9 Terrible Things Excessive Scrolling Does To You

#4. It causes double chins

You probably clicked on this article for one of the following reasons.

1. You’re an excessive scroller and you need more reasons to scare you into cutting back.
2. You think you already know all the terrible shit excessive scrolling does to you, so you want to confirm that there is nothing new here.
3. You have/don’t want a double chin.

Either way, it’s good to have your eyes on the screen.

But once you’re done, put the screen away, even if just for a little while.

You already know some of the reasons why you should, but I’m here to emphasize and maybe add some more to your list…

#1. It’s not that hygienic

Chances are, you are now more conscious of germs, bacteria, and viruses... All the good stuff.

You might even actively avoid them more than you used to. You might wear a mask in public places, and disinfect your hands after you touch anything and everything.

But somehow, despite all of that, you’re not that concerned with the amount of time you spend fondling a dirty screen. Then touching your face.

Without a hand sanitizer intermission.

The truth is, your dear old phone is about ten times dirtier than your toilet seat. But there you are, scrolling it some more. Then scrolling your face.

#2. It sucks for your eyes

All that blue light burning out of your screen is making your eyes go bad.

A study in the JAMA Ophthalmology shows that prolonged periods of screen time contribute to alterations in the tear fluid which keeps your eyes moist, therefore making your tear fluid chemically similar to that in people with dry eye disease.

Bottom line: you don’t want dry eye disease.

It’s “a chronic condition in which sufferers don’t produce enough tears to lubricate and nourish their eyes”, making them feel like “their eyes are irritated, gritty, scratchy or burning”, and some people “experience blurred or even permanently impaired vision.”

It’s estimated that 5 million Americans suffer from this condition, and the majority of them are over 50.

I’m guessing that the age will drop if we continue to scroll like we do.

In fact, the whole act of “constantly scrolling” is unnatural to our eyes.

Certain tracking motions come naturally to our eyes, like surveying an area or even following a specific target, like a deer on a hunting trip. But scrolling nonstop? There’s nothing natural about it. — Sarah Chaney

By focussing and refocussing our eyes for long periods of time without pausing, we are setting ourselves up for eye strain and headaches. It’s as if we were constantly flexing any other muscle in our body without pause.

How exhausting.

#3. The blue light can also cause wrinkles

Great, so now your eyes are aging and so is the rest of your face.

A recent study found that even short exposure to the blue LED light emitted from electronic devices can have an effect on human skin cells.

While human skin has been exposed to natural light at different levels since the beginning of time, with the evolution of technology and electronic devices, they are now exposed to more artificial light than natural light.

“Humans are not exposed to adequate levels of natural light during the day but are overexposed to relatively high levels of artificial light at night.”

It turns out that the light from our devices “can increase the generation of reactive oxygen species”. This oxidative stress targets skin and research heavily supports a link between oxidative stress and aging, particularly “extrinsic skin aging”.

So in addition to wasting your time, you’re also aging prematurely.

#4. It causes double chins

Pick up your phone right now.

Start scrolling.

Now open up your camera, and take a look at your scrolling chin.

Or should I say chins…

Since 2010, chin augmentation surgery, or “chinplants” have risen to 71%. While there are naturally more reasons behind this, increased cell phone usage is a major contributor.

It’s not only the hours of holding your head in a bad posture, and all the skin aging we saw above. It’s also people’s obsession with looking young, tight, and beautiful for their long hours of video chats and selfies.

Wouldn’t it be cheaper and less invasive to just cut back on the screen time though?

#5. You can get thumb tendonitis

Fun.

So just to recap… At this point, your vision is blurred, your eyes are irritated and you have a migraine. You look in the mirror only to find wrinkles are forming on your youthful face and your multiple chins are grinning at you.

Then your thumb starts to hurt.

The doctor tells you it’s de Quervain tenosynovitis, which in and of itself sounds terrifying.

Apparently, the relentless and repetitive thumb motion on your filthy screen caused it. The fact that you currently own the largest iPhone in the market doesn’t help either. It makes for more thumb exhaustion.

You could alternatively use your index finger to ease the symptoms, the doctor says.

But you don’t want to look like your 60-year-old mother.

So tendonitis it is!

#6. The bad posture can give you back problems

Let’s add a hunchback with chronic back pain to the party, shall we?

Researchers from the Orlando Health system in Florida found that “poor posture can lead to health issues such as chronic pain in the back, neck, and knees, circulation problems, heartburn, and digestive problems.”

All that upper-body stiffness isn’t just genetic, friend. It’s also your bad posture as you slouch and scroll. It’s your text neck. Or “occipital neuralgia” if you want to get technical about it.

Occipital Neuralgia is a neurological condition in which the occipital nerves — that run from the top of the spinal cord at the base of the neck up through the scalp — are inflamed or injured. — BBC News

The resulting symptoms can be confused with migraines or headaches because your head is essentially hanging above your screen, which creates severe pressure on the front and back of the neck.

So your headache can be a result of eye strain or neck tension. Or both.

