It’s not in your head. Your phone has been designed to make you reach for it. Not just the apps, but the phone itself.

You know something’s wrong when you spend an hour of your well-earned free time “relaxing” with your phone and end up feeling more exhausted than when you started. That post-scroll stupor brings on a hollow sense of purposelessness and clawing anxiety.

Instead of telling you to take a social media break (though I do recommend that), I want to share three simple strategies to make your social media time actually restore your energy.

Anytime someone suggested trying grayscale, I’d bristle. Until my kid forced me to face the reality of how addictive screens are. When I turned off the TV at 8 PM, expecting to go about our usual bedtime routine, he started a whine that rose into a wail. I locked eyes with my husband. “That can’t be because we turned off the TV…can it?” He was only three months old. Turns out it was.