How Technology and Screen Time Affect the Nervous System

A little while ago, I finished what I thought had been a fairly quiet day.

I had worked from home, answered a handful of emails, read a few articles and spoken to a couple of clients online. Nothing particularly stressful had happened. There were no difficult conversations, no looming deadlines and no unexpected crises. By early evening, I should have felt reasonably settled.

Instead, I felt oddly restless and tired at the same time.

I remember walking into the garden because something in me knew I needed to step away from the screen. The air was cool, the light was beginning to fade and a bird was making enough noise to suggest the neighbourhood belonged entirely to him or her. Within a few minutes, I noticed my breathing slowing down. My shoulders dropped. The tight feeling behind my eyes began to soften.

It struck me how different my body felt after only five minutes outside. Nothing about my circumstances had changed. Only the environment my nervous system was responding to.

Technology has become so woven into daily life that we rarely stop to consider what it asks of our bodies. We tend to think about screens in terms of productivity or entertainment. How many hours we spend on them. Whether we should reduce our social media use. Whether children should have less screen time.

Those are worthwhile conversations.

There is another one happening quietly underneath them.

Our nervous systems evolved in environments where information arrived at a human pace. Conversations had pauses. News travelled slowly. Faces belonged to people who were physically present. There were long stretches of ordinary life where nothing particularly demanded our attention.

Today, attention has become one of the most competed-for resources we have.

Every notification, message, headline and video invites the nervous system to orient towards something new. Most of these interruptions are not dangerous, of course, but the body still has to process them. Eyes shift. Attention narrows. Muscles prepare. Breathing changes, often so subtly that we never notice it.

Then it happens again.

And again.

I became aware of this one afternoon while writing. Every few minutes I found myself checking my phone, not because it had made a sound, but because my hand reached for it automatically. After half an hour, I realised I had interrupted myself so many times that I could barely remember what I had been trying to write in the first place.

The interesting part was not the distraction. It was what my body was doing.

My jaw had tightened. My breathing had become shallow. There was a slight buzzing in my chest that felt strangely familiar. It reminded me of the sensation I used to have before exams at university, except this time there was no obvious reason for it.

The nervous system does not always distinguish between intensity and importance. Constant novelty, rapid shifts in attention and endless streams of information all require the body to keep orienting itself. It is a little like asking someone to turn their head every few seconds because another person has entered the room. One movement is insignificant. Hundreds throughout the day create a very different experience.

This is particularly true when we spend hours moving between work, news, social media, messages and online conversations without any real pause in between. The body rarely receives a clear signal that one activity has ended and another has begun. Everything blends together into one continuous stream of input.

Research has found that prolonged digital engagement can increase physiological arousal and mental fatigue, particularly when it involves frequent task-switching and constant interruptions. Attention becomes fragmented, stress hormones remain elevated for longer, and the nervous system has fewer opportunities to return to a regulated state. None of this means technology is inherently harmful. It simply means our biology has limits that are easy to overlook.

I notice those limits most clearly after seeing clients online for several hours. Although I have been sitting still, my body often feels as though it has been working much harder than it appears. My eyes are tired. My shoulders feel slightly lifted. There is a subtle sense of being pulled forwards, both physically and mentally.

For a long time, I assumed I simply needed to become better at managing screen time.

Now I think about it differently.

My nervous system needs transitions.

When I finish work, I try not to move immediately into another screen. Sometimes I make a cup of tea and stand outside for a few minutes. Sometimes I walk the dog without listening to anything. Occasionally I just sit quietly by a window and let my eyes rest on something that is not asking anything of me.

These moments are not particularly exciting. They are not meant to be.

The nervous system settles through ordinary experiences that remind it the world is larger than a rectangle of glowing light. Feeling the breeze on your face. Watching leaves move in the wind. Hearing birds before noticing them. Looking into the distance after hours of focusing on objects that are only a few centimetres away.

Simple experiences become surprisingly powerful when they are repeated.

I am not suggesting we abandon technology or pretend life was better before smartphones. I value the ability to work with people across the world, stay connected with friends and access extraordinary amounts of knowledge within seconds. Technology has enriched my life in many ways.

What I have become more interested in is balance.

If our days are filled with digital stimulation, our bodies need experiences that ask for nothing in return. Moments where attention is allowed to soften instead of constantly narrowing. Places where the nervous system can stop scanning for the next piece of information and simply recognise that, for now, there is nowhere else it needs to be.

Perhaps that is why I keep returning to the garden.

Nothing there is trying to capture my attention.

And that, these days, feels surprisingly healing.

References

Mark, G. (2023). Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity. Hanover Square Press.

Ophir, E., Nass, C., & Wagner, A. D. (2009). Cognitive control in media multitaskers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(37), 15583–15587.

Rosen, L. D. (2017). The Distracted Mind: Ancient Brains in a High-Tech World. MIT Press.

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