But bad posture for long periods of time can also result in neck, arm, shoulder, and upper back pain. And with a tight neck and weak back, get ready for the hunchback to develop.

So maybe your mom was right to hold the phone up to her eye level after all.

See the skeleton guy below? Does he look happy? I guess the joke is on him in the end.

#6. It can make you anxious, restless, and impatient

There is now a whole new term for endlessly scrolling through social media and consuming endless pounds of bad news. It’s called “doomscrolling”.

Sounds pretty horrible. Because it is. For our dear old mental health.

“If you’re depressed, you often look for information that can confirm how you feel. If you’re feeling negative, then reading negative news reconfirms how you feel. It’s the same mindset.” — psychologist Susan Albers, PsyD.

So in the end, our innocent and mindless habit of scrolling just because turns into an active reinforcer of negative thoughts, resulting in an overall negative mindset.

We may not go into social media to see bad news, but somehow, the bad news always ends up on our screen. And as we scroll and consume all this negative stuff, we expose ourselves to higher levels of “fear, stress, anxiety, and sadness.”

Worst of all, if you are already prone to depression and anxiety, doomscrolling is only going to drown you in deeper, possibly even leading to panic attacks.

Yes, this all sounds pretty catastrophic at this point.

And it’s not just in the research. You can see it too.

One study showed that “89% of college students experience moderate or severe anxiety and fear when they don’t have their phones with them.”

It’s not hard to believe that young people experience withdrawal symptoms from devices or internet deprivation. You can literally see it. Their impatience, frustration, irritability, and anxiety when they are disconnected are real.

And don’t even get me started on how all that anxiety and blue light messes up your sleep cycle… which then affects your mental health… which then makes you scroll some more to avoid all the anxiety…

#7. It can negatively affect your self-esteem

So by this point, you’re probably not feeling too great about all the scrolling.

I’m getting quite anxious about it myself.

But I’m not done yet.

Don Grant, PhD, Newport’s Director of Outpatient Services talks about how young adults “compare and despair” when scrolling through social media.

Facebook’s own research found that Instagram in particular — which is used by 71 percent of young adults, according to the Pew Research Center — negatively impacts mental health. That’s because the carefully curated, “perfect” images on the app elicit feelings of envy and inferiority. — Newport Institute

Young people are literally being brought up in a social world where they have to alternate between two identities — their filtered and ideal online identity, and their real-world identity which won’t ever match up.

It’s no wonder that research shows that phone addiction, sleep deprivation, and mental health are all linked to low self-esteem, poor academic performance, high-risk behaviors, and reduced coping abilities.

Your self is constantly being measured, managed, evaluated, criticized, and celebrated. It’s exhausting.

#8. It can make you avoid yourself

According to one estimate, in a single day, the average person scrolls through 300 feet of content — the height of the Statue of Liberty. — Newport Institute

That is an awfully long height to go to avoid yourself.

Our brains are wired to respond to a reward system, and that’s what makes social media so successful. We scroll, it’s unpredictable, so we scroll some more, then boom, we hit the dopamine jackpot and keep going. We’re like dopamine junkies.

Likes, ads, comments, colors — it’s a party.

We know where to find relief from pain, anxiety, a bad mood, or just a dull moment. All we have to do is pull out our phones. No need to feel uncomfortable when we can escape and avoid ourselves altogether.

#9. It can fracture your relationships or prevent you from creating meaningful connections

From a place of avoidance, loneliness, anxiety, and physical pain, I’d say it’s going to be pretty difficult to create and maintain meaningful relationships.

Scrolling gives us an illusion of connection, information, and awareness while really it just provides us with a lot of emotional disconnection.

Research shows that too much screen time is related to feeling depression, disconnection, and loneliness, drinking from your energy leaving you tired.

What’s happening on a biological level is that you are feeding your brain a continual stream of cortisol, or the stress hormone. Over time, the brain and body become exhausted by the high levels of this stress hormone. It breaks down and leads to health problems or mental health issues.”

Healthy relationships won’t flourish if we are emotionally drained, stressed, lonely, and under physical pain.

And new relationships won’t form if we are always distracted with our noses in our phones.

In addition to producing negative emotions, zombie scrolling syndrome also prevents us from engaging in positive IRL experiences, what Dr. Grant calls “organic bids for connection.” These are the opportunities for positive interactions and emotions that are happening around us all the time, but which we don’t notice when we’re glued to our phones.

We are missing out on essential ingredients of human interaction like physical touch, eye contact, and indirect communication. We are losing the capacity to read each other in real life because we aren’t paying undivided attention to physical cues and body language.

Final thoughts

Get off your phone. Get some fresh air. And live your real-world life.

Mindless scrolling through your phone is a learned habit, and the easiest way to unlearn it is to replace it with another one. — Kat Nicholis

The point of all these horrifying facts isn’t to terrify you into discarding scrolling altogether, but to take a more mindful approach to it.

Finding alternatives that get your brain curious and the dopamine rushing is a great place to start. And the real world has a lot to offer.

A lot more than scrolling does.

That’s it. Those are my final thoughts.

Now be free.

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