Impact of Scroll Fatigue on Work Performance

Your employees are wasting hours at work. And no, it's not laziness. We all pretend to be busy. But let’s be real. How much of the workday is lost to mindless scrolling? One headline turns into another. One video becomes five. And before you know it, half an hour has vanished. But it’s not just a personal habit anymore. Doomscrolling is killing productivity in the workplace. And most companies are doing absolutely nothing about it. But why is it a workplace issue? - Anxiety is skyrocketing Constant exposure to bad news keeps employees in a state of stress. And stress does not switch off just because they have a meeting. - Productivity is crashing The more time spent scrolling, the less time spent working. And even when they stop, focus is already lost. - Sleep is suffering Late-night doomscrolling leads to poor sleep, exhausted employees, and eventual burnout. It can be fixed though. ✅ Encourage screen breaks No one needs to be online 24/7. Normalise stepping away. ✅ Talk about mental health If stress is ignored, it only gets worse. Create a culture where employees feel safe asking for support. ✅ Offer real wellbeing support Mindfulness tools, workshops, and mental health resources. Help employees reset before burnout kicks in. Doomscrolling is a workplace problem. Ignoring it means lower focus, higher stress, and a team running on fumes. What is your company doing to help employees actually disconnect?

Screen fatigue will kill you. I say this because lately I have started noticing what hours of scrolling do to the mind. The body remains still, yet the brain feels like it has run a marathon through noise, urgency, and endless micro jolts of stimulation. A recent study by Harvard Medical School mentioned that prolonged screen exposure elevates cortisol and suppresses melatonin, which means the body reads passive scrolling as stress and wakes up the nervous system when it should slow down. Another research from Stanford showed that digital fatigue does not come from information, but from continuous micro-decisions - swipe or stay, respond or ignore, open or close, watch till the end or skip. The mind never rests. At some point, I realised most tiredness came from sitting, not working. The exhaustion felt different. It felt hollow. Like my attention had been stretched into thin threads. I could work for three hours deeply and feel energised, yet lose forty minutes to reels and feel drained for the entire evening. And that scared me. Because I understood endurance in the gym, exhaustion on a run, burnout from long writing days - yet this fatigue felt invisible, gradual, difficult to detect and dangerously easy to justify. That is when I started keeping my phone away from me. Some evenings I leave it in another room. Some mornings I avoid touching it for the first hour. The silence feels uncomfortable initially, then freeing. Many people assume fatigue appears through action. Yet modern fatigue often emerges through overstimulation without movement. Sleep researchers from Oxford say that the average person checks the phone around 150 times a day. The blue light disrupts circadian rhythm, the notifications create dopamine loops, and the lack of natural downtime interrupts recovery cycles. A machine overheating shows a warning. The human brain shows subtle symptoms - restlessness, irritability, inability to stay still, lack of focus, shallow thinking, fragmented attention. Over time, it affects creativity, memory, and emotional capacity. This is why I have started rebalancing. I want to protect depth, attention and whatever part of the mind writes, reflects, imagines, and creates. Because that part grows only in stillness. When the world slows down and mind breathes instead of reacts. Screen fatigue will kill you slowly, not physically at first, but mentally. It will erode clarity, shorten attention, weaken emotional depth, and shrink imagination. Awareness becomes the antidote. Boundaries become medicine. And intention becomes the shield. Today, keep the phone away from you for one hour. Let your mind meet silence again. Let thoughts form without interruption. Let your nervous system exhale. Your future self will thank you.

The average worker loses 51 minutes every week to "digital tool fatigue." That's 44 hours per year, an entire work week stolen by our devices. 👉 We're overstimulated and underfulfilled. Every scroll, ping, and click gives us a quick hit of dopamine—the illusion of progress, without any real fulfillment. Studies show nearly 60% of workers feel pressured to respond to notifications even after hours, creating a cycle of constant mental activation. [Forbes] According to Mass General Hospital, this "digital distraction" leads to decreased productivity and negative impacts on our mental health. [MGH] We've built lives filled with micro-rewards but empty of deep satisfaction. 🧠 The biggest upgrade in my life was not another new tool, it was less stimulation. I stopped trying to "hack" my productivity with apps, notifications, and systems. Instead, I started removing noise: Deleting social media apps from my phone Turning off all non-essential notifications Setting "no phone" zones in my home Blocking 2-hour "deep work" sessions without digital interruptions Spending 30 minutes outside daily without devices And that's when focus, creativity, and energy started coming back. Less so because I added something new, but because I subtracted what was draining me. 👉 We call it downtime, but it's really dopamine time. Most of what we think is "rest" is actually mental junk food: scrolling, swiping, binging. Research shows roughly 40% of adults routinely multitask with digital devices, significantly impacting their ability to focus on meaningful tasks. [APA] ‼️ True rest requires stillness: ↳ Reading a physical book ↳ Creating with your hands ↳ Moving your body ↳ Just breathing, without input The space you're afraid to create is where your best thinking lives. 💡 Remember: We don't need more stimulation. We need space. What's one digital habit you could subtract this week? 👇 **** 🏃♀️➡️ Follow Dr. Angela Kerek MBA for more insights on personal growth through life's transitions 💚 Like and ♻️ reshare if this resonated with you. 📥 Sign up for FREE weekly strategies on Winning Inside: https://lnkd.in/dp9Q__2t *** Sources: [Forbes] - Forbes, "Digital Tool Fatigue" (2025) [MGH] - Mass General Hospital, "Digital Distraction and Its Impact on Your Health" (2023) [APA] - American Psychological Association, cited in "Digital multitasking and hyperactivity" (2024)