How long have you spent scrolling YouTube this week? Let’s look at the deeper reason why you keep getting pulled into the screen, even when you’re not particularly enjoying the experience.

If you study trauma psychology, you’ll notice a connection between trauma-based dissociation and internet addiction: endless scrolling has become a massive problem for people who don’t realise that their phone habits are intimately connected to unconscious nervous system triggers.

We can all relate to those moments of zoning out and spending too much time on the Internet… too much time avoiding the things which would actually bring purpose and meaning into our lives… but why do so many of us choose to disrespect our time and energy with unconscious phone use?

If you want to spend less time scrolling, then consider identifying your unmet needs, healing your subconscious nervous system responses and focusing on underlying moods rather than symptomatic behaviours.

Practically speaking, this means catching the moment when your mood shifts into boredom, apathy or disconnection and taking that moment as an invitation to check in with yourself and see if there’s a deeper emotional problem which you’re actually avoiding?

Let me give you an example, based on my own life.

To be truthful, I have an ongoing and predictable pattern of excessive content consumption whenever I have an unmet need for privacy and introversion.

I’m generally mindful of phone usage until I’ve depleted my social battery and feel the need to withdraw my energy from extending outwards into the world of people and relationships.

My screen-time expands when I need to contract.

I’ve been watching this pattern for years, and I now know that aimless YouTube scrolling feels like a sluggish, but nonetheless compulsive inward retraction of my psychic energy.

It’s an almost cocoon-like craving.

An inwards-facing collapse, disguised by an outer veil of content consumption. It looks like I’m watching the screen, but really I’m listening inwards… or at least attempting to listen inwards with gaping mouth and half-awareness.

My unconscious scrolling indicates an unmet need for healthy and restorative introversion, an unmet need which could be better fulfilled by a private walk in nature, or even a full-reset afternoon nap, which are my two most common forms of conscious self-regulation when I’m feeling stretched thin.

Sometimes I catch the cycle, and other times I don't.

Yesterday I went for a nearly two hour barefoot walk in my local woods while wearing a 20kg weighted vest after catching the urge to waste a few hours watching videos I didn’t need to watch.

I don’t always walk for that long or with that much extra weight, but I enjoy exercise and how the extra weight forces me deeper into the soil and slows my mental rate. I eventually returned home and was able to work and be mentally sound for the next eight hours before bedtime.

Remember that there’s always a deeper reason for falling into the YouTube scroll hole, and it’s likewise worth pausing to zoom out and remember just how little time we have in this life.

Find your unmet needs, and meet those needs.

Remember you deserve better.

Jordan