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The Double-Edged Scroll: Why Passive Screen Time Drains You More Than Active Use

Offline.now experts say the problem isn’t just how long you’re on your phone, but what your brain is doing while you’re there and passive scrolling is the real energy thief. 

Registered Social Worker (RSW)

Most conversations about “screen time” focus on hours. But newer research and what clinicians see in practice suggest how you use your phone may matter as much as how much you use it.

 
A 2024 meta-analysis of 141 studies on active vs passive social media use found that, overall, effects are small, but there is a pattern: passive use (just scrolling and watching) is more consistently associated with worse emotional outcomes, while some forms of active use (commenting, messaging, posting) show small links to greater wellbeing and online social support. (OUP Academic) Other work from Frontiers in Psychology suggests that the emotional impact of passive use depends heavily on how you feel about the content: when it triggers envy, comparison or negativity, mental ill-being goes up; when it’s genuinely positive, the effect can be neutral or even slightly protective for some users. (Frontiers) Reviews also point to upward social comparison, FOMO and rumination as key pathways linking passive browsing to lower wellbeing. (ScienceDirect)

 
Psychotherapist Harshi Sritharan, MSW, RSW works with teens and adults who feel “wiped out” by their feeds and draws a sharp line between passive and active tech use:

 
“Don’t do passive tech use — that doom scrolling, or content just being thrown at you,” she says. “I want people to engage in active tech use. Go and search something up, choose the long-form video you actually want, talk to your friends. Don’t let the app decide everything you see — especially for kids, who are getting content they’re not ready for and didn’t sign up for.”  She notes that many of her clients describe feeling “numb, anxious or wired” after long passive sessions, a sign that their nervous system is being pulled around by unpredictable, emotionally loaded content rather than chosen experiences. She also discussed the short term recall related to scrolling:

"Some of my clients can't even remember what content they consumed right after scrolling. However, we know that what we pay attention to and what we show our brains has an impact on our thoughts, mindset, feelings and overall internal world."  Offline.now founder Eli Singer frames this as a design problem, not a moral failing. The platform’s research shows people already spend about 10 of their 16 waking hours on screens; the realistic goal is to upgrade some of that time, not pretend we can all go offline. His advice: instead of vowing to “get off your phone,” start by swapping just 20 minutes a day from passive to active use; for example, messaging a friend to meet up, learning something specific, or planning an offline activity.

“When people tell us they feel overwhelmed by their screen habits, it’s not laziness, it’s a crisis of confidence,” Singer says. “We don’t need perfect digital detoxes. We need small, winnable shifts, like taking one block of passive scrolling and turning it into something you actually chose.”  For journalists, the story isn’t simply “screens are bad.” It’s that passive, algorithm-driven scrolling is where comparison, FOMO and emotional overload tend to pile up and that helping people change how they use their devices may be more realistic, and more effective, than focusing on raw minutes alone.

 
Featured Experts  Harshi Sritharan, MSW, RSW – Psychotherapist specializing in ADHD, anxiety, insomnia and digital dependency. She helps teens and adults understand how doomscrolling and passive feeds hijack dopamine and mood, and teaches practical shifts toward more intentional, “active” tech use.  Eli Singer – Founder of Offline.now and author of Offline.now: A Practical Guide to Healthy Digital Balance. He brings proprietary data on digital overwhelm and the “confidence gap,” and shows how 20-minute “micro-wins” like upgrading one chunk of passive screen time can change people’s relationship with their phones without extreme detoxes.   Expert interviews can be arranged through the Offline.now media team.



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We Don’t Realize How Much Time We Spend With AI. Because It’s Hiding in Our Phones

Offline.now experts say AI is quietly eating into our already 10-hours-on-screens day, not just in chatbots, but in all the “little” tools we barely notice. 

If you ask most people how often they use AI, they’ll say something like: “I tried ChatGPT a couple of times” or “I don’t really use AI.”

 
But look at their phone, and the story is completely different.

 
Digital wellness platform Offline.now has found that we already spend about 10 of our 16 waking hours on screens, roughly 63% of our day. Founder Eli Singer calls AI “the shadow roommate inside those 10 hours”: invisible most of the time, but involved in more of our everyday taps and swipes than we realize.

