Is your screen a false friend?

Imagine you have a friend whom you speak to every day without fail for at least an hour. It’s a big investment of your time in your life. And then you find out that your friend is using you for their own gain. Crushing. Well, we all have relationships with the screens and apps we give hours to. Are they good friends or are they false friends? Or both? Hijackers or tools? Or something else?

In this article, I am inviting you to reflect on the nature and impact of your screen use. It has become such a huge part of our culture as well as our individual lives and relationships. So what is it in your life? How does it affect your relationships and your use of time? Does it open up possibilities? Does it steal your time and life away?

It is important to acknowledge the positives and opportunities that a managed and self-directed screen life offers people. However, here I want to pay attention to the problematic side.

Screens becoming normal

In 2011 I was living in Cape Town with no smartphone. Over that summer I noticed people wandering around the city staring, zombie-like, at their hands. By 2012 half the city seemed to be walking around like this, utterly captured by something that I didn’t even know existed. It was confusing and unsettling. They seemed to disappear from the world I lived in and into a world locked inside the rectangles in their hands. I asked a friend: “What on earth are they all looking at?” He tried to explain apps, but I couldn’t get it.

Little did I know how normalised screen life would be 15 years later. A parent scrolls while the baby watches. A couple sit across from each other at dinner looking down. Most of us have our own version of this. I certainly do, and I have to guard against it.

But this normalisation comes at a price. Ofcom reports that UK adults now spend an average of four and a half hours a day online, most of it on a phone. The mental health of young people seems to be declining at the same time, with NHS figures for 2023 finding that around 20% of 8-to 25-year-olds had a probable mental disorder. The degree to which screens are contributing to this is still argued over by researchers, and I want to be careful here, because it is easy to overstate evidence. But what is not in doubt is what people describe to me. The hours go somewhere, and they are often not sure where to and why.

A typical day

When a new client starts therapy, I often ask them to describe a typical day in their life. This can uncover a lot. We reflect on how they spend their time, and what they pay attention to.

Who looks after the house? Do they make the bed? How do they sleep and what do they eat? Who do they spend time with, and how do they feel about their work? All the little things that say something about how we live our lives as well as the big things. However, screen-life often gets overlooked in their description of their day, although, as the figures suggest, four hours a day or more is entirely ordinary.

So, let me ask readers a few questions. There are no right or wrong answers and nothing to score; it’s just for your own reflection:

• What apps do you spend time on?
• How much time do you spend on them?
• Do you notice that you have picked up your phone, or does it just appear in your hand before your eyes?
• What mood are you in before you dive into your screen?
• If you doomscroll, do you notice time pass?
• How aware are you of your body and your surroundings when you are locked in your screen? Can you be aware of that as it is happening rather than after you finish with the screen?
•  How do you feel when you finally put the phone down – relieved, guilty, anxious, something else?

These questions invite you to consider your experience. There is a great deal written about screens and dopamine, about habit loops and attention, and much of it is worth reading. But your own experience matters as much as any of it, and you are the only person with access to that.

No addiction starts as addiction

Problematic screen use does not always become addictive, and perhaps that is not the case for you. But it can. I have worked extensively with addiction in many guises – alcohol, drugs, shopping, food, gambling, and now screens.

No addiction starts as addiction. It starts with a particular kind of relationship – one in which the thing we turn to offers one of the following:

• It gives a certain type of longed-for feeling.
• It lets us avoid an unwanted feeling, situation or task.
• It numbs pain.

And it is generally very good at its job in the short term. I use an acronym to describe this behaviour: FAN. Feeling, seeking, avoiding and numbing. We all do this to some degree, but for people who find themselves slipping increasingly into FAN behaviour of any description, it is worth exploring what feeling they lack, what things they avoid and what pain they numb.

And what is it that makes finding or facing these things difficult? It could be that if you can identify this from your screen behaviour, then you find your way to examining aspects of life that you avoid or numb. Perhaps examining screen life leads you to more profound insights into how you live your life more generally.

Very few people come to psychotherapy to address their screen use. But it is a reasonable thing to bring, and it does not have to have become a major problem before it is worth talking about.

If any of these questions landed somewhere uncomfortable, that is useful information rather than a judgement or verdict. What helps varies from person to person, and talking it through with a therapist, partner, family member or trusted friend is a reasonable place to start.