What scroling reels is doing to you
Scrolling through endless short videos can really numb us emotionally. It's like our brains get overloaded, and we only have shallow reactions instead of deep feelings. This constant stream of info makes it tough to truly connect with anything or anyone. We need to deliberately slow down, really soak in each moment, to get our emotional capacity back.
It started with a heartbreak video.
A girl crying for her missing little Pomeranian. For a moment, I felt that warm pinch in my chest—the one that makes you pause. But before I could even feel the emotion fully, my thumb moved on its own to the next reel: a couple dancing in their kitchen.
Next: a guy tripping over a chair clumsily.
Next: violins behind a self-love quote in bold letters.
Next: a skit about Indian moms and their one-liners.
In barely five minutes, I had felt sadness, joy, humor, love, nostalgia… and yet, when I finally put the phone down, I had actually felt nothing.
Not sadness. Not joy. Just… blankness. It wasn’t emotional variety. It was emotional noise!
Researchers call this emotional blunting. When too many emotions in too little time overwhelm the brain, so it simply stops processing them deeply.
Just like when you give your laptop ten commands at once. It doesn’t become faster. It just hangs. And maybe reels are making our brains do the same.
We don’t normally think of reels as “emotional experiences.” We think of them as “timepass.” But every tiny visual stimulus triggers a micro-emotion in the mind. And the brain needs time to process each one of them, which continuous scrolling doesn't allow.
The problem is simple: your brain never gets the time to complete one feeling before you hand it another.
It’s like listening to twenty stories at the exact same time. You don’t call that storytelling. You call it chaos. And slowly, that chaos starts leaking into real life.
I noticed it when a friend told me her pet was unwell. I said the right words of empathy, but the feeling didn’t land deeply. Movies that once made me cry now just get a small nod. Even good news may feel… mild or maybe just not good enough!
I later learned that psychologists talk about how rapid switching between digital stimuli weakens emotional focus and slows the brain’s ability to process feelings deeply. Research on media multitasking, where people frequently switch between streams of information, shows that this kind of constant jumping reduces cognitive control and impairs how the brain filters emotional information.
In simple terms, when the brain is overloaded with fast emotional cues, it is unable to process any emotion nicely. Just like when we give too many commands to our laptop, it just hangs.
That is exactly what we are doing to our brain!
No wonder we feel so disconnected. From people, from ourselves and from the world. Sometimes scrolling