35 | Is Your Phone Making You Anxious? How Screen Time Impacts Your Mental Health

You tell yourself you’ll just check one thing, but suddenly, it’s an hour later. Your heart feels heavy, your mind feels cluttered, and instead of feeling calm, you feel worse. This episode isn’t about guilt. It’s about awareness, understanding how your phone quietly feeds your anxiety, and how to take your power back one small step at a time.

In this episode, Jessica Davis, licensed therapist and creator of the C.O.U.R.A.G.E. Method, shares why constant notifications and scrolling leave you overstimulated and disconnected, along with five realistic ways to reset your relationship with your phone.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• How your phone and social media quietly activate your anxiety
• The real science behind notifications, dopamine, and overstimulation
• Why awareness, not restriction, is the first step to calm
• Simple strategies to reduce screen time without guilt
• The power of stillness and how boredom actually helps you reconnect
• A 15-minute daily challenge to help you regain focus and peace

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🎙️ Presented by Davis-Smith Mental Health

This podcast was created by Davis-Smith Mental Health, offering counseling for teens & young adults in Illinois (only). We accept BCBS PPO, Aetna PPO, and self-pay clients.

Links: 
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https://www.blockoutthenoisepodcast.com/anxiety-survival-toolkit/

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⚠️ Disclaimer:  Block Out the Noise provides personal insights and practical stra...

