By now everyone knows that scrolling social media isn’t exactly good for you. But did you know it might be making you sweat? Researchers from the psychology department at Durham University tracked the physiological responses of scrolling on social media and found a rather strange side effect.
The researchers asked 54 young adults to browse Instagram for 15 minutes while monitoring their heart rate and their skin conductance (which would tell how much sweat they produced). Compared to reading a news article on a phone, they found scrolling Instagram made people’s heart rates slow down and, simultaneously, made them sweat more. From the control group, who just read the news article, they could tell it was not being on the phone or reading that was causing this response. It was something about social media.
Researchers found that the physiological responses were present in all participants, regardless of how they scored on a questionnaire that assessed the symptoms of social media addiction. When participants were purposefully interrupted from their scrolling, rather than snapping out of the excitement and returning to a calmer state, participants continued to sweat and their heart rates increased.
When they were asked to completely disconnect, participants reported being stressed and anxious. They even reported having cravings for social media at that moment. Such bodily and psychological stress responses are similar to those addicts experience when going through substance withdrawal.
Most Americans don’t need another reason to want to cut down on screen time. Over half (53%) of Americans say they want to cut down on phone usage in 2025 (33% more than in 2023), with people spending an average of 5 hours and 16 minutes per day on their phones—a 14% increase from the 4 hours and 37 minutes people reported in 2024.
While researchers didn’t attempt to answer the question of whether we’ve developed a physical addiction to social media, the study does suggest that social media indeed has addictive elements.
My screen time could’ve told you that.
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