Confessions of an online addict: ‘My phone is a needle and social media the concoction it delivers’

I am harmfully addicted to my phone. I have tried everything. I frantically scroll for six or seven hours a day. I am not in control.  It answers my questions and shows me silly things, like kittens. Then a photo of friends… without me.

Suddenly, I feel anxious. It shows a video of Andrew Tate speaking and I want to punch my wall. Then the outlines of an influencer’s nipples under a T-shirt come up and I’m horny, before a video of an old guy getting kicked in the face and blood spewing on to the street makes me nauseous. When I get to Donald Trump, I put it down. I don’t want any of this.

A moment later, I hear the little “bleep bloop” of a notification, pick it up, and we do it all over again, again and again, and the more I do it, the more I get high. My phone is a needle and social media the swirling concoction it delivers; uppers and downers, all at once.

I love it. But the high wears off quickly. My head feels like it’s full of mucus, all sore and tight. It weighs on my eye sockets. I’m both exhausted and full of energy. Minutes of scrolling turn into three hours on a good day and nine on a bad one, which turn into days, months and eventually years. Anxiety becomes depression.

I’m not alone. According to Ofcom, UK adults aged between 18 and 24 spend an average of 6 hours and 20 minutes a day on their phone. That’s nearly 40% of all their waking time. On average! Meaning, for some, it’s way higher.

Tech bosses have repeatedly denied that their products are addictive or harmful, despite whistleblowers alleging otherwise, or leaked internal documents showing they knew that not to be true.

On 25 March, jurors in Los Angeles found that Meta and Google intentionally built addictive social media platforms that harmed a 20-year-old woman’s mental health.

They have to pay a total of $6m (£4.5m) in damages, though both companies are intending to appeal against the verdict. In 2025, Meta made $83bn and Google $132bn profit. The win has been called a “bellwether” case. There will be many more.

And I’m not completely out of the fight. I punch back.

Each time, I start by deleting all the social media apps. That works for a day. But I can’t control myself, so I go on a web browser and use my social media accounts there. Eventually, I realise what’s going on, so I deactivate my social media accounts, take the sim card out of my phone, put it in my trusty old Nokia and go cold turkey for a while. I use my laptop, and only the wifi at cafes for essential things, like checking my family WhatsApp chat.

I go outside. I literally smell flowers. I read, draw, write, call my friends and family on the Nokia and have long conversations. I see people. I go on adventures. My head is clear. Music means something because it’s not always on. I am myself. I am inspired. I even start talking to strangers – and, occasionally, trees.

But, suddenly, WhatsApp on my laptop stops working. So I can’t message my family. I forget about things, miss events and who knows what else. Each time, I push on – once, I lasted a year. And then something happens, like getting locked out of my online banking, so I put my sim card back in my iPhone. Just to do this admin – nothing more!

I do one minute of admin. Then, like a businessman in a back alley shooting heroin into his veins with fleeting joy, I relapse. I open YouTube, I log in to my old Instagram account. I reactivate LinkedIn and cyberbully crypto bros. I go on Pornhub. Hours pass. Months. And so on.

Sebastian Hervas-Jones is a writer and carpenter

Photograph by Tom Pilston for The Observer