Mental Health
Impact on Mental Health
Digital waste not only has an environmental impact, but an impact on our wellbeing. Find out how and what we can do about it.
Our mental health
The on-demand lifestyle created by smartphones has brought unprecedented convenience and connection to consumers, and it will be compounded by the rise of AI. So why are rates of anxiety, depression and social isolation rocketing? Over-reliance on our devices has have a negative impact on our wellbeing. And it’s proved much harder to put them down than it was to pick them up.
Online obsession
Smartphone use really has become an addiction for many of us, fuelled by a fear of missing out (FOMO) and the tricks and strategies digital platforms use to keep us online. Our digital obsession can cause problems in the workplace as well - the constant pings of emails and work messages has had a profound impact. Absenteeism due to stress costs the UK £1.24bn annually, as people feel like they can never switch off from their jobs.
How technology is hurting your mental health
Evidence is emerging about the detrimental effects of social media, particularly for young people, from overuse, and harmful and addictive messaging. Watch the special report from CBS News Cindy Hsu.
Engineered Addiction
This dependency isn't entirely a personal failure. In national polling, 69% of the UK public recognise that digital platforms are intentionally engineered with features like infinite scroll and aggressive notifications to override our boundaries and keep us hooked.
How does it affect our wellbeing?
Social Isolation
Paradoxically, the more "connected" we are digitally, the more isolated we become in reality. 61% of people in the UK admit they are not fully present with loved ones because they are distracted by their devices. University of Portsmouth research highlighted that compulsive phone checking deepens distress and heightens long-term loneliness.
Micro-Anxiety
Constant pings and 1000's of emails in your inbox is a growing micro-anxiety problem. By practicing a daily digital clean-up, you can eliminate 1000's of micro-distractions and improve concentration.
Burnout
Smartphone dependency doesn't just disrupt work hours—it stretches into our personal time as we receieve work emails, Slack, messages and team chats on our phones. This keeps stress hormones like cortisol elevated creating a constant state of alertness - individuals finding themselves unable to fully rest.
Brain Rot
Research has shown that watching short-form video degrades cognitive control, working memory and impulse inhibition - aka "Brain Rot." By constantly switching topics, thoughts decay in your working memory before they can be transferred to long-term storage. This causes your attention span to shorten and hinders deep learning.
Anxiety & Depression
The link between smartphone addiction and mood disorders is highly correlated. When a device is used compulsively, it is often used as a coping mechanism to escape real-world stress - which then feeds a loop of worsening mental health.
Critical Thinking & AI Use
An MIT study showed that excessive reliance on AI-driven solutions like ChatGPT may contribute to "cognitive atrophy” and shrinking of critical thinking skills. This suggests "cognitive offloading" to AI can have a corrosive effect on our mental abilities. In the study, the Chat GPT group showed up to 55% less brain activity than the control.
Teenage Depression
Research funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) and King's College London showed that UK teenagers are twice as likely to experience anxiety and nearly three times as likely to suffer from depression with problematic smartphone use.
Wasted Time
Phone use becomes an unconscious habit, people often open apps without a specific purpose, losing blocks of 15–20 minutes multiple times a day to mindless scrolling, then requiring 23 minutes and 15 seconds to return to a deep level of focus after a single distraction.
Constant Distraction
Everytime you receive a notification or you mindlessly look at your phone, your brain has to disconnect from your work to connect to your phone. These micro distractions prevent the deep focus - you never really reach a state of "flow" or deep concentration during the workday.
Sleep Disruption
A year-long study by Virgin Media and O2 showed that 41% of UK adults report poor sleep directly linked to their phone or internet habits. Sleep deprivation reduces emotional resilience, making individuals more vulnerable to anxiety and mood swings.
Scrolling our lives away
In the UK, adults spend 8 hours and 41 minutes per day on a screen - that's more time than they are asleep, spending 2.15 hours on social media alone. We even check our phone every 12 minutes, clicking, tapping or swiping 2,617 times every day.
And it's affecting our children - who on average spend 6 1/2 hours per day on screens. Almost 70% of parents think their kids spend too much time on devices at home - studies have shown that kids who spend too much time on screens are more likely to have severe anxiety and depression.
Device dependancy
Every morning, 65% of adults reach for their smartphone within the first 5 minutes of waking up. And in the UK 66% of adults suffer from "nomophobia", the fear of losing their phone or being without their phone at any given time. This digital addiction is causing a global mental health epidemic, so much so that in the US the first internet addiction treatment centre opened in 2013. And in China 300 digital detox bootcamps have since opened to treat addicted children. In th UK Dr Richard Graham at London's Nightingale Hospital treats 50 new cases of digital addiction every year.
Worsening mental health
Research from Nottingham Trent University shows that 1/3 of notifications we receive worsens our mood, and 52% of school children have reported that social media makes them feel less confident about their appearance and how interesting their life is. There is a strong link between Problematic Smartphone Use (PSU) and depression, with users 5 times more likely to suffer from severe depression, and twice as likely to suffer from social isolation. Since 2018 gaming addiction is listed as a mental health condition, with warnings from psychiatrists after MRI scans revealed potential brain damage to young gamers.
Mental Health
41%
of people report having little to no control over their phone habits
37% of UK adults openly admit they are addicted to their devices, with little or no will power to put down their devices. Nearly 40% of UK university students show active signs of technology/social media addiction.
Focus and concentration
Our tech habits today are denying our brains downtime, and our ability for deep thinking, maintained focus, critical thinking and analysis have declined. Just hearing a notification is enough to severely distract you. In the 11 years since smartphones existed human attention spans have declined significantly - they are now lower than a goldfish. Some researchers have argued that our short attention span is the result of our increased ability to multitask - but research from MIT and other neuroscientists proves that the human brain cannot focus on two complex tasks at the same time instead switching back and forth between tasks causing delays, mental fatigue, and mistakes.
Decreased human connection
Our busy lifestyles mean we depend on tech to communicate. But it is having detrimental effects on our mental health. In the UK 58% text loved ones even though they'd prefer to meet in person, and 31% miss out on spending time with loved ones as online habits eat into personal relationships. 54% admit to interrupting converstions to respond to a notification - even sending messages to people in the same room at the same time. Almost 1/3 of UK children admit to sending text, email or social media to parents whilst being at home at the same time. Although sharing memes and funny videos with family and friends is called pebbling, from Gentoo penguins who gift pebbles to their partners. It's a low effort bond, keeping relationships strong without long conversations - typical of our fast digital life.
New research on excessive screen use
About 70% of adults say they spend too much time on phones. Marios Iacocou discusses therapy for phone addiction, while Dr. Megan Moreno explains warning signs and ways to cut screen time. ABC News
Impact on:
Read more about the impact of digital waste on our environment, water, the grid and other resources.
The impact of AI
AI is already being used across UK, from big business, local councils to policing and the NHS. But without clear oversight and clean digital operations, the risks will grow.
Data centres and our water resources
The massive cooling demands of data centres processing our digital waste consume billions of litres of fresh water daily, heavily straining local watersheds and intensifying global water scarcity.
The hidden carbon footprint
Digital waste is far from carbon neutral; it consumes significant electricity and resources.
The relentless expansion of data centres to process our digital waste is placing an unprecedented strain on electricity grids and consuming vast amounts of water for cooling, significantly driving up the global carbon footprint.
