Digital Mental Health &
Technology Wellness
Most people, when asked honestly, say they spend more time on their devices than they'd like. They find themselves scrolling without intention, reaching for their phone without thinking, spending hours in ways that feel unfulfilling in retrospect — and yet finding it difficult to change.
If this is something you've struggled with, you're not alone, and it doesn't mean that you're lazy or lack willpower. The technology we're all living with has been deliberately engineered to capture and hold our attention — and we're all, in some way, still catching up to what that means for our lives.
People rarely come to therapy specifically because of their relationship with technology. More often, they come in feeling unmotivated, distracted, or unable to manage their time. They're not sleeping well, or they feel restless and unfocused. They feel like they "did nothing" all day — and yet somehow the day is gone. When you start asking questions, technology use is often a significant part of the picture. Not always, but often enough that it's worth exploring.
To learn more about the technology-related concerns we work with, you can browse by concern below or scroll through the full list. To learn more about how we can help with these issues, click here.
Our Relationship with Technology
We are living through a period of technological change that is moving faster than our ability to understand its impact. Many of us have already felt the effects before we've had the chance to name them. We reach for our phones in quiet moments, in social situations, even in the middle of things that should hold our full attention. Most of us can think of times we've used our phones when we probably shouldn't have — in meetings, in classes, at dinner, while driving. The fact that phone use while driving is both dangerous and illegal, and yet nearly universal, says something about how powerful the pull has become.
Unlike alcohol or other substances that carry social restrictions about when and where they can be used, our phones are with us always. There is no hour of the day, no social setting, no context in which having your phone nearby — or even in your hand — is considered unusual or inappropriate. There are no barriers to use, no social sanctions, no natural stopping points. That makes developing a healthier relationship with technology a genuinely different kind of challenge than managing other habits.
Social Comparison
Comparing ourselves to others is a normal part of human psychology — we've always done it, and in small doses it's not necessarily harmful. But social media has changed social comparison in ways that are worth understanding. What was once an occasional and organic experience has become much more frequent and one-sided in a way that puts us at a significant disadvantage.
When we scroll through social media, we are not comparing ourselves to real people living real lives. We are comparing ourselves to carefully curated versions of those lives — the highlights, the achievements, the aesthetically pleasing moments, the bodies at their best angles, the relationships that appear conflict-free and effortless. Rarely do we see the bad days, messy moments, or the more mundane and ordinary hours.
Social comparison on social media tends to be upward — we are almost always looking at content that makes us feel like we have less, look worse, or are doing less well than others. Over time, this can erode self-esteem and fuel anxiety and depression. What makes it particularly insidious is that the source is often invisible — people feel worse without necessarily connecting that feeling to the hour they just spent scrolling.
Many people are aware, on some level, that what they're seeing on social media isn't the full picture. The curtain has been pulled back — most of us know that people curate their online presence. And yet knowing this doesn't always protect us from the impact. The comparisons happen quickly, almost automatically, and they carry an emotional charge that is hard to think our way out of. In therapy, we often hear people describe feeling inadequate or lesser after time on social media, even when they can articulate clearly that what they were looking at wasn't real. That gap — between knowing and feeling — is one of the most frustrating aspects of social comparison online.
Social comparison is often thought of as a problem primarily for teenagers, and it is a significant one for them. But it affects adults too — perhaps less visibly, but no less meaningfully. Young adults navigating careers, relationships, and identity are particularly vulnerable. So are new parents, who encounter endless images of other parents doing it all gracefully and effortlessly. And so, frankly, is almost anyone who spends significant time on these platforms.
Technology, Connection, & Loneliness
There is a striking paradox at the heart of social media: platforms explicitly designed to connect us may actually be contributing to growing reports of loneliness worldwide. Research — including a 2023 advisory from the U.S. Surgeon General — has identified social media use as a loneliness risk factor. This doesn't mean social media causes loneliness in everyone, or that the relationship between the two is simple. But loneliness is something we hear about regularly in our practice — among children, teenagers, and adults alike — and it is worth understanding why the connection people seek online so often fails to deliver.
