When did we become so busy being connected that we stopped feeling connected?
Have you ever found yourself looking around a sidewalk, restaurant, waiting room, subway car or event & notice how many of us are looking down? At screens. Scrolling. Checking. Refreshing. Responding.
I’m not judging. I do it, too. Sometimes.
As a Gen Xer, I have a strange relationship with technology. I remember life before smartphones, social media, Google, texting and the expectation that everyone should be instantly available.
I remember… Being bored. Driving somewhere without knowing exactly where I was going, or having to consult a map to plan my route. Reading an entire book chapter without checking my phone (and not having a phone to check!). Using my imagination to entertain myself. Sitting with someone & having a conversation without either of us looking at a screen or checking anything! Being present enough that I didn’t want to look at a screen!
I also remember something else: life felt slower & more manageable. Although it had its stressors, we were not as chronically stressed, or distressed, as we are on average today (observations of a psychotherapist).
Technology offers incredible benefits. We can connect with people around the world, find information instantly, work from almost anywhere & access support and community that may not otherwise be easily available. It definitely has its benefits!
But there is another side to this technological revolution.
Our phones aren’t simply tools anymore. They have become companions, entertainment centres, newsrooms, social calendars, shopping malls, cameras, maps, libraries, workplaces and sources of reassurance. All of which is being carried around in our pockets or purses.
Our brains, nervous systems & bodies are adapting to this new environment.
The question isn’t whether technology is “good” or “bad.” The more interesting question is: What is the impact of technology on us & what are the mental, emotional, physical and nervous system implications?
We’re Spending an Extraordinary Amount of Time Online
Technology has become deeply embedded in everyday life.
In 2026, more than 50% of adults surveyed by the Canadian Internet Registration Authority reported spending five or more hours online each day.
Canada’s digital environment is enormous. In early 2025, approximately 31.7 million social media user identities were recorded. That’s equivalent to roughly 79% of the population.
Among younger Canadians, the numbers are particularly striking.
Statistics Canada reported that in 2022, 42% of people aged 15–24 spent 20 or more hours per week on general internet use, excluding streaming and gaming. Another 26% spent at least 20 hours per week watching online content.
These numbers don’t capture the tiny moments occurring throughout the day:
Checking your phone while waiting for coffee. Looking at Instagram when you’re supposed to be sleeping. Opening TikTok when you’re supposed to be working. Checking email at dinner. Scrolling anywhere and everywhere. Picking up your phone because you feel bored for approximately three seconds.
Those moments add up.
In fact, Canadian data found that almost two-thirds of people were checking their smartphones at least once an hour, while among people aged 15–24, almost half reported using their phones as frequently as every 15 minutes!
Your Attention is Being Trained
One of the most significant effects of constant technology use may be what happens to our ability to focus & concentrate. To read a few pages. Listen to someone without interrupting. Finish a thought. Sit through boredom. Work on something difficult. Remember what you just read. Let your mind wander…
These are not insignificant abilities. They are part of how we think, learn, create, regulate ourselves & connect with others.
Research on problematic smartphone and internet use has found associations with difficulties involving executive functioning and cognitive control, particularly in adolescents and young adults. A 2024 review of neuroimaging studies found associations between problematic smartphone/internet use & altered functioning in brain systems involved in cognitive control & reward processing.
A more recent review examining social media & cognitive development in children and young adults similarly found associations between excessive use and difficulties involving attention, working memory & executive functioning, while also emphasizing that the research is mixed and that causality cannot always be established.
This distinction matters.
A Phone Doesn’t Automatically Damage your Attention.
But repeatedly switching between notifications, messages, videos, headlines & social feeds may train us toward a style of attention that expects constant novelty.
This influences distractibility. It is changing brain wiring and development.
When Everything is Fast, Slow Can Feel Boring
This is where I think the conversation about dopamine & instant gratification becomes interesting.
Dopamine isn’t a “bad” chemical. It is an important neurotransmitter involved in motivation, learning, reward & the drive to repeat behaviours.
The problem isn’t dopamine. The problem may be the constant availability of highly stimulating, immediately rewarding experiences.
