“I’m online & I’m OK”: Can scrolling through social media fit a healthy life?
Here’s what I’m not going to do.
I’m not going to tell you yes.
I’m also not going to tell you no.
Beyond that, I’m not going to regurgitate popular advice shared throughout self-help books, podcast episodes, and all those other blog posts: “unfollow everyone you don’t know personally”, “use apps that limit your screen time”, “take breaks every now and again”. As a National Board-Certified Health & Wellness Coach, over the last 7 years, I’ve supported thousands of clients with various lifestyle goals. In the last year, as that demographic has become heavily concentrated with college students, I‘ve supported over a hundred clients who feel their behavior with social media scrolling trends toward addictive.
So no, I can’t say for certain that being online and being OK can co-exist. It’s a bit like gambling (more on that later) — if it’s difficult to do in moderation and may lead to addictive behaviors, how can you use it and also be OK? However, I‘ve also helped these clients find solace in tried and true behavior science strategies for building and sustaining change. Whether they’ve found alternatives to match the functions social media held for them or now use it only in an intentional way, students in their teens and twenties are making peace with the role social media plays in their lives. I think that means you can, too.
The names used below have been changed to protect clients’ anonymity.
Take Alex, for example — a 19-year-old sophomore at a big university in the Southeastern United States. When the topic of social media came up in one of their therapy appointments, their provider referred them to me for support with screen overuse, especially social media scrolling. In our first session together, Alex shared they felt like they’d tried everything: deleting social media from their phone altogether, then trialing apps that cut social media browsing after a specified timeframe. Neither seemed to work. Alex noted they’d either head to the apps on their phone’s browser or simply hit “ignore” when the time limit on Instagram or TikTok was hit.
We talked about what Alex learned from those experiences. They shared that making the apps harder to access just made them crave the behavior more. We then discussed what Alex felt the function of social media was for them. Did it quench their thirst for learning? Did it help them connect with others? Was it a way to alleviate boredom? They shared that it was a combination of all three. In the same sentence where Alex acknowledged the potential negative impacts of the app’s algorithms on things like critical thinking, open-mindedness, and productivity, they also shared the ways in which TikTok helped them stay on top of local news, Instagram kept them abreast of their high school friends’ life announcements, and the short videos on both kept them entertained between classes.
So, against the social media advice I’ve read in droves lately, I offered Alex a counter-intuitive idea. “Instead of trying to limit the amount of time you spend scrolling,” I said, “what if you find other easy ways to lean into the values it’s allowing you to express?” For their love of learning, we discussed regular trips to the library so they could always have a book on-hand. We also looked at longer videos on YouTube as an option; “less brain-melting,” Alex said. For the purposes of sustained connection, we talked about searching for the contact numbers of those friends from a few years back and reaching out to them with a quick text message from time-to-time. And while there may be no better-equipped boredom buster in the year 2026 than a quick scroll through social media, we also discussed various ways Alex enjoyed simply passing the time as alternatives: doodling, listening to music or podcasts, and journaling.
Alex left our first session with one goal: take these values-based alternatives to scrolling and play around with them. Just a week later, they shared excitement about the changes they were experiencing. They noticed first that they no longer felt shame around their social media use. Likening it to eating sugary treats, Alex shared that they could now “take the bad with the good”, knowing that finding a way to moderate was key. They also acknowledged that the alternatives we’d brainstormed had expanded to include getting back into learning guitar, having heated philosophical discussions with friends, and testing out mindfulness meditations for a few moments in-between classes. For Alex, being online lost its shine when it offered just one way of meeting their needs.
After a month of sessions, Alex reported their time on social media had significantly decreased, especially in-between classes. They were leaning on other activities to learn, connect, and entertain themselves. After they’d accepted the hold social media can have on the brain, they also experienced less shame, less frustration, and more acceptance. They specifically noted “Feeling drawn to social media isn’t my fault, but it is my responsibility to make work it for me.” The behavior found a place in their life, removing the cognitive dissonance they’d experienced as they examined the consequences of being online and yet continued to feel unhelpfully attached.
— — —
Like gambling, social media is designed to keep us hooked. Built into the type of reward schedule used, our brains become hooked on the possibility of a dopamine rush. Rather than a predictable every 30 minutes or every swipe down bringing us joy or excitement, it’s the variability of that reward schedule which keeps us enthralled, as our dopaminergic receptors hope for one more “big win”. Maybe for you, that’s a sweet dog video or Michael Scott’s parkour scene from The Office. Either way, when it “hits”, you feel it, and that excitement keeps you scrolling for more.
— — —
Destiny, a 24-year-old graduate student on the West Coast, used what she’d learned in an intro to psychology course her freshman year of college to understand the impacts of this reward schedule. Like Alex, she knew that social media was built to be hard to leave. She knew it had negative impacts on her productivity, her sleep quality, and her mental health. At the same time, after a long day of research and meetings, she’d often find herself up until the early hours of the morning scrolling through Instagram “mindlessly and without any specific goal in mind.”
Our first step together was to affirm the efforts she’d already taken to understand the behavior. Again, like Alex, she’d tried using other apps to limit her scrolling to 1 hour per day. But ignoring those limits became an established habit, much like hitting “snooze” each morning. So we tried something different. Once again, instead of attempting to limit the scrolling and run the very real risk of FOMO and an resurgence of the behavior instead, we discussed where else in her day scrolling might fit, without inserting itself into her sleep routine. Destiny identified a 45-minute break she got every day, Monday — Friday, between lab and library time with her colleagues. Most days, she’d grab a coffee and head right to the library early. We talked about experimenting with that same routine, but settling into the cafe and doing some scrolling instead.
At first, this behavior felt really uncomfortable for Destiny. She felt “incredibly unproductive”, like she was “wasting too much time” at a point in the day when she could’ve been working. So we did the math. If she spent 45 minutes scrolling at that time of day, she’d get back anywhere between 2 and 4 hours for studying, sleep, or self-care later that evening. After our first follow-up, she took the same goal forward and tried it again. Four afternoons out of five, she was able to enjoy her almond milk latte with some social-media scrolling, headphones in, and no distractions. She began to call this “unproductive time” and owned it for its purpose: a chance to pause, check-in with others, and simply let her mind wander.
Three months into our sessions, Destiny’s daily screen time average went from roughly 5 hours to just over 1. She also began to use those 45 minutes each weekday for more than scrolling. After securing a spot at the window in the on-campus cafe, she’d take the lid off her latte and watch the steam rise. She’d close her eyes and let herself “ just be bored” for as long as she could stand it, then open up her apps to start scrolling. With the time constraint built in, knowing she’d need to meet her colleagues at the library in just 45 minutes, her screen time had a clear start and end time. She also found that it fit in realistically with her need for rest, as a way to break up her more productive windows through the week.
— — —
These are, of course, only two examples of busy students finding a way to make screen-time, social media, and scrolling align with their values and needs. A theme of acceptance generated sustainable change for both of them, allowing both to stay connected while still acknowledging the need for moderation.
So, is it safe to say that we can be online and still be OK? The answer to that remains to be seen. However, I’d argue that unless systems change — the variable-ratio reward schedule used by tech companies to keep us coming back, the easy accessibility to topics and people of interest in lieu of in-person connection, and the prioritization of “online personas” to express ourselves and share ideas, perhaps the best case scenario now for teenagers, twenty-somethings, and the rest of us is not to shame ourselves into deleting the apps every 3–4 months, but instead to find an individualized solution to social media use that works for each of us.
What reflections have you uncovered as you examine your own social media use? I’d love to hear from you. Share your story with me via email at textahealthcoach@gmail.com.