Why do I keep picking up my phone?
Most of the time, it isn't the phone we're reaching for. It's a feeling.
Boredom. Worry. A task we're avoiding. A need to check that everything is okay. We all have doorways into our phones, and once you start to notice which ones you walk through, something shifts.
A little spot on my nose
I noticed a little spot on my nose after being out in the sun. It didn't look dangerous or dramatic, definitely no reason to panic. But I could feel a doorway opening into my phone.
I'm one for picking it up when I'm worried. When I need reassurance, and to feel safe.
Check, check, check… Is everything okay?
Hi there, Doctor Google. Now turned Doctor ChatGPT.
And I realised this was happening to me quite regularly.
The doorways into your phone
Before we even start scrolling, there's a moment. A doorway. And each of us has our favourites.
Bored
A gap in the day, a queue, sitting alone at a café table with nothing to do.
Relax
Winding down on the sofa. It can soothe us, and it can also do the opposite.
Connect
Friends, family, community. Seeing what your people are up to.
Learn
A question, a curiosity, the start of a rabbit hole.
Dopamine
Looking for stimulation and a little reward.
Check
Messages, likes, the news, your health. Is everything okay?
Work
An email, a task, “just one quick thing”.
Avoid
The job you’re putting off, or a feeling you don’t want to sit with.
Habit
No reason at all. Your thumb moves before you do.
None of these are wrong. Sometimes the internet is exactly the right place to go. The trouble is when we walk through the doorway without knowing we've done it.
Which ones do you recognise? Play Scroll Loop Bingo
Every single time I open an app,Christina, Attention Experiment participant
I'm asking myself what doorway is this?
The habit of checking
Checking notifications. Checking messages. App hopping. Checking likes, follows, views, comments.
All the micro-habits that have snuck up on me, and everybody, over the past ten years through our phones. The app blocker I use tells me I check my phone every 15 to 20 minutes on average, which apparently isn't that bad. In a late 2025 survey of 1,000 American adults, people said they check their phones 186 times a day.
And we're not very good at knowing. When researchers in the UK tracked people's actual phone use, they found we use our phones about twice as much as we think.
And I've noticed a pattern. It's like the check, check, checking of the phone has spilled out into the rest of my life. Check, check, checking my body. Check, check, checking on family.
We live inside digital systems built to watch us, and I think some of us have learned to watch ourselves in the same way. Every other advert in my feed seems to be selling a supplement, a therapy or a cure, often using science plus fear. I saw one for a toothbrush that insinuated I could avoid an early death by using it. And I felt my anxiety rise.
Seeing it this way has helped me. It makes my own checking feel less personal, and more like a learned attention pattern. One that was designed, on purpose, by big tech.
Some of my checking even has a character of its own. When I reach for my phone, I think: oh hiiii, little Like hunter. I ask her what she's looking for. Usually it's connection, approval and validation. And she's at her most active when I've been on my own for a while.
I first noticed her while writing my second book, back in 2019. Naming her was the beginning of everything I teach now.
So this is no fault of our own. I need to keep saying that.
What your body is telling you
Interoception is our ability to notice and understand signals from inside the body. Discomfort, warmth, tension, tingles, excitement, tiredness, worry, ease. Little internal messages we feel happening inside us.
During my digital wellbeing diploma training, my teacher introduced us to a 2025 study on interoception and problematic internet use, and told us to print it off and read it many times. It was a small, early study of young adults, and it found that people who tended to distract themselves from uncomfortable body sensations, rather than stay with them, were more likely to use the internet in problematic ways. People more prone to worry and emotional reactivity were more at risk too.
In other words, when it's hard to trust and sit with what we feel, we reach for something that helps us feel better. Of course we do. Unfortunately, that can take us into the big tech lion's den, where personalised content keeps us there.
I recognise this in myself. As a hypermobile person meeting perimenopause, I've really noticed how I use social media, the internet and now AI to reassure myself. To help me feel safe when I sense danger around me or in my body. Much more when I'm bored or alone.
What I love about this research is that it doesn't separate the body from the internet. It looks at the relationship between them.
It's not just you
On a coach back from London, I watched a woman across the aisle open Facebook, realise it was boring, close it, and put her phone on her lap. Thirty seconds later, maybe a whole minute if she was lucky, she opened it again. Same thing. Then her photos. Then back to Facebook. For the entire three and a half hour journey.
And it wasn't just her. The people to my left, my right and in front were all on and off their phones. The light from their screens was like a strobe on a dark bus.
But they didn't know they were doing it.
Neither do most of us, most of the time. Me included.
Young people have doorways too
So much of the conversation about teens and screens focuses on how much time they spend online, and whether to ban it, limit it or delete it. That matters, but it's an outside-in approach.
Children and teenagers aren't going online to rot their brains. From everything I've heard from young people, they go online to learn, to connect, to ask questions, to belong, as well as to distract themselves, escape and be entertained. They use it to make sense of themselves and to find reassurance as they grow up.
If we only talk about limits and bans, we miss the more human question: what doorway are they walking through, and why?
Notice the Scroll Loop before the scroll
This is why The Attention Experiment isn't an app blocker or a screen time limit. It works from the inside out.
The practice can be very small. Before you even start scrolling, notice the moment you want to pick up your phone. See if you can catch yourself in the doorway, and for extra points, notice which one it is.
Then ask yourself:
Which doorway is leading me in?
And then choose what to do next, rather than being on autopilot.
Sometimes the internet will be the right place to go. Sometimes you might pause and put the phone back down. Either way, the choice is yours again.
This is noticing the Scroll Loop before the scroll. See the full method step by step
Questions people ask
Why do I pick up my phone without thinking?
Because the habit has been trained into us, often through a feeling rather than a decision. Boredom, worry, avoiding something, wanting connection. Apps are designed to make that reach automatic. Noticing the doorway you’re walking through is the first step to choosing.
Is constantly checking my phone a sign of anxiety?
It can be linked. Many of us check our phones for reassurance, and constant checking can also feed worry. It’s not a diagnosis either way. If anxiety is affecting your daily life, please talk to your GP or a professional you trust.
What is interoception?
It’s your ability to notice signals from inside your body, like tension, tiredness, hunger or worry. Early research suggests that finding it hard to stay with uncomfortable sensations may make us more likely to reach for the internet to feel better.
What are the doorways?
They’re the reasons we reach for our phones: bored, relax, connect, learn, check, work, avoid and habit. Everyone has their own favourites. You can find yours in Scroll Loop Bingo or the free app.