I’m going to say something that might get me in trouble in wellness circles: I think our collective panic about screen time has become more harmful than the screens themselves.

Before you close this tab (on whatever screen you’re reading it on), hear me out.

The Guilt Industrial Complex

Somewhere over the past decade, screen time became the new sugar — a universal villain we all agree to feel bad about. Wellness influencers post about their “digital detoxes” while simultaneously maintaining six social media accounts. Parents agonise over every minute their child spends on a tablet. Adults feel a low hum of shame every time their phone shows them their weekly usage report.

And I get it. There are legitimate concerns about excessive screen use, especially for young children and especially when it displaces sleep, movement, or face-to-face connection. I’m not dismissing that research.

But we’ve overcorrected. We’ve turned a nuanced conversation into a binary — screens bad, nature good, end of story.

What the Research Actually Says

When you dig into the studies, the picture is far messier than the headlines suggest.

A 2024 meta-analysis published in Nature Human Behaviour — one of the largest reviews on this topic — found that the relationship between screen time and mental health was “small and inconsistent.” The effect sizes were roughly equivalent to the impact of eating potatoes on wellbeing. Not zero, but not the catastrophe we’ve been sold.

Professor Andrew Przybylski at the Oxford Internet Institute has been saying this for years. His research consistently shows that moderate screen use is not associated with worse mental health outcomes, and in some cases, social media use is associated with better social connectedness — particularly for people in regional or isolated areas.

Here in Australia, where distances between communities can be enormous, that finding feels especially relevant. For someone living in outback Queensland, their online community might be the most meaningful social connection they have. Telling them to “just go outside and touch grass” isn’t helpful — it’s dismissive.

The Problem With Guilt

Here’s what concerns me as someone who works in the wellness space: guilt is one of the worst emotions for mental health. Chronic guilt is associated with anxiety, depression, and reduced self-worth. When we attach guilt to something we do for hours every day — often for work, connection, information, and yes, entertainment — we’re creating a constant low-level stress response.

I’ve had clients tell me they feel anxious about using their phone even when they’re using it for something beneficial, like a guided meditation app or a video call with a friend. The guilt has become so automatic that it overrides the actual experience.

That’s not wellness. That’s just a different kind of suffering.

Context Matters More Than Minutes

What I’d love to see is a shift from “how much time are you spending on screens?” to “how do you feel during and after screen use?”

Spending an hour on a creative project, connecting with friends, or learning something new is qualitatively different from spending an hour doom-scrolling news sites or comparing your life to curated Instagram feeds. Lumping them together under “screen time” is like counting a home-cooked meal and a bag of chips as the same thing because they’re both “eating.”

The question worth asking isn’t “how many hours?” — it’s “is this adding to my life or draining it?”

What I Actually Recommend

I’m not saying screens are harmless. I’m saying the conversation needs more nuance. Here’s what I tell my clients:

Notice how you feel, not how long you scroll. If you finish a session feeling energised, connected, or informed, that’s probably fine. If you finish feeling anxious, inadequate, or wired, that’s worth examining — regardless of whether it was 15 minutes or two hours.

Protect sleep. This is the one area where the screen research is pretty clear. Screens before bed disrupt sleep, and sleep affects everything. Keep the bedroom screen-free if you can. That’s a boundary worth holding.

Stop performing digital minimalism. If you enjoy watching TV at the end of a long day, that’s a perfectly valid way to rest. You don’t need to replace it with journaling and candlelight to be a “well” person.

Be wary of anyone selling you a problem and a solution. The wellness industry profits from making you feel broken. Screen time panic is a perfect vehicle for that — it creates guilt, then sells you the detox.

The Bigger Point

Wellness should reduce your suffering, not add to it. If your relationship with screens genuinely isn’t serving you, absolutely make changes. But if you’re functioning well, sleeping well, connecting with people, moving your body, and also watching Netflix for an hour before bed — you’re fine. I promise.

The most radical wellness act might be giving yourself permission to stop feeling guilty about something that’s a normal part of modern life.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a screen to stare at. I’m rewatching The Bear and I’m not sorry about it.

Jess Morley is a Brisbane-based wellness writer and yoga instructor. She writes about evidence-based wellbeing at SoulShine.