Part of the answer lies in what social media actually is, and what it isn't. Most of what we do on social media is observe — we scroll through other people's lives, watch their videos, read their posts. This is a fundamentally different experience from genuine engagement with another person: the back-and-forth of conversation, the physical presence of someone, the feeling of being truly seen and heard. And yet these two very different kinds of experience can feel surprisingly equivalent in the moment. We come away from an hour on social media feeling as though we've been social — and so we feel less of a pull toward the in-person connection that would actually address loneliness.
There is also the question of time. The same features that make social media difficult to disengage from — infinite feeds, autoplay, algorithmic recommendations — mean that what we plan as an hour of relaxation can easily become several. Younger people in particular are spending significantly less time with friends in person than previous generations did before smartphones. The phone is always available, always engaging, and requires nothing of us — making it a far easier choice than making plans, reaching out, or simply sitting with the discomfort of having nothing to do.
The result, for many people, is a kind of low-grade loneliness that is hard to name — a sense that something is missing in their social lives, without a clear understanding of why. The social time is there on paper, but it isn't the kind that touches the deeper need for connection.
Influencers &
Misinformation
Influencers are people who build large followings online by sharing their lives, opinions, and recommendations. When we follow influencers over time, watching their daily life, their struggles and successes, we can develop a real sense of knowing them. We may feel warmth toward them, trust their judgment, and be genuinely influenced by their choices — even though they have no idea who we are. This is what psychologists call a parasocial relationship, and it is one of the defining features of the influencer economy.
Most influencers are also marketers. For those who make it their career, their income depends on their ability to sell products, ideas, lifestyles, and even themselves as their own brand. The reason they are so effective is precisely because of that feeling of closeness and trust. We are far more likely to buy something recommended by someone we feel we know than by a stranger in an advertisement. Most of the time this is relatively harmless. But the same mechanism that makes influencers effective at selling skincare also makes them effective at selling ideas that may be less benign.
Some influencers promote health and wellness content that ranges from questionable to genuinely dangerous. The distinction matters: there is a significant difference between lifestyle advice that may simply not apply to you, and medical recommendations that are not supported by research and could cause real harm. Looksmaxing — a trend that promotes extreme physical modification in pursuit of an idealized appearance — is one example of content that can fuel body image problems, problematic thinking, and in some cases dangerous behaviors. Other influencers promote medical interventions for perceived physical deficiencies with little or no scientific basis, sometimes with significant health risks.
The trust people place in influencers can make it difficult to evaluate what they're actually being sold. Unlike recognizing that a feed is curated, recognizing that the sense of closeness you feel toward someone you've followed for years may not reflect a real relationship is a much more emotionally complex thing to reckon with. Most of us are still learning to navigate this — and that's not a personal failing, it's a reflection of how new and how powerful these dynamics are.
Understanding how influencer culture works — for yourself and for the young people in your life — can be genuinely useful. In therapy, we often work with people who are struggling with body image, self-esteem, or a vague sense of inadequacy without fully recognizing the role that the content they consume may be playing. We also work with parents trying to help their children develop a more critical and healthy relationship with what they see online. Having a clearer understanding of how these dynamics work is often the first step.
Body Image &
Social Media
Body image concerns are not new — they long predate social media. But social media has supercharged them in ways that are worth understanding. The sheer volume of appearance-focused content that most users encounter on a daily basis — images of idealized bodies, transformation stories, shapewear and filter-enhanced photos, beauty standards presented as achievable and normal — creates a relentless visual environment that previous generations didn't face.
What makes this particularly insidious is that you don't have to seek this content out. Algorithms are designed to push appearance-related content to certain demographics regardless of what they've searched for. And if you do engage with it — even innocently, searching for something like calorie information or workout tips — the algorithm tends to escalate, serving increasingly extreme content over time. Someone who starts with a mild curiosity about nutrition can find themselves, without quite realizing how they got there, consuming content that promotes extreme restriction, extreme thinness, or appearance standards that have no basis in science or medicine.
Body image issues affect people of all genders, though they can manifest differently. While eating disorders and body image concerns are more commonly discussed in the context of women and girls, they significantly affect men, boys, and nonbinary people as well — often in ways that go unrecognized and unsupported. This can include pressure toward extreme muscularity or particular body ideals that are equally unrealistic and equally damaging.