One swipe. One new video. One notification. One like. One message. One headline…
Some clinicians & popular neuroscience writers use the language of “fast” versus “slow” dopamine to describe this difference. Strictly speaking, there aren’t two different types of dopamine, so I prefer to think about it as fast rewards versus slower, more effortful rewards.
Fast digital rewards require very little effort. Slow rewards often require us to participate.
Slow Rewards: Reading a book. Learning an instrument. Cooking dinner. Going for a walk. Having a meaningful conversation. Practising yoga. Gardening. Creating something. Being in nature. Building a friendship. Working toward something that matters.
These experiences may not provide the immediate stimulation of an endless social media feed, but they can provide something different – depth. They connect us to our ability, capacity, competence & we develop grit. In turn, that helps to reduce anxiety, improve self-esteem, self-confidence and mood!
Dr Daniel Amen and other brain-health clinicians have written extensively about the way highly stimulating digital environments can reinforce reward-seeking & compulsive checking behaviours. At the same time, mainstream research continues to emphasize that the relationship between digital media, reward systems & mental health is complex and shouldn’t be reduced to a simple “dopamine overload” story.
The takeaway isn’t that we need to “detox” our brains. It may be that we need to relearn how to enjoy things that don’t immediately reward us.
What Happens to our Nervous System
Imagine spending your day moving between: notification → response → email → news → text → Instagram → work → TikTok → message → headline → YouTube → notification. Talk about overstimulation!
Even when none of these individual experiences is particularly stressful, the cumulative effect can be a state of constant mental activation. There is always something to respond to, know, watch, compare yourself with, be missing out on (hello, FOMO!), going on elsewhere… And that can make it difficult to be truly present.
Canadian research has found that digital technology use can interfere with sleep, physical activity, work, school & relationships. In a Statistics Canada survey, 24% of Canadians reported that online activities interfered with other aspects of life, while 22% said online activities sometimes made them feel anxious, depressed or envious of other people’s lives.
For adolescents, the relationship between digital technology, sleep & well-being is particularly important. A review of prospective studies found evidence that problematic or excessive device use can affect sleep, while sleep can in turn mediate relationships between device use & mental health/well-being.
Our nervous systems need stimulation, but they also need recovery.
They need periods when nothing is happening, when it’s quiet, when we’re moving, taking in sunlight, sleeping, resting, connecting with others face-to-face, even daydreaming.
Social Media Can Connect Us, Yet Still Leave Us Lonely
This is one of the great paradoxes of our time. We have never had more ways to communicate, yet many people feel increasingly disconnected.
Research here is nuanced. Social media isn’t inherently harmful. It can provide belonging, creativity, information, community & support. In a 2024 Pew Research Center survey, many teenagers said social media helped them feel connected to friends & gave them a place to express themselves.
But the same teens also reported significant downsides.
About 45% said they were spending too much time on social media, while others described feeling overwhelmed by drama, pressure to post popular content, exclusion or dissatisfaction with their own lives.
A 2024 review and meta-analysis of 182 studies involving more than 1.1 million young people found small but significant associations between social media use & depression and anxiety, while problematic social media use showed stronger associations with depression, anxiety, sleep problems and poorer well-being. The researchers also emphasized substantial variation between studies.
Here’s something particularly interesting: Canadian data from 2025 found that people who communicated with friends only virtually were less likely to report being satisfied with their friendships than people who combined virtual & in-person connection.
Maybe the goal isn’t to disconnect, but to connect differently.
Your Body is Living in the Digital World, Too
Our phones don’t just affect our minds and emotional states. They affect what our bodies are doing.
Every hour spent sitting & scrolling is an hour that might otherwise have involved walking, stretching, exercising, cooking, playing, being outside or sleeping. In other words, actually being productive.
Canadian surveillance data indicates that adults aged 18–64 spend an average of approximately 3.5 hours per day in recreational screen time, alongside about 9.3 hours of sedentary time.
For children & teens, Canadian movement guidelines recommend limiting recreational screen time to two hours per day. Some researchers, like Jonathan Haidt, recommend far less.
Perhaps we need to move beyond the question of a perfect number, because two hours of creating something on your laptop is not the same experience as two hours of passive scrolling. However, the lack of activity and experience of instant gratification can produce symptoms very similar to ADD/ADHD.
