By Chi-Chen, TSAI, Content Team Contributor

You unlock your phone to look at one notification. A few seconds go by, and you are scrolling through news articles, TikTok videos, and countless other posts. One video leads to ten, and then fifty. Before you know it, an hour or three have passed.

You make a mental note to stop after the next post, but your thumb continues to scroll.

If you find yourself doing this, you may be experiencing doomscrolling.

Doomscrolling is the compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of negative news or other media, which may lead to higher levels of anxiety, stress, and depression. What is interesting is that it is often an unconscious act. A quick check of your phone may lead to hours of scrolling with no intention.

Social media may also cause anxiety due to the culture of comparison. Social media platforms create an environment where people are encouraged to show off their lives, such as having amazing vacations, ideal physiques, successful careers, and beautiful lifestyles. This may lead to a sense of inadequacy as you compare your mundane life with the ideal life portrayed on social media.

Many sites are also designed to ensure that we stay as engaged for as long as possible. This can, over time, foster FOMO (fear of missing out) and we feel we must constantly check what everyone else is doing online.

It is quite easy to find ourselves so engrossed in our phones that we end up measuring our self-worth by how we feel about what other people think of us online, such as through likes, views, and comments.

The good news is that there is much we can do to reestablish our relationship with our phones.

The first thing we can do is set digital boundaries. This can be achieved, for instance, by turning off notifications for non-essential apps, or setting a daily time limit for our social media apps.

Another technique is to have phone-free time in your day. For example, it could be helpful to avoid using social media during mealtimes, bedtime, or the first hour after waking up.

Sometimes, it may also help to replace the time spent on the internet with other activities when you are anxious. For example, a short walk, some stretches, writing in a journal, or a phone call to a friend could help to shift your mind back to the present and away from the virtual world.

If your anxiety is getting worse and is difficult to cope with, it is essential to know that there are people and services there to help you. For example, the No Panic website has a lot of helpful information and support for people who are experiencing anxiety, panic attacks, phobias, and OCD. You can contact the No Panic helpline on 0300 772 9844 and talk to someone who knows exactly how you are feeling.

Social media itself is not the problem; it is the way we interact with it that is the issue. Perhaps the solution is to reduce the time spent comparing ourselves to others online and focus more time on the world of real experiences, relationships, and environments to regain a sense of balance in our lives.

The best thing we can do for our own mental health is sometimes to put the phone down.