Is your body as doomed as your feed?

Social media is pretty bad for your health. Yeah, nothing new. That news has been going around for years. But there's a side of this we don't talk about as much that is just as important. Social media, in addition to affecting you emotionally, also has measurable effects on your physical body. And for teenagers spending an average of five or more hours a day on their phones, whether it's doomscrolling on the toilet or checking your stories right when you wake up, those effects really do add up.

Social media destroys your sleep. This is the most well-documented physical effect of social media use and you should definitely take it seriously. The blue light your phone emits makes you produce less melatonin, the hormone your body makes when it's time to go to bed. Using your phone before bed pretty much tricks your brain into thinking it's still daytime, making it nearly impossible to fall asleep and cutting into your total sleep time. But this isn't just because of the light. Social media is designed to keep you addicted, with its infinite feed, notifications, and the instant dopamine hit of every piece of new content, keeping your brain stimulated and alert and ensuring that you will not fall asleep.

The effects of sleep deprivation extend beyond just napping in first period. Poor sleep is linked to weight gain, worse immune function, and increased stress levels. Doomscrolling until 3:00 a.m. is setting you up for health issues in the future.

It also messes with your hunger hormones. When you don't sleep enough, your body produces more ghrelin and less leptin. This means you feel hungrier and after eating are less likely to feel full. The result is that when you are sleep deprived, you will start craving high calorie foods including those high in sugar and saturated fat. Essentially, your brain is running on low energy and wants the fastest fuel source it can find, making this a physiological consequence of sleep deprivation rather than an issue with your motivation to eat healthy.

It also makes you more sedentary. Unless you're doomscrolling on the treadmill, which I highly suggest you don't do, chances are that every hour you spend doomscrolling is an hour you spend sedentary. Think about it: five hours a day of screen time is five hours of essentially physical inactivity. When you add this up over a year, that's almost 2,000 hours of sitting still. Physical inactivity is one of the leading risk factors for obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Your body was not designed to be stationary for the majority of its waking hours, and the normalization of teenagers spending entire afternoons doomscrolling on their phones has real long-term consequences.

It makes you stressed. Social media is a constant influx of stimulating content and social comparison. Whether it's feeling like everyone else is richer and better looking than you, or just the low-level anxiety of always being available, social media keeps millions of teenagers in a persistent state of low-grade stress. Elevated cortisol levels over time are linked to increased fat storage, worse immune function, higher blood pressure, and increased inflammation throughout the body, which is an underlying factor in a lot of chronic diseases.

It also warps how you see your own body. Social media presents you with unrealistic body standards, whether it's edited pictures of a 20-inch waist or the constant lie that "it's natural" slipping through lips the size of sausages, making you feel dissatisfied with your body, which is one of the strongest predictors of eating disorders. Heavily restricting your diet, spending hours on cardio, and skipping meals are significantly more common among teenagers with high exposure to this type of content, and the physical consequences of eating disorders are quite serious.

So what should you do? Realistically, you're probably not going to quit social media, and that's not my point. The point is awareness. Keep your phone out of your bedroom at night. Set a screen time limit before bed. Unfollow those duck lip influencers making you feel insecure. The apps don’t care about your body. You should.