When Rest Isn’t Rest: How Social Media Tricks Your Nervous System

We tell ourselves we’re “just relaxing” , phone in hand, thumb scrolling, mind half elsewhere. It feels harmless, even deserved. But what if the very thing we call rest is quietly keeping us activated? What if the easy scroll, that soft, endless drift through other people’s lives, ideas, and stories is one of the reasons we feel so tense, distracted, and overstimulated? This isn’t about guilt or judgment. It’s about understanding how our nervous systems work, what they crave, and how modern life so easily confuses stimulation with stillness.

The Illusion of Relaxation

How many of us have said, “I’m just relaxing,” as we reach for our phones and open social media? The easy scroll often feels like the simplest way to switch off. A few minutes to unwind, to catch up, to fill the space between doing and being. But the truth is you can’t really turn off when the very thing you’re using keeps giving you more and more to think about.

When Rest Isn’t Really Rest

Whether it’s watching what your friend is doing, learning about ADHD, or absorbing endless self-help snippets, although these things can feel deeply satisfying, helpful, even nourishing they aren’t truly relaxing. They feel like rest, but they’re actually a form of stimulation.

The danger is that the time we call “relaxing” isn’t relaxing at all. It’s overstimulating, activating, dysregulating, and in a subtle but cumulative way, stressful.

We Weren’t Built for Constant Input

As human beings, we weren’t built to live like this. Our brains evolved for slow observation, for noticing the shift of light through trees, the quiet rhythm of a fire, the pulse of another person’s voice nearby. We’re supposed to experience stress, yes but in manageable doses, followed by recovery and rest. The nervous system thrives on rhythm, not constant input.

The Algorithm Knows What It’s Doing

Social media doesn’t offer rhythm; it offers a relentless stream. And our nervous system doesn’t know the difference between what’s real and what isn’t. The body reacts to every image, every tone, every fragment of news or conflict as though it’s happening right here, right now. You probably know how the algorithm can spiral, one minute you’re watching something light, and the next you’re knee-deep in “911, what’s your emergency?” videos, or stories that quietly raise your heart rate without you even noticing.

Scrolling Isn’t a Human Activity

The alternative is the passive scroll endless, thumb to screen, mind half-engaged. But that too isn’t natural for us. Scrolling is not a human thing to do. We are built for movement, conversation, rhythm, rest — not for flickering, fragmented attention. Even if you’re “just scrolling,” your brain and body are still impacted by that microsecond of stimulation. Over time, this can desensitise you not because you don’t care, but because your nervous system becomes worn out by caring too much, too often, without a pause to process.

Awareness Over Guilt

It’s not about guilt. It’s about awareness about reframing how you understand these apps. Recognising why they’re built and how they’re designed to keep you there. Once you see that, you can start to treat them in accordance with what they actually give you — not what they promise. Maybe that means choosing when and why you open them, and when to step back and offer your brain the kind of quiet it truly needs.

The Human Need to Do Less

Beneath all of this scrolling, searching, learning, and absorbing — there’s often a quieter truth: we’re tired. Deeply, systemically tired. The kind of tired that rest alone doesn’t fix because our days have become so full, so fast, so relentlessly on. The endless input of social media can become a way to escape that fatigue not because we’re lazy but because our systems are overstretched. Sometimes what looks like procrastination or distraction is really a nervous system trying to protect itself from overload. We dissociate, we numb, we scroll — not because we don’t care, but because we care too much and need somewhere, anywhere, to land for a moment.There’s a very human need to do less. To not have to hold so much. To not keep proving our worth through productivity or constant awareness. But the kind of rest we truly need isn’t found through a glowing screen; it’s found in slowness, in noticing, in letting the body remember what “enough” feels like.

A Gentle Reframe

So maybe the next time you catch yourself scrolling, you can pause not to criticise yourself, but to ask: What am I really needing right now? Connection? Comfort? Distraction? Rest? Once you name it, you can meet that need more directly — with a walk, a breath, a quiet sit, or even a moment of nothing at all. Which I know compared to the dopamine of tik tok can feel ridiculous and impossible but slowly that can change.This is how we begin to reclaim real rest. Not by deleting the apps, but by returning to ourselves.

If you’re curious about how your nervous system might be responding to overstimulation or how to gently find balance between doing and being you can read more about my approach to nervous system awareness and therapy at erikazazzu.com to explore why you might be turning to these apps and what you really need.