Addiction to Screens and How It Effects Democracy
- Pamela Cross
- Sep 28
- 4 min read
I, dear reader, am old enough to remember when phones were merely devices in the home to call in or call out from, often tethered to the wall in the kitchen. I also remember a time when phone described a pocket-sized, nearly indestructible, device capable of sending only a limited amount of text messages and allowing a limited number of minutes for phone calls (aside from unlimited nights and weekends, of course). Now it is 2025 and a phone is a dopamine dispenser.
They are tethered once more—to our palms rather than to a yellowed curling cord and plastic base screwed into a wall. With emerging studies, research has made it clear: these attention-hijacking, echo chamber amplifying machines are reshaping not just our mental health, but politics, too.
The Mental Toll
A 2023 study found that excessive mobile phone use harms mental health partially because it disrupts sleep. When students get hooked on their phones and social media, they sleep poorly and that sleep deficit leads to anxiety and depression. This emotional drain weakens our ability to think critically, empathize, or even notice injustice.
In children, addictive looping through short videos erodes attention spans and lowers physical activity. The “popcorn brain” phenomenon of shuffling rapidly between apps and notifications frays our focus, reduces cognition, and makes real-life tasks—even the ones we once enjoyed—feel too slow or demanding. Unfortunately, TikTok and its excellent algorithm has been implicated in the erosion of attention and academic performance as the term “TikTok Brain” has been coined by some experts.
Social Media and Democracy
Scattered amongst all our beloved apps we also must contend with echo chambers and algorithmic radicalization—the perfect recipe for subtle political manipulation. Social media platforms and algorithms tend to foster ideological isolation, pushing users into increasingly extreme pipelines. Prolonged use of smartphones hinders our ability to process new information—this is particularly dangerous when we are being spammed with curated outrage and AI slop that is quickly becoming harder and harder to discern.
Social media has repeatedly shaped election outcomes, turning misinformation into an entertaining boon rather than something to be critically considered and debunked. It’s much easier to share a clickbait article with a title that riles people up than a peer reviewed study that no one will click on. This is no longer just a theory, it is happening. Addictive design plus fractured attention spans is leading to interference in the political process.
On Doom Scrolling
YES, we have allowed ourselves to be dragged into the endless scroll—I'm certainly guilty of it, my husband often comes home from work to find me three screens to the wind. Writing something on my laptop, chatting with friends via voice clips on my phone, with a movie on in the background. He’ll find me cooking with TikTok auto-scrolling on my iPad or in bed at night, phone lashed to an articulated arm, scrolling around with a little remote. BUT awareness is the first step! Harvard experts urge us to take a look at how prioritizing screens over people impacts our relationships and happiness. Smartphones are not inherently evil but the apps are designed to capture our attention and can form dangerous habits with far-reaching effects.
Reclaiming Your Attention and Your Civic Power
A complete digital detox, while it sounds like something that might help, is not sustainable long term. Often users that manage to completely unplug for a day or a week fall right back into old habits the moment their detox ends. We must implement strategies that are more likely to have a lasting effect.
One way to combat brain rot is to enable Focus Modes or Do Not Disturb at mealtimes and in the evening to allow yourself to naturally wind down. Hank Green has recently released a free to use app called Focus Friend that I am finding helpful—you set focus timers that allow a little digital pet to knit socks then use those socks to fund Animal Crossing type room decoration.
You might also rearrange your apps, moving particularly addictive apps off your home screen. That slight variation from a muscle-memory routine can break the haze of autopilot scrolling.
Try doom scrolling with intention, set a goal like reading just one news story then closing the app.
Consider creating phone-free rituals—try to get out of bed and drink your morning coffee before picking up your phone and put it down an hour before bed. Science now tells us that just 20 minutes in nature or with a book calms the mind and restores focus.
The Bigger Picture
Less screen time = more attention. More attention = more meaningful engagement. It’s hard to participate in society if you’re too distracted to examine and weigh options, consider and confront your biases, or show up to the polls rather than simply reposting an Instagram story and doing no further activism.
We must treat our attention like it matters—because it does, and app developers and advertisers know that and seek to exploit it. Let’s all try to unplug a bit, recharge, and engage with the world that’s happening around us.
Extras - Social Media Story to advertise this blog post. Full Brain rot
