As part of our It’s Not You, It’s Them content series, Penn State University student Mia Tricarico shared a follow-up to her November 2025 article on the damages of social media.
I remember the shift, and I remember it being rapid. Looking back, my mother had a flip phone, and my father had a BlackBerry. The BlackBerry was even considered tech-savvy at the time. They were simple devices, but simultaneously huge advancements from what our parents grew up with. The idea of accessing a wireless connection almost anywhere was extraordinary. They had everything we needed: outgoing phone calls, SMS, and even email.
In what felt like the blink of an eye, I was gifted my first Apple iPod in middle school. The smooth, electric blue device slipped into my hands perfectly. It felt so fragile and futuristic. The shift still wasn’t damaging at this time. We still had time — kids still played outdoors, and YouTube and Vine were just taking off. Technology wasn’t something we felt guilty about using. It was a cool little sidekick at this point. Just a sleek screen that I had no issue putting down.
Now, in 2026, I feel the shift on all levels. How did we get here, to this point of humans lacking basic social skills? True connection is at an all-time low. Instead of bumping into a friend on the street or on campus, our necks are craned down to maintain eye contact with our screens.
I see it happen all around me, even to myself. It’s hard to escape or ignore because then you might feel out of the loop. I spend a great deal of time on my phone, and I still don’t know half of these micro trends and celebrity dramas my chronically online friends reference. There are so many realms to tackle, from the warped perception of realistic bodies and lifestyles to stalking your crush’s Snapchat score and the eye strain from infinite scroll. It is simply becoming more harmful than helpful.
Your favorite apps — Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp — are unsurprisingly owned by one company: Meta. The founder himself, Mark Zuckerberg, gave a statement in 2018 saying that these platforms are supposed to “help people stay connected and bring us closer together with the people that matter to us.” However, the issue with his statement is that many users don’t even use it to connect with friends; they use it to look at strangers.
This isn’t a coincidence, either. Millions of engineers work behind the scenes to make the platforms so addictive. They play on natural human traits and behaviors as vulnerable leverage to suck us in. I’ve watched it happen. A close friend of mine was embarrassed to show her screen time, and the results were jarring: 13 hours. That’s more than half a day spent with your eyes glued to the phone.
The unpredictability of human nature is exactly what we are lacking now. Outside, the weather is warming up, and you never know who you’ll meet or what you’ll see. But people choose the more comfortable option: staying inside and scrolling, because the algorithms provide us with that feeling of unpredictability anyway. This artificial unpredictability triggers a massive dopamine spike. We aren’t looking for connection anymore; we are pulling the lever on a digital slot machine, hoping for a neurochemical reward.
From the physical action of swiping your finger up and down, Big Tech has successfully removed our brain’s natural ability to pause and evaluate if we actually want to keep consuming. I face this issue a lot. I know I have assignments piling up or studying to do, but I decide to give myself a treat by scrolling first. “Just 15 minutes,” I say, and then fifteen minutes turns into “just five more Reels.” Then it gets to a point where I throw my phone to the other couch because I know exactly what it’s doing to me. Our attention spans have gotten too short to enjoy a classic film, to listen to our friends talk without glancing down at a notification, or to sit through a lecture without scrolling. We would simply not know what to do with our free time if we didn’t have a phone.
According to the Survey Center on American Life, “more than one in three (35 percent) millennials report that after using social media, they are more likely to feel left out than connected to others.” My theory behind this is that, before social media and the constant performance we are putting on, people would hang out with friends, share a meal, do stupid things, and none of it was documented. Now, in the digital era, an aesthetic martini photo is posted with a hand in the background, and the person who wasn’t invited isn’t just missing out. They’re sitting in their dark room, zooming in on the image, inspecting the hand, and thinking, “Who did they invite? Where did they go? Did they have these plans all day? Why wasn’t I invited?” Thoughts like these are destructive over time and can lead to erosion of self-worth and confidence. It also leads to insecurity in friendships and relationships, creating tension.
Before, it was all so simple. We’ve been conditioned to feel a personal sense of failure for our screen time. We’re told that if we just had more willpower, we wouldn’t be zooming in on that martini glass in a dark room or losing thirteen hours to a digital void. But as recent court decisions in New Mexico and California are finally making clear, this isn’t a lack of discipline. It’s a lopsided fight. Our social lives have been hijacked and turned into a high-stakes audit. If we don’t demand a change in how these platforms are built, we aren’t just risking eye strain; we’re risking the permanent erosion of the very friendships that make our four years at university worth it.
But there is a “stop” button, and it shouldn’t require a software update or a surge of superhuman willpower. It requires holding Big Tech accountable for the predatory architecture they’ve built. We don’t need more tips on digital detoxing; we need platforms that are designed for our humanity, not our dopamine. The unpredictability of a real conversation shouldn’t be a radical act. It’s time we stop apologizing for our screen time and start demanding that the engineers behind it finally respect our time, our vision, and our right to be present in the real world.