The content that circulates on social media around food, eating, and bodies is often not medically or scientifically grounded. "What I eat in a day" videos, extreme diet content, and before and after transformation posts can fuel unhealthy thinking patterns around food — a constant sense of eating too much, eating the wrong things, or failing to measure up — even in people who don't have a formal eating disorder diagnosis. Over time, this can erode a person's relationship with food and their own body.
We work with people struggling with body image concerns, including feeling self-conscious or critical of the way you look, a persistent sense that your body should be different than it is, or difficulty feeling comfortable in your own skin. We also work with people who have a complicated relationship with food — persistent guilt around eating, a feeling of constantly monitoring and criticizing your food choices, overeating, or cycling through diets that don't feel sustainable. While we don't treat active eating disorders as a primary presenting concern, we are happy to provide referrals to specialized eating disorder treatment when needed.
Impact on Relationships
Relationships & Wellbeing
Our relationships are among the most important determinants of our wellbeing, and technology has introduced new pressures on them. Below we describe some of the most notable technology-related challenges we've seen in relationships.
Presence & Distraction
One of the most common ways technology affects relationships is through distraction — being physically present with someone while being mentally elsewhere. This has become so widespread that it has its own name. "Phubbing," a combination of "phone" and "snubbing," refers to the experience of being ignored by someone who's paying attention to their phone instead of you. Most of us have been on both sides of this and know that it's not necessarily intended as a slight. We often accidentally phub because we're simply responding to the pull of our devices, often without fully realizing we're doing it. Nevertheless, for the person on the receiving end of it, being phubbed can feel like a signal that something on a screen is more interesting or important than you are, and that can be surprisingly hurtful.
The cumulative effect of this kind of distraction on relationships can be significant. Conversations are interrupted, moments of potential connection are missed, and you may begin to feel like you have to compete with phones to get others' attention.
Bids for Connection
Research from the Gottman Institute offers a useful framework for understanding how this plays out. Dr. John Gottman's research identifies what he calls "bids" — any gesture, verbal or nonverbal, that is an attempt to connect. A bid might be as small as pointing something out, sharing a thought, or simply making eye contact. How we respond to these bids — whether we respond affirmatively to them, ignore them, or miss them entirely — has a profound impact on the quality and longevity of a relationship.
When we are on our phones, we often miss bids — both the ones our partners make and the opportunities to make our own. When our bids go unnoticed, or when we stop receiving bids from a partner, we can feel rejected and alone. In our practice we have seen that digital distraction can erode connections and contribute to relationship distress, so we work with people to build awareness of their own habits and the impact these may be having on their relationships.
Unrealistic Expectations
Social media presents a version of relationships that is almost entirely curated. People post about their happy and celebratory moments, but rarely about the ordinary friction, unresolved arguments, and periods of distance that are part of every real relationship. Over time, this can create unrealistic expectations — a sense that conflict is a sign that something is wrong, rather than a normal and inevitable part of intimacy.
Research consistently shows that conflict is a normal and inevitable part of all relationships — and that instead of expecting to avoid or resolve all conflict, we should aim to understand and better manage it over time. When people expect conflict-free relationships and then encounter the inevitable difficulties that arise in any relationship, they can feel hopeless or threatened in ways that make those difficulties harder to navigate.
Family Dynamics
Technology affects family relationships in ways that are easy to overlook because they happen in the most ordinary moments. Family dinners are interrupted by phones, evenings are spent in the same room but staring at screens, parents are distracted by devices while their children are trying to connect. These small disruptions add up.
For young children in particular, parental attention and eye contact are developmentally significant. Children learn that they matter, that they are seen and important, through the experience of having a parent fully present and engaged with them. When parents are frequently distracted by their devices, children can absorb the message that something else is more important than they are. We don't bring this up to blame parents — the pull of devices is real and affects all of us. We bring this up because, if we are aware of that pull and our susceptibility to distraction, we are better able to make intentional choices about where we direct our attention.
Friendships
Friendships are not immune to the effects of technology either. The experience of being with a friend who is frequently on their phone — or of noticing yourself doing the same — is a subtle but real form of disconnection. Conversations may become shallower, and the moments of genuine presence that make time with friends feel nourishing may become fewer and further between.
