As Americans increasingly report feeling overwhelmed by daily life, many are using self-care to cope. Conversations and social media feeds are saturated with the language of “me time,” burnout, boundaries and nervous system regulation. To meet this demand, the wellness industry has grown into a vast multitrillion-dollar global market. Paradoxically, despite growing interest in self-care, Americans’ mental health continues to deteriorate.
After recently suffering from a concussion, I was prescribed two months of strictly screen-free cognitive rest – no television, email, Zooming, social media, streaming or texting. The benefits were almost immediate, and they surprised me. I slept better, had a longer attention span and had a newfound sense of mental quiet. These effects reflected a well-established principle in neuroscience: When cognitive and emotional stimuli decrease, the brain’s regulatory systems can recover from overload and chronic stress.
Obviously, most people can’t go 100% screen-free for days, let alone months, but the underlying principle offers a powerful lesson for practicing effective self-care. Mental health is now at a low point. Roughly one-third of U.S. adults report feeling overwhelmed most days. Upended sleep, anxiety, impaired concentration and emotional exhaustion are widespread, particularly among young adults and women. Chronic disease patterns mirror this strain. When daily stress becomes persistent, it can trigger biological changes that increase the risk of long-term conditions like heart disease and diabetes.
Many Americans say they actively practice self-care in everyday life. For example, they describe taking mental health days, protecting personal time, setting boundaries around work and prioritizing rest and leisure. The problem lies in how that leisure time is being utilized.
Over the past 22 years it has been consistently found that watching TV is the most popular leisure activity for U.S. adults. Americans spend far more time watching TV than exercising, or socializing. Gaming is also prevalent too. Mobile phones have become the dominant screen, with adults spending several hours per day on their phones.
For many adults, checking social media or watching short videos has become a default relaxation behavior layered on top of traditional screen use. This practice is often referred to as second screening. Although many people turn to screen-based activities to wind down, these activities are counterproductive as they may have the opposite effect biologically.
Pre-internet forms of leisure often involved activities such as watching scheduled TV shows, or reading books and magazines. For all of these pastimes, the content followed a predictable sequence with natural stopping points. Today’s digital media environment looks very different. People routinely engage with multiple screens at once, respond to relentless notifications and switch rapidly between several streams of content. These environments continuously require users to split their attention, engage their emotions and make decisions. This type of mental multitasking draws on the same neural systems people are often attempting to rest with leisure. The result is a far more fragmented and cognitively demanding environment than in the past.
Americans check their phones roughly 200 times per day. In doing so, they repeatedly pull their attention back to screens during routine moments. Modern digital platforms are explicitly designed to maximize engagement. Algorithms tend to prioritize emotionally arousing content, particularly anger, anxiety and outrage. These feelings drive clicks, sharing and time spent on platforms. This design is associated with higher stress.
Against the backdrop of daily hassles and competing demands, it can feel like relief to flip on the TV. Practices such as streaming or so-called bed-rotting – spending extended periods in bed while scrolling – often are framed as a form of radical rest or self-care. Other common coping behaviors include leaving the television on as background noise, scrolling between tasks throughout the day or using phones during meals and conversations. These strategies can feel restful because they temporarily reduce external demands and decision-making.
However, pairing rest with screen use may undermine the very restoration that people are seeking. Even while people are sitting or lying still, being onscreen can keep their nervous systems in a heightened state of arousal. It may look like downtime, but it doesn’t create the biological conditions for restoration.
It is recommended that we reduce digital multitasking, limit task-switching, spend time in low-stimulation environments such as the outdoors, and unwind with analog or low-novelty activities, such as reading or device-free walking.