Health & Wellness

Your Relationship With Instagram Is Literally Abusive—’The Art of Being Well’ Breaks Down Why

November 6, 2025

You pick up your phone without thinking—between tasks, during lunch, mid-conversation. It’s muscle memory now. Nearly a hundred times a day, your thumb hits refresh like it’s checking for oxygen. The second a notification lights up, your heart flickers, half dread and half dopamine. And even when you swear you’ll delete the app tomorrow, you never do…because what if you miss something?

On The Art of Being Well, host Dr. Will Cole sits with relationship expert Mark Groves to unpack why your phone anxiety isn’t in your head, but in your body. Turns out, social media doesn’t only feel like a toxic relationship. It functions like one, complete with unpredictable rewards, shifting rules, and that constant, uneasy sense that nothing you do will ever be enough.

Social Media Anxiety

Your body can’t tell the difference between a mean comment and actual death

Your body doesn’t know the difference between a bad comment and a bear attack—it just knows a threat is present. When someone criticizes you online or a post tanks, your nervous system floods with the same stress hormones designed to keep you alive. Your chest tightens, your breathing shortens, and your brain instantly searches for safety. Except there’s no real danger, just pixels and perception.

“Your nervous system is not designed to have a version of you available 24 hours a day for social criticism,” Groves explains. When your digital self is constantly up for judgment, your biology never clocks out. Every notification becomes a potential social rejection, and your body reacts accordingly.

Researchers call this “social-evaluative threat”—and it’s one of the biggest triggers of cortisol, the stress hormone linked to anxiety, fatigue, and poor sleep. And because your brain can’t separate emotional safety from physical safety, it keeps you in low-level fight-or-flight all day.

The algorithm is gaslighting you

The stress isn’t just coming from what people say—it’s built into the platform itself.

If you’ve ever wondered why your post flops right after one goes viral, that’s not coincidence. Social platforms run on the same reward system as slot machines: random payouts, unpredictable hits, and the illusion that if you just keep pulling the lever, the next one has to be big. “Nothing will ever be enough,” Groves explains. “There’s no amount of content that will ever be enough. It always wants more from you.” Sound familiar? That’s because toxic relationship dynamics and addictive tech design use the same psychological hooks.

Your content isn’t just judged by people—it’s filtered through a non-human algorithm deciding if your voice deserves to be heard. The rules for “winning” are a mystery you’ll never solve, and that’s the point. That uncertainty keeps you in a low-grade panic, constantly refreshing, tweaking, and trying again. Groves says that kind of instability teaches your body to chase validation when what it really needs is peace.

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How to break up without losing everything

Breaking up with your phone doesn’t mean deleting every app and moving to the woods. It means taking your power back. Groves learned that firsthand when he took a six-month break from social media. His anxiety dropped, his sleep improved, and his blood sugar stabilized. When he came back, he did it differently. “The opposite of trauma is choice,” he says. “And if we don’t decide our relationship with technology, it will decide our relationship with us.”

That’s the key: you don’t need a digital detox. You need boundaries that tell your nervous system, “we’re safe now.” A 2018 study found that people who limited social media use to about 30 minutes a day reported better mood and lower anxiety after just three weeks. Another randomized trial showed that even a one-week break improved wellbeing.

You’re not addicted to your phone because you’re weak. You’re just human, and the system was built to exploit that humanity. Start small—one hour off at night, a few scroll-free meals—and remind your body it’s safe to rest.