Social media also introduces new dynamics into friendships. The experience of seeing a friend interact enthusiastically with someone else online, for instance, can trigger feelings of jealousy or a sense of being left out. These feelings may seem irrational or be hard to name, but they may still create distance in friendships that were once close.
Opportunity Cost & Wellbeing
Every hour spent scrolling is an hour not spent on something else — exercise, a hobby, reading, time with people, or simply being present in your own life. This is what economists call opportunity cost. Most people are aware, on some level, that they are trading something for their screen time. The question is whether they feel the trade is worth it — and many people feel it's not.
What makes this particularly hard to address is that reaching for our phones has become so automatic that we barely even notice when we're doing it. And by the time we look up, the time we had intended for something else is gone. Many people attribute their scrolling behavior to laziness or lack of willpower, and we see how this shuts them down, giving them no clear path to actually changing the way they do things. In our practice, what we aim to do is help you become more aware of your behavior and understand what gets in the way of doing the things you want to do. When you understand what's getting in the way, you're better positioned to work through it.
Kids, Teens, & Families
Many of the topics covered on this page — social comparison, influencer culture, body image, loneliness, and the science of engagement — affect young people in particularly significant ways. Adolescence is a time of identity formation and heightened vulnerability, and the digital landscape adds new dimensions to challenges that were already complex. For a more in-depth look at how technology affects children and teenagers specifically — including identity formation, cyberbullying, sleep, digital parenting, and how we work with children, teenagers, and families — visit our page, Raising Kids in a Digital World.
How We Can Help
Our relationship with technology is one of the defining challenges of our time — and one that therapy is well-positioned to help with. We work with adults navigating the full range of issues described on this page: problematic device use, social comparison, body image, loneliness, relationship strain, and the broader question of what role technology is playing in your life and whether that role is working for you.
Our approach is not about telling people to put their phones down or get off social media. It's about helping you develop a clearer picture of how technology is affecting you specifically — and from that clearer picture, making more intentional choices. We understand that the pull of devices is real and that changing habits is genuinely hard.
Our director holds a certification from the National Institute for Digital Health & Wellness (NIDHW), and our practice's approach to this work is grounded in that training. We are available in-person in Princeton, NJ and virtually across NJ, NY, and more than 40 states. Whether you're ready to get started or just have questions, feel free to reach out. You can contact us by text, email, or through the form below to schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation.
Get in Touch
Whether you're ready to get started or just have questions, feel free to reach out — we're happy to help you figure out your next steps. We're available in person in Princeton, NJ and virtually across NJ, NY, and more than 40 states. You can contact us by text, email, or by clicking below to schedule a free 15-minute phone consultation.
Social Media &
The Science of Engagement
Social media platforms are designed with the explicit goal of keeping you engaged as long as possible. There is no formal diagnosis for social media addiction, but researchers and clinicians have observed that many people develop relationships with these platforms that have the hallmarks of addiction, including continued use despite negative consequences, using it at the expense of other parts of life, and difficulty cutting back despite genuinely wanting to. These are experiences we hear about regularly, from the people we work with and from the people in our own lives. This is not a pathology unique to a vulnerable few — it is part of the shared human experience of living with this technology today.
This makes sense when you understand how these platforms are built. The engineers who designed social media extensively studied what keeps people engaged longest, and deliberately incorporated those findings into their products — features like infinite scroll, autoplay, push notifications, and algorithmically curated feeds that are tailored precisely to your interests and habits. The result is an experience where continuing is always easier than stopping, and where there is no natural moment to put the phone down.
What these features create is a cycle of anticipation and seeking that can be genuinely difficult to interrupt. We pick up our phones expecting something — a message, something interesting, something that will be satisfying — and we scroll in search of it. Occasionally we find it, and that intermittent reward is enough to keep the cycle going. But most of the time, what we find is fleeting and not particularly meaningful. We put the phone down having spent far more time on it than we intended, having gotten little out of it, and often feeling vaguely worse than before. And yet the next cycle of anticipation begins almost immediately. Most people recognize this pattern in themselves. Many have tried to change it and found it harder than expected — not because they lack discipline, but because the platforms are specifically designed to make stopping difficult.
For more on how we can help, click here.