A video call with your grandmother isn’t the same as two hours of TikTok. A documentary isn’t the same as endless short-form videos. A walk while listening to a podcast isn’t the same as sitting in bed scrolling when you should be sleeping.
Context matters: What are you consuming? Why are you consuming it? How do you feel afterwards? What is it replacing?
I Don’t Want to go Back to a World Without Tech
Despite what I’ve written here, I don’t want to go back. I like technology, use it professionally, personally, to learn, to obtain information, listen to music, get directions, etc.
Part of the paradox is that I appreciate the ability to offer online psychotherapy in Ontario. It has connected me to clients outside the neighbourhood and in remote areas.
Technology has given us extraordinary opportunities, but I also remember something that I don’t want us to lose – what it was like to be unreachable.
I remember going for a walk without taking pictures of it, waiting, boredom, being immersed in a conversation, laughing hysterically, being at a concert without documenting it, having to figure things out, go to a library, consulting an encyclopedia, dictionary, thesaurus, asking others. Things didn’t have to be optimized & I think that’s worth reclaiming.
Do You Need a Digital Detox or a Fuller Life?
I don’t believe the answer is to throw your phone away & move to a cabin in the woods. Most of us have jobs, dependents, responsibilities, relationships & lives that benefit from technology.
The goal isn’t necessarily less technology at all costs, but perhaps more choice, awareness & agency.
More capacity to notice when you’re reaching for your phone because you’re genuinely interested versus reaching for it because you’re uncomfortable being still. More ability to tolerate boredom. More capacity to sit with difficult emotions without immediately escaping into distraction. More time engaging in hobbies, passions and doing things that make you feel alive. More time with people you love. More time in your body. More time outside. More time resting.
And perhaps most importantly, more time actually living the life you’ve been documenting on your phone.
How Psychotherapy Can Help You Change Your Relationship with Tech
Have you ever practiced putting your phone down and keeping it out of reach? If so, did you notice how many seconds it took for you to reach for it instinctively? It’s important to be curious about that while also learning to override the impulse. It may be worth a comprehensive exploration of the habit.
Sometimes scrolling isn’t really about social media. It may be about:
- avoiding difficult emotions
- managing anxiety
- escaping loneliness
- avoiding boredom
- putting off something uncomfortable
- seeking reassurance
- comparing yourself with others
- feeling connected
- regulating stress
- filling an uncomfortable sense of emptiness
- giving your mind a break from responsibilities
Sometimes the phone isn’t the problem, it’s just become the tool that we’ve learned to use to numb, avoid & distract.
Psychotherapy can provide a space to explore what’s happening beneath the behaviour without shame or judgment.
We take a holistic, whole-person approach to psychotherapy. Rather than simply asking, “How do we get you to stop using your phone?”, we can explore more meaningful questions:
What would you like to have more of in your life? Presence? Connection? Creativity? Calm? Confidence Intimacy? Time outdoors? Focus? Enjoyment? Authenticity? Capacity to be fully present?
Technology isn’t going away, but your relationship with it can change.
Creating more space from the screen isn’t about giving something up, it’s about discovering what you’ve been missing.
Ready to Spend More Time Living & Less Time Scrolling?
If you are a teenager, parent, young adult or adult struggling with excessive social media use, phone use, technology dependence, distraction, anxiety, burnout, loneliness or difficulty staying present, psychotherapy can help you explore the patterns underneath your technology use & change your relationship with it to be more intentional and aligned with the life you want to live. Our holistic, integrative psychotherapists are here to help.
You don’t have to give up technology, but you can reduce your use, change your relationship to it and live a fuller, more satisfying life.
Sources & Further Reading
- CIRA — 2026 Canadian Internet Trends
- Statistics Canada — Digital Well-Being: Technology Use, Mental Health & Relationships
- Statistics Canada — Scrolling Through the Social Media Stats
- Pew Research Center — Teens, Social Media & Mental Health
- Jonathan Haidt — The Anxious Generation / Tech & Society Research
- Amen Clinics — Why Social Media & Mental Health Are Closely Linked Today
- Close Screens Open Minds
