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Is Your Phone Really the Reason You Feel Low?

Many of us worry that too much phone time might make us feel worse, but new research gives us a different view. This article explains a large new study that looked at how using smartphones affects mood in adults and what it might mean for everyday life.

PSYCHOLOGY INSIGHTS

12/14/20252 min read

1. What the Study Looked At

Researchers followed over 10,000 adults for about one month.
They did not ask people to change their phone habits. They just watched what already happens.

Every day, the researchers looked at:

How much people used their smartphones
How people felt emotionally (happy, calm, stressed, sad)

The big question was simple:
Does using a smartphone really make people feel worse?

2. What They Found

The answer surprised many people.

Overall, smartphone use did not strongly change people’s mood.

Some days, people used their phone more and felt slightly worse.
Other days, they used it more and felt slightly better.
Most of the time, nothing much changed at all.

The emotional changes were very small.
So small that most people would not even notice them in daily life.

In simple words:
Using a phone was not a big reason people felt good or bad.

3. What This Means for Everyday Life

Many parents think:
“I feel exhausted because I’m on my phone too much.”
“My mood is bad because of screens.”

This study suggests something important:
Life stress is probably the bigger problem, not the phone itself.

Things like:

Lack of sleep
Work pressure
Parenting stress
Money worries
Feeling alone

These things affect mood much more than just phone use.

The phone often becomes the scapegoat, because it’s easy to blame.

4. Why This Matters for Parents

Parents carry a lot of guilt.

Guilt for checking messages.
Guilt for scrolling at night.
Guilt for letting kids use screens.

This research does not say phones are perfect.
Phones can still:

Distract us
Reduce sleep if used late
Take time away from family moments

But it does say this:
Phones alone are not destroying our emotional health.

For parents, this is a relief.

Instead of fighting the phone all the time, it may help more to focus on:

Short breaks to breathe
A few quiet minutes outside
Small moments of connection with children
Rest, not perfection

Emotional well-being comes more from how supported, rested, and connected we feel than from how many minutes we spend on a screen.

Reference

Dutta, Sanchari Sinha. (2025). Your smartphone might not be hurting your mood after all. News-Medical.net. https://www.news-medical.net/news/20251016/Your-smartphone-might-not-be-hurting-your-mood-after-all.aspx