being without your phone. Many studies, including Ward’s, have found that simply having your phone near you, even if it’s not buzzing or lighting up with a notification, is enough to distract you and give you the itch to check.
You don’t have to quit cold turkey, Ward says. (In fact, some research suggests this kind of abrupt digital detox can trigger anxiety.) To ease in, start going without your phone for set periods of time, like when you’re working on an important project or want to give all of your attention to your friend or partner. Over time, as you get used to being without your device, it may get easier to resist that constant pull to check. You may even find that you want to leave your phone behind more and more often, Ward says.
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Building awareness is also helpful. Melumad recommends paying attention to how different kinds of smartphone use make you feel. Reading a news article on your phone, for example, may bring up different feelings than doomscrolling.
If you catch yourself swiping through TikTok videos without even absorbing the content, take a moment to ask yourself what’s driving your behavior, suggests Katy Tam, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Toronto Scarborough who researches boredom and digital media. Do you actually want to be on TikTok, or are you just putting off a less-fun task?
Tam is one of the researchers who has found that smartphone usage can increase boredom—which may be handy to remember if you’re trying to cut back on your screen time. Shifting your mindset to think of phone usage not as a salve, but as a crutch, may make it easier to cut back.
Sometimes, Tam says, “it’s our behavior that makes us feel bored.”