Transcript

Jessica Davis: 0:09

You know that feeling when your phone lights up another notification, and before you even look, your chest tightens a little. You tell yourself you'll just check one thing, but now you found yourself doom scrolling for who knows how long. Messages that haven't been answered, and a video that has literally made you question if you're doing enough with your life before you even realize you've been scrolling for over an hour. Your mind feels scattered, your chest feels heavy and deep down you're wondering, why do I feel worse? Not better at that. Sounds like you. This episode is for you. Because what's happening isn't laziness. It's anxiety disguised as screen time. Hi, and welcome to Block Out the Noise, A space to quiet the noise of anxiety, self-doubt and overthinking, and start building a life filled with confidence, courage, and purpose. I'm Jessica Davis, a licensed therapist, mindset coach, and the creator of the Courage Method. I specialize in helping teens and young adults with anxiety, overthinking, and low self-esteem. If you ever wish you had quick tools to help you when anxiety hits, there's a free anxiety survival toolkit waiting for you in the show notes. It's designed to help you stay grounded and fight back against anxiety when your mind starts to spiral and it's completely free. Also before we dive in, remember this podcast is here to support and guide you, but it is not a replacement for talking to someone in real life. If you're struggling with your mental health, please reach out to a therapist, and if you're in crisis, contact, emergency services, or a local health line, you don't have to go through it alone. So today I want to talk to you about something. Almost every one of us deals with our phones. How the way we use them might be quietly feeding our anxiety, hurting our focus, and making it hard to feel in control of our lives. I just want you to know this isn't about guilt or judgment. It's about awareness and learning how to take your power back one small step at a time. Lately, so many of my clients have been coming in saying the same thing. My anxiety's worse, but I don't even know why. When you start to do a deeper dive, we notice the same pattern. They're not getting enough rest because they're scrolling late at night, or they can't focus because their phone buzzes every few minutes and their minds feel overstimulated before the day even really begins. I've been there too. I've had moments where I thought that I would just check my phone for a small period of time and then lost track of time. I've been noticing a difference in my ability to concentrate and focus. Because of how much time I'm spending on my phone. That's what this episode is about. Understanding your phone can quietly feed your anxiety and how to start untangling yourself from it in a way that feels doable and kind. Let's start with this. The average person spends six to 10 hours a day on their phone. That's roughly 3000 hours a year, or about 125 full days. Over a lifetime that adds up to maybe more than 13 years spent looking down at a screen. 13 years of your life gone to scrolling, comparing, consuming. But here's what those numbers don't show, the emotional toll that it takes every hour you spend reacting, checking, or refreshing keeps your nervous system in alert mode. That constant stimulation tells your brain something might be wrong even when you're safe. That's what anxiety feeds on, uncertainty, urgency, and overstimulation. It keeps you stuck in a loop that says, don't stop checking. Just one more scroll and one turns it to the next and the next. So this isn't about saying phones are bad. It's honestly about realizing that the way we use them accidentally keeps our anxiety turned on. Let's break down what actually happens in your brain. Every time you get a notification, your brain releases dopamine, the same chemical that makes you feel rewarded. It's supposed to make you feel good, but when it happens over and over and over again, your brain starts to expect it. And when it doesn't come, that little rush turns into restlessness, which is exactly what anxiety feels like, and add onto that, the constant stream of information, the news, the comparison, the pressure, and your brain never really gets to rest. So you start noticing things like feeling on edge, even when nothing's going on. Difficulty focusing or finishing task, a racing mind when you're trying to sleep, or the subtle sense that everyone else is doing better than you. That's just not distraction, that's anxiety. Living in the background, your phone doesn't create anxiety out of nowhere, but it can magnify it, like turning up the volume on thoughts that were already there. Here's what I want you to hear. You don't need to feel guilty about how you use your phone. We're all human and your phone is literally designed to hold your attention. Awareness is the first step, though, so this week open your phone screen time tracker, look at your daily average, and instead of judging yourself, just take notice of what it is. Then ask yourself a few gentle questions. How do I feel after I've been on my phone for a while? What emotions usually lead me to pick it up? Boredom, loneliness, stress. What do I wish I would do instead if I had the energy or focus? These reflective questions can help you see the pattern beneath the habit because once you notice it, you can actually start to change it. Not outta shame, but out of self-respect. If this episode is hitting home and you've been thinking, okay. I want to work on this, but I need something concrete to help when my brain starts spiraling, go download the Anxiety Survival toolkit in the show notes. It's free and made for moments just like this. When anxiety tells you you're lost, when you can't think clearly or when you need something that walks you through what to do next, keep it on your phone. I know it's funny. So it's always within reach and if there's a resource or topic you wish existed. Something that would help you even more. You can text your ideas through the link in the show notes. I read every single message, and I really want to keep creating tools that help support you on your journey. So let's talk about ways to start creating calm again, one, start with awareness, not restriction. Just notice when and why you pick up your phone. Anxiety thrives in autopilot. Awareness breaks the cycle. Two, turn off those non-essential notifications. Every ping tells your nervous system to stay alert. Silence what isn't urgent. Your brain will honestly thank you. Three, set calm hours. Choose one hour before bed or right after waking up to stay phone free. That's when your mind is most open, so it can give it space to breathe. Four, replace. Don't remove. When you reach for your phone out of habit, try something gentle instead. That could be breathing, stretching, writing, just sitting with the stillness for that moment. We had a client that mentioned recently feeling as though they were struggling with motivation, and even though they had created this major list of things that they could do, they still didn't feel like doing it. And I, I really do believe sometimes because of phones. There's this lack of ability to be bored, right? If we are ever bored for a second, we could pick up our phone and choose from hundreds of different apps to keep us busy. But boredom actually is this really great tool to help us lean towards things that we love, right? When we're bored, we could be reading, we could be writing, we could be engaging, we could be present, we could work out, we could move our bodies, we could connect, and yet I think our phones have. Made it so that we feel as though we can't connect and that we have to spend our time not being bored. So I challenge you too, to be comfortable with that boredom and to really try and replace picking up your phone with something else, even if it is just that stillness, because stillness doesn't have to be scary. It is where your peace grows. Five, celebrate progress, not perfection. If you used your phone 20 minutes less today, that counts. You know, I love to celebrate the wins. And someone might say, well, 20 minutes isn't that much, but 20 minutes each day adds up to over two hours in a week that you're getting back in time. And that is a lot of time. So 20 minutes does count, it does matter. You're not failing. If you slip back, you're going to have days where you do really well. Other days where you might struggle a little bit more with your phone usage, take notice and celebrate the win. This isn't about getting it right, it's about reducing over simulation so that your anxiety doesn't get the final say. Something incredible happens when you start to reclaim your attention. You begin to notice the quiet again, and at first that might feel uncomfortable because silence is where anxious thoughts tend to show up. But that's also where healing begins. When you create space away from constant noise, your nervous system starts to reset. You think more clearly, you feel more grounded. You stop reacting and start responding. You realize you're not behind. So here's the courageous moment Before the next episode, I want you to try something small but powerful. Go into your phone settings and check your daily screen time average. Write it down somewhere private and don't judge it. Then just for one week, try to cut it down by 15 minutes a day. That's it. 15 minutes of less stimulation, 15 minutes of more calmness. And when the week ends, check in with yourself. Notice if you're sleeping a little better, focusing a little longer, or feeling a little more at peace. That's what progress looks like. Not huge leaps, but gentle shifts. I know it seems like your phone is the enemy, and I can totally understand how it can feel that way. Sometimes it feels as if it's stealing your power away, but you get to shape your power. You get to make these decisions and not let it steal it. You deserve to feel calm again. You deserve to focus, to feel peace, and to live with presence and not feel this overwhelming pressure. To go towards technology or your phone. This episode is a lighter way of handling a problem. But honestly, there are tons of apps out there that can help you reduce your screen time. But I feel like this is a gentler approach and probably one that ends up to being more successful because it leads you to have more control over your decisions. So take the 15 minutes, try your best to reach that goal. And understand that your phone isn't the enemy. It's us trying to learn how to control our environment better. You deserve to feel calm again. You deserve to focus, to breathe, and to live with presence and not feel this overwhelming pressure to be pulled towards your phone or a device. If you need help, please know that you can reach out to a therapist to get support with this. Thank you so, so much for listening. Until next time. Keep moving forward. Trust yourself and never forget you have what it takes to block out the noise.