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Areas › Focus, starting, and ADHD › Screens and attention
Use aimed at status, at likes, at managing how you come across tends to sit alongside feeling worse. Use aimed at staying in touch and sharing what you have been up to does not carry the same weight. That gives you something to change short of quitting: notice which of the two you are doing, and shift the balance a little. Messaging one person back is a genuinely different act from checking who looked.
The present life is just a game, a diversion, an attraction, a cause of boasting among you, of rivalry in wealth and children (Quran 57:20). Boasting and rivalry name precisely the mode of use that leaves people flat.
الحديد
ٱعۡلَمُوٓاْ أَنَّمَا ٱلۡحَيَوٰةُ ٱلدُّنۡيَا لَعِبࣱ وَلَهۡوࣱ وَزِينَةࣱ وَتَفَاخُرُۢ بَيۡنَكُمۡ وَتَكَاثُرࣱ فِي ٱلۡأَمۡوَٰلِ وَٱلۡأَوۡلَٰدِۖ كَمَثَلِ غَيۡثٍ أَعۡجَبَ ٱلۡكُفَّارَ نَبَاتُهُۥ ثُمَّ يَهِيجُ فَتَرَىٰهُ مُصۡفَرࣰّ ا ثُمَّ يَكُونُ حُطَٰمࣰ اۖ وَفِي ٱلۡأٓخِرَةِ عَذَابࣱ شَدِيدࣱ وَمَغۡفِرَةࣱ مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ وَرِضۡوَٰنࣱۚ وَمَا ٱلۡحَيَوٰةُ ٱلدُّنۡيَآ إِلَّا مَتَٰعُ ٱلۡغُرُورِ
Bear in mind that the present life is just a game, a diversion, an attraction, a cause of boasting among you, of rivalry in wealth and children. It is like plants that spring up after the rain: their growth at first delights the sowers, but then you see them wither away, turn yellow, and become stubble. There is terrible punishment in the next life as well as forgiveness and approval from God; the life of this world is only an illusory pleasure
Qur’an 57:20read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
A narrative review reports that heavy smartphone use occurs alongside depression, anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, ADHD and alcohol use disorder, and alongside poor sleep, impulsivity and low self esteem. What that gives you is a picture of what tends to travel together, not proof that a particular way of using a phone brings low mood on. Read it as a reason to pay attention to what your use is for, not as a diagnosis.
Wacks Y, Weinstein AM. (2021). Excessive Smartphone Use Is Associated With Health Problems in Adolescents and Young Adults.. Frontiers in psychiatry doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
The same app can leave you connected or leave you measured, depending on what you went there to do.
Some of what circulates makes being unwell look good. Drugs filmed like a party, low mood styled into something delicate and photogenic, until the illness starts to feel like a personality.
Asked what all the scrolling had done to her most, one young woman did not say sad. She said angry, more or less all the time.
For some people the online part is not a side issue sitting next to the depression or the anxiety. It is one of the things holding them in place.