 
And we now have data to prove it.

 
A recent Talker Research survey of 2,000 U.S. adults, commissioned by Samsung, found that 90% of Americans use AI features on their phones, but only 38% realize it. Common features like weather alerts, call screening, autocorrect, night-mode camera enhancements and auto-brightness are all powered by AI — yet more than half of respondents initially said they don’t use AI at all. Once shown a list of features, 86% admitted they use AI tools daily. (Lifewire)

 
Singer sees this as a classic “confidence gap” problem applied to AI.

 
Beyond the “invisible AI” on our phones, generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude and image generators are spreading fast. A nationally representative U.S. survey from Harvard’s Kennedy School and the Real-Time Population Survey found that by August 2024, about 39% of adults aged 18–64 were using generative AI. More than 24% of workers had used it at least once in the previous week, and nearly 1 in 9 used it every single workday. (NBER)

 
Globally, usage is enormous. A World Bank backed analysis of online activity estimated that, as of March 2024, the top 40 generative AI tools attracted nearly 3 billion visits per month from hundreds of millions of users. ChatGPT alone commanded about 82.5% of that traffic. (Open Knowledge Repository)

 
From a mental-health perspective, psychotherapist Harshi Sritharan, MSW, RSW says the issue isn’t just the number of visits, it’s the way AI subtly shapes the texture of our day.

“Every autocorrect, every AI-sorted inbox, every ‘magic’ photo fix is a tiny cognitive hand-off,” she explains. “Individually they feel helpful. But taken together, they keep your brain in a constant state of micro-decisions and micro-rewards, which is exhausting, especially if you already struggle with ADHD, anxiety or overwhelm.”  She points out that many of her clients only think of “AI time” as the hours they spend in a chatbot window. In reality, AI is involved when: 
Their phone decides which notifications to surface  A map app reroutes them automatically  Spam filters silently screen hundreds of emails   “By the time they open a dedicated AI app, their nervous system has already been engaging with AI-driven features all day,” Sritharan says. “That’s part of why people end the day feeling tapped out but can’t quite explain why.”  Singer worries that this “shadow AI” is quietly eating into the same finite resource Offline.now tracks with screens in general: attention.

 
“We already know 10 hours a day on screens is unsustainable for our focus and our relationships,” he says. “Layer AI on top — systems designed to predict and nudge our behavior — and you’re not just losing time. You’re outsourcing micro-chunks of judgment, memory and choice without even noticing.”  So how much time are people spending with AI?  Right now, no one has a perfect number and that’s exactly the point. The best data we have suggests:

 
 Most smartphone users are already interacting with AI daily, whether they know it or not. (Lifewire)  Roughly 4 in 10 U.S. adults now use generative AI, with a growing share using it at work every week or every day. (Harvard Kennedy School)  Globally, billions of monthly visits are flowing into AI tools on top of our existing 10-hour screen days. (Open Knowledge Repository)   “The future isn’t AI or no AI,” Singer says. “It’s: Can you be conscious about how you use it — instead of letting it hijack your attention and manage your life?”  Featured Experts  Eli Singer – Founder of Offline.now and author of Offline.now: A Practical Guide to Healthy Digital Balance. He brings proprietary behavioral data on screen time and digital overwhelm, and a framework (the Offline.now Matrix) for rebuilding confidence through 20-minute, real-world steps instead of all-or-nothing “detox” advice.  Harshi Sritharan, MSW, RSW – Psychotherapist specializing in ADHD, anxiety and digital dependency. She explains how AI-assisted micro-tasks interact with dopamine, attention and overwhelm, and offers brain-friendly ways to renegotiate your relationship with both screens and AI.   Expert interviews can be arranged through the Offline.now media team.



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Do Teens Secretly Want Phone Boundaries More Than Adults Think?

Offline.now experts say many teens feel overwhelmed by their phones and actually want limits, just not constant power struggles with their parents.

Executive Function Coach, Speech-Language Pathologist, and Educational Specialist

Ask a parent about phones and teens, and you’ll hear the same story: “They’re glued to that thing and don’t care.” But when you ask teens themselves, a different picture emerges.

 
A recent Pew Research Center study found that about 95% of U.S. teens have access to a smartphone — and around 4 in 10 say they spend too much time on it. (Pew Research Center) Coverage of the same data notes that over 70% of teens say they feel happiness or peace when they’re not tethered to their device, even as they rely on it for social life. (KTUL)

 
Psychotherapist Harshi Sritharan, MSW, RSW, who works with teens and young adults on digital dependency, sees that ambivalence every day.

 
“I have 12- to 15-year-olds who come in and say, ‘I know I’m kind of addicted to my phone,’” she says. “When a teenager says that, I’m relieved — it means we have something to work with.”  She stresses that most young people don’t actually want to be left alone with endless scrolling — they want help making sense of it. 

Teen Limits Work Better Than Parents Think  New data suggests that reasonable limits can help and that many teens benefit when parents set them thoughtfully. A tool parents can use is collaborative problem solving. This involves parents and teens working together to come up with a plan for the best strategies that combat everyone’s concerns while compromising.

 
A 2024 Springtide Research Institute survey of 1,112 13-year-olds found that teens whose parents limit their screen time are less likely to be heavy users: only 32% of those with limits use their phone 5+ hours a day, compared with 55%of those with unlimited time. Just 24% of teens with limits said they’d felt like they had a mental health problem, versus 32% with no limits.(Springtide Research Institute)

 
In other words, boundaries are mildly protective, not cruel, especially when they’re explained instead of imposed.

 
Sritharan cautions against “no phones ever” rules that ignore school and social realities: 
“We can’t make blanket statements of ‘no screens’,” she says. “We shape how kids use devices so they can still get things done and spend more time engaging with their family.”    That might mean agreeing on tech-free windows (like family dinners or the hour before bed) and tech-friendly ones (like a 45-minute bus ride where a teen can listen to music or message friends). 

Teens Are Leading a Quiet “Cutback” Movement   Parents often feel like the only ones craving less screen time, but surveys show Gen Z is already trying to dial things down.

 
A global survey cited by Tech Times and ExpressVPN found that about 46% of Gen Z are actively taking steps to limit their screen time, more than older generations.(Tech Times) Another U.S. poll commissioned by ThriftBooks found half of respondents are cutting back on screens, with Gen Z and millennials leading — and 84% adopting analog habits like printed books, paper planners and board games.(New York Post) Reporting on the “board game revival” among Gen Z echoes the same trend: young people are consciously seeking offline, face-to-face ways to connect.(Woke Waves)

 
For Offline.now experts, this adds up to a simple message: teens aren’t fighting all boundaries — they’re fighting feeling controlled or misunderstood.

 
Parents as Co-Pilots, Not Phone Police  Executive Function Coach Craig Selinger, M.S., CCC-SLP says the real leverage point isn’t just new rules; it’s how parents model and co-create them.

 
“If you want behavior change in kids, start with the parent model,” he says. “A 12-year-old will not put their phone away at dinner if their parents won’t.”   He encourages families to focus on “little moments” where phones quietly block connection — especially car rides and in-between times when kids might naturally open up:

 
“In the car, your kid is trapped with you,” Selinger says. “That’s when they start talking. If they’re on their phone the whole time, you lose those big conversations hiding in the boring moments.”  Both experts emphasize co-designing boundaries with teens: agreeing together on tech-free times and how late-night scrolling affects mood and school performance. When teens feel heard — and see adults following the same rules — boundaries feel less like punishment and more like shared protection.

 
For journalists, the story isn’t “teens vs phones” or “parents vs teens.” It’s that both sides are quietly overwhelmed, and many young people are more open to limits than adults realize — if those limits are built with them, not against them.

 
Featured Experts  Harshi Sritharan, MSW, RSW – Psychotherapist specializing in ADHD, anxiety, insomnia and digital dependency. She helps teens and young adults understand dopamine cycles, distinguish passive vs active tech use, and build realistic phone boundaries that support sleep, school and mental health.  Craig Selinger, M.S., CCC-SLP – Executive Function Coach and child development specialist (Brooklyn Letters). He focuses on how tech use shapes learning, attention and family dynamics, and how parents can model healthy habits and co-create screen rules that actually stick.   (Expert interviews can be arranged through the Offline.now media team.)



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