He explains: “Using social media releases small bursts of dopamine into the brain’s reward centre.
“Experiencing this neurological response can push the user to take part in the behaviour again, and as social media is accessible 24/7 anywhere and everywhere, the user receives instant and constant gratification wherever they are.
“Being addicted to social media will mean the user would rely on their device compulsively to satisfy a particular need, making them dependent on social media to feel balanced and functional.”
Fernandes also argues that social media addiction is similar to substance addiction in two ways.
He says: “First, it instigates the same reward pathway in the brain which occurs when someone uses drugs or alcohol, and second, it can completely take over and ruin a person’s life, just in the same way as an addiction to substances can.”
I knew I needed help when I began wondering whether the online world had become more exciting than the real one. I’d be on the phone with my boyfriend, only to catch myself zoning out, unresponsive, as I couldn’t resist the urge to scroll through Instagram and check how many likes my latest post had received. At work, just when I was about to dive into something creative, I’d find myself distracted, reaching for my phone to check TikTok. The constant pressure to mentally “curate” my life for an online audience was becoming unbearably exhausting and late-night social media binges meant I was getting little sleep.
So last week, I checked myself into Delamere as an outpatient for a couple of days with the hope of picking up some practical tips to help me avoid developing a serious dependency – the kind that would usually require a guest to undergo the full 28-day residential treatment.
As soon as I arrived, I was quickly escorted up to what would have been my bedroom for the next 28 days to make sure I was safe and to establish a “contract” – the boundaries between myself and the team at Delamere.
The room was everything you’d expect to see in a luxurious five-star hotel: oak-panelled walls, floor-to-ceiling windows framing the rolling, snow-covered Cheshire hills, and a swanky en-suite bathroom. The only difference was the emergency help button beside the headboard.
During my initial assessment, I was relieved to hear that my phone wouldn’t be confiscated. The head of clinical care admissions made it clear that the choice was mine, emphasising that, true to Delamere’s approach, the locus of control must remain with the individual because, ultimately, it was up to me to decide if I was ready for change.
However, she did suggest that someone with my type of addiction would usually hand in their phone or lock it away in the bedroom safe for a few hours. She explained that a period of abstinence upon arrival would help remove my crutch, allowing whatever feelings I’d been masking to finally surface. I reluctantly decided to leave it in the care team’s office.
As the clinical team were assured I was in good health – surprising after a Christmas period of binge drinking and cheese boards – we skipped the physical health assessments a guest would typically undergo, which include blood tests for liver and kidney function, bone profiling, urine analysis and breathalysation. Instead, we jumped straight into the mental health assessment, where the nurse conducted a patient health questionnaire (PHQ-9) to assess my levels of depression. I scored 14 – moderate depression, just one point shy of moderately severe.
After a quick tour around the grounds, I was whisked into my first one-to-one therapy session with addiction therapist Paige Lindsay-Keegan. Having never experienced therapy before, I felt a bit apprehensive about what we might uncover. I shared with her the shame I felt around admitting my social media addiction, how I’m embarrassed to scroll in front of friends, yet I’ll spend hours doing it alone. It’s similar to the discomfort you might feel when admitting how many units of alcohol you drink each week – I get uneasy when a colleague asks me for my screen time stats and insists our team all compare them.
However, my therapist made it clear that my social media addiction was only the tip of the iceberg. The real work lay in digging deeper into the root causes of my uncontrollable urge to check my feeds, my habit of mentally curating my life for an audience, and the validation I seek from likes online.
Within the hour, we began to make sense of why my social media addiction had become part of my life. Tests revealed that I’ve had a lifelong tendency to focus on the negative aspects of life while ignoring the positives. I’ve also become overly fixated on gaining approval, attention and recognition, often at the expense of developing a true sense of “self” – my self-esteem hingeing entirely on others’ reactions. My social media addiction has allowed me to mask these feelings and avoid confronting the deeper issues. I’ve been living on auto-pilot rather than in the present.
At Delamere, they take a more holistic approach to addiction than the traditional 12-step programme, focusing on the whole person rather than treating individual symptoms in isolation. During my stay, I participated in mindful activities, such as yoga, breathwork and reiki, as well as a manifestation fire pit ceremony. Taking part in these experiences reminded me how much I’ve neglected the things that I know are good for me and that I genuinely enjoy doing, not because I lack time, but because I’ve been mindlessly scrolling away so much of my free time.
I was most nervous about attending group sessions with the other guests, worried they might judge me or find my addiction trivial. As we went around the room, the guests shared their stories of being hooked on crystal meth, snorting cocaine before breakfast and drinking five bottles of wine a day before being hospitalised. When it was my turn, I shakily uttered “I’m addicted to social media”. I braced for a laugh or a smirk, but instead, everyone was very understanding – they expressed their respect for me for wanting to get my life back on track. I felt a sense of relief wash over me as my addiction was validated for the first time.
Several guests in my group said they could see the same patterns in behaviour in their social media usage as their drug or alcohol addictions. A few had locked their phones away completely, knowing that when they can’t drink, do drugs or have sex, they’ll turn to social media for that dopamine hit instead of confronting their anxieties. One guest shared how social media killed his self-esteem. Just seeing someone with a big car or travelling the world would trigger hours of obsessive scrolling, feeling like their life was far better than his.
The guests at Delamere weren’t the stereotypical types of addicts that you read about or see on television. They weren’t homeless or rock stars; they were ordinary, middle-class people, aged 18 to 87, suffering from poor mental health that they were desperate to numb.
Before checking into rehab, one guest batch-cooked four weeks’ worth of meals for her husband, only to discover he’d been out with friends every night since she arrived. Another’s wife took over running his business while he was away. Many of them were married, had children and remained hopeful for brighter futures.
During my sessions with Sally Hopkins, my recovery mentor, we crafted a future-proof plan for what my recovery life would look like. Much like with a food addiction, going cold turkey isn’t an option for me, because I need social media for work and to stay in touch with friends. Instead, the focus is on retraining my brain to cultivate a healthier relationship with it. The plan included turning off notifications on all social media apps other than WhatsApp, signing up to my local yoga studio and making journalling a daily habit.
I’m also setting limits – just two hours of screen time a day – and scheduling social media use for the evenings. I plan to attend Internet and Technology Addicts Anonymous (ITAA) on weekends and lock my phone away at work in my desk drawer. To reconnect with real-life moments, I’m going to start making physical photo albums so I can look back on my photos as memories rather than mere content for an online audience.
I know I’ll be on the slippery slope to relapse if I don’t stick to these commitments. Sally reassured me it’s all about fitting them into my daily routine and holding myself accountable. I’m clear on what a relapse would look like and what I want my life to be instead – grounded, present and free from the urge to endlessly scroll.
Leaving the clinic, I cried, not from sadness, but from a deep sense of relief. I had finally received help for my addiction, one I had been silently struggling with as I felt I had no one to turn to.
This week, I’ve felt much more present, truly tuning into the world around me. I’ve been noticeably happier and have much more time. I haven’t touched TikTok, even attended a sound bath, and when my boyfriend calls, I’m actually listening. When I do reach for my phone, I’m pausing to ask myself if that’s really what I want to do. Most of the time, the answer has been no.
So, dear parents, in an increasingly digital world, be the force that keeps pulling your children back to reality. Implement clear phone usage rules, encourage them to lock their devices away at times, turn off their notifications and get them moving. Believe me, you don’t want your child to end up in rehab like me.