What Are We Really Seeking When We Pick Up A Screen?

Your screen time might not be a bad habit at all. It might be your nervous system trying to solve a real problem the fastest way it knows how. I’m Naomi Mills, chiropractor and host of You Are the Answer, and I’m inviting you to look at scrolling, gaming, and constant checking through the body’s wiring rather than through shame, guilt, or “just try harder” discipline. 

We talk about what happens when your baseline stress response sits a little too high for a little too long. In that low-level fight or flight state, your brain craves both relief and stimulation, and screens deliver both on demand. We unpack dopamine, unpredictability, notifications, and why the next video, message, or like can feel irresistible even when it doesn’t genuinely make you feel good. This nervous system regulation perspective also explains why focus can feel harder offline, because real life isn’t designed around constant rewards. 

If you’re a parent, we go deeper into why teens struggle more with smartphones and social media. The teenage brain’s reward and emotional centres develop earlier than the logical centres that support impulse control, and the prefrontal cortex keeps developing into the mid twenties. That doesn’t mean your child is weak or difficult. It means the environment matters, and the support needs to match their stage of development. 

We finish with a practical shift that changes everything: regulation versus distraction. You’ll leave with kinder questions to ask yourself or your young person, plus real-world ideas that meet the underlying needs for safety, connection, soothing, and healthy stimulation. If this resonated, subscribe, share with someone you care about, and leave a review so more people can find their way back to their body.

You can order your nervous system reset deck via my website: Products | You are the answer

Transcript

Welcome And Core Message

Naomi Mills 0:01

Welcome to You Are the Answer, the podcast that helps you reconnect with the most powerful healer you know, your own body. I'm Naomi Mills, chiropractor, healthcare professional, and believer in the natural intelligence within us all. In this podcast, I explore what it means to trust your body, decode its signals, and take ownership of your well-being without quick fixes or health fats. Whether you're just beginning your journey or deep in transformation, I'm here to guide you back to the truth. You are not broken. You are the answer. Welcome to episode 27. I'm so glad you're here. And if you are one of the people that has shared this podcast with a friend or taken the time to leave a review, thank you so much from the bottom of my heart. This is a real passion project for me. It's not something I'm natural or confident around. But I really created this podcast to continue the conversations that I have with so many clients in my chiropractic practice. And because I believe that looking at the world through a nervous system lens can really empower us to understand more what's going on in our lives, in our bodies, and you don't need a degree or any fancy training to understand how your central nervous

Stress States And The Brain

Naomi Mills 1:30

system works. And just as a reminder, we're talking about your spinal cord, your brain, the way that your wiring is working in terms, usually in terms of how much sort of stress and fight or flight state that we're under, which means we're going to be working more in that limbic survival system, finding it more difficult to take on new information. We're going to be less focused, we're going to sleep less well, we'll digest less well, versus prefrontal cortex, versus calm, resilient. Doesn't mean nothing bad happens. It doesn't mean you don't move into fight-flight if you need to get something done or you require that oomph of energy or something genuinely stressful happens. But this podcast is all about giving you the tools to make sure we don't live in overwhelm and overdrive because then we're not really living at all. We're not connecting and being present and having the quality of life that I believe we really crave and are wired to have as humans. So

What We Really Want From Screens

Naomi Mills 2:30

today's pod is then really close to my heart because we're going to talk about screen time and what it is that we're all craving really when we're on our screens. You know, I think a lot of us feel like we are having a battle with screens. But maybe it's not about the screens. This comes up a lot with young people that I work with, but it's very true for adults as well. We're not just addicted to our devices and the dopamine feel-good responses that they're giving us. But maybe we're searching for something in that. It's not that we are ever looking to go on and get the dopamine hit. We actually probably don't think, oh, I'm going to go on because it makes me feel good. Because does it? And we'll come back to that in a moment. But I would like to suggest that maybe we are looking for something. We're maybe looking for some connection, for some regulation, for that really innate feeling in all of us to have connected with another human being. So in this episode, I want to explore the nervous system side of screen time, not from a place of shame or blame, but from a place of new understanding, from a different filter, just to see how it fits. I think a lot of us are trying to solve a nervous system problem with discipline, maybe through shame or guilt or willpower alone. And I really don't think it's working. If you think about how much stimulation your nervous system is processing now compared to even 20 years ago, you've got notifications and messages and scrolling and 24-7 world news. You've got comparison not just with your peers, but with people living really markedly different lives to you. There's a lot of noise, there's a lot of urgency, there's a sense of missing out if we don't take part, but pressure that we also resent to take part, to respond, to get back to somebody. And what it means is that most of us are living in this low-level state of activation almost all the time. And we're not talking about panic or overwhelm, just being on. This baseline of relaxation is always higher. And when this is your long-term baseline, your nervous system starts to crave relief but also stimulation. It wants to be distracted, but it also wants it soothed and it creates this desire for something novel and new and stimulating, but also really wanting connection. Some of those can feel like they almost conflict with each other. But screens offer all of these things almost instantly. And that's why I want to have this conversation today, because I don't think anybody is weak or that parents are bad for struggling to get their children off their phones. What I do see in my practice all the time are nervous systems which are slightly overloaded. And that's the parents and the children. And so this, I call it with my daughter, chocolate for the brain, this tool that is both a blessing and sometimes a curse can be a tricky one for all of us to navigate.

Dopamine Hits And Endless Scroll

Naomi Mills 6:32

So every time something refreshes, or you have the endless scroll that doesn't run out, or you get a notification, or you watch a really cute short video, or somebody likes or comments on something, even just leveling up to the next level in your game, the brain is receiving a small dopamine hit. And it's basically saying, This was either important, exciting, or rewarding. I want to do it again. And that becomes really powerful because, as you know, phones and apps are designed around keeping us engaged. And when you don't know what's coming next, what video is next, what might be the next thing that's coming up that you might really like, we kind of thrive on that unpredictability. It's really stimulating for the brain. It's similar to why gambling can feel addictive. It's also very similar why so many young people are struggling to focus in school, for example, because school's a great example. Life in general isn't set up for constant dopamine hits like the online world is. And it's not that everything you do online is giving you a reward, it's not all making us feel good. But there's that chance the next thing will. So it's quick comfort, it's quick stimulation, and it's really, really effective for what we're looking for. And so

Why Teens Struggle More

Naomi Mills 8:03

if you're a parent, and I'm a parent of a young person who does not have access to the internet or smartphone yet, but this is something that we're all going to have to navigate, it's certainly not that teenagers are adults with worse discipline. The teenage brain is genuinely different because their emotional and reward centers develop much earlier than their logical centers. And I've talked about in this in other podcasts before. So if we remember when you were a teenager and your sense of fear is much lower, your sense of adventure is much higher, we are literally wired as teens to seek pleasure and connection and not be so worried about what's going to happen in the long term, what does it mean for our safety, even? So we have poor impulse control. We don't have long-term thinking because as a teen, it's all about feeling all the feelings, what's happening right now, what feels good in this moment. That is how they are wired. It's to seek something new, social approval is really, really important. And they're also seeking connection within their friendship group. And they certainly don't have the capacity to regulate their self-regulate these urges because the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that's going to allow us to do that in adulthood, in theory, she says, because let's face it, I can be a very um dopamine-seeking pleasure-seeking adult too. But I have the capacity to recognize it and potentially do something about it. But the prefrontal cortex is not fully developed until age 24. So you can now imagine we're just arriving in your your young person's brain with a giant tray of sweets being like, try them all, one of them might change your life, you know, it's going to be fantastic. And then asking them to very maturely only have as many would as would be, quote, good for them. And it's so it's just impossible. And however your teen feels about it, in terms of there, there can be a lot of discomfort when you try and take away and regulate screen time, or um they might feel conflicted in themselves because they're not really understanding why they want it so much, and yet probably don't feel that great as a result. Understanding how that wiring is working can be a very useful way of making it make sense.

Ask What The Nervous System Needs

Naomi Mills 10:43

So rather than asking how do we stop screen time, maybe a more useful question, a more constructive question, is to ask what is does their nervous system need right now? And this is what I've been alluding to the whole podcast most of us are aware that even when we super indulge, whether it's the online shopping, the gaming, the scrolling, whatever it is, you almost never come away feeling fulfilled or more connected or more calm or regulated, usually quite the opposite. Underneath that scrolling behavior is often a bit of loneliness, a bit of tiredness, a bit of boredom, anxiety, disconnection, wanting some kind of input into our nervous system, and not getting that from the physical real world, if you like. And lots of us as adults do the same. And we might call it, I'm just catching up, or I'm switching off, or I'm decompressing, while actually feeling a bit overstimulated or a bit icky or not great afterwards. And for me, the distinction that I think matters the most is what is regulation and what's distraction. So something can distract any of us temporarily, and our nervous systems will stay activated underneath. But regulation will change our breathing, our movement, how we feel in our own physical bodies, our connection with nature, our connection with each other. We go into this co-regulation where we our nervous systems, and it's almost like you are a personal hotspot, and you start to your nervous system will match the energy of somebody in the room. We can move into rest, we can move into safety. Real things that your body can feel. It's one of the reasons I created my daily nervous system cards for both adults and teens. They're two separate decks because, as we've just established, you're in two very different kinds of wiring systems at different stages in our lives. But they're not meant to be preachy, they're not meant to be anti-technology, but they are there to give tools for all the hundreds of different things you can do in the real world to actually fulfill that need to calm anxiety, get more connection, feel safe, feel better, that we are mistakenly sometimes turning online for and not quite getting. And it can be really difficult to know what to do. So simply pulling a card and having a suggestion there is a really lovely way to begin reunderstanding how helpful it can be to get connection and regulation in the real world rather than the online one. And of course, this doesn't have to look any particular way. I'm not looking for someone to start meditating for an hour or start this massive digital detox that probably isn't achievable in the long term. But for me, actually, and your young person understanding this is how my brain is wired, these are some of the emotions that I'm looking for. Now that's a key because it's actually takes a time and practice and a little bit of skill for us to recognize and name our emotions. It's something we are not great at because it's not taught. But once we can start to identify, I'm looking for this, then you can turn to other ways of getting it. Breath work, stretching, going out and having a laugh with your friends, playing music's a brilliant one. Teenagers that I work with love the feeling of pushing really hard into the floor, really hard into the wall to like expend frustration, anger, energy. It's about getting back into our bodies rather than trying to solve everything in our minds.

Compassionate Screen Boundaries And Wrap

Naomi Mills 15:01

So if screens feel hard to put down for you or your child right now, all I'm inviting today is that you approach it with a bit more compassion and less criticism. Maybe try and ask yourself or draw out of your young person, like, what is it that you think your nervous system is searching for, or that you know, your what is it that you think that you need? What are you looking to get before you do this activity? And it's almost always to feel safe or connected or soothed or stimulated because we want that little bit of activity to go on and we're not in a place where we are comfortable just being instead of doing maybe we just want to feel seen. And these are all extremely valid needs. But the question is whether or not you're managing to meet them in a way that is truly nourishing. As ever, I would love to hear from you in the comments if you've got any questions around this. This is me teeing up the last of our mindset episodes before we will be going into the teen series, actually, where we're gonna really do a deep dive into young people, their nervous systems, and a lot of the topics and issues that come up in my practice. But for now, have a wonderful day and I'll speak to you next week. Thank you for joining me on You Are the Answer. If today's episode sparked something in you, share it with someone you care about and leave a review to help others find their way back to their body too. For more tools, inspiration, and resources to support your journey, head to www.uareanswer.co.uk. And until next time, stay connected, stay curious, and remember, you are the answer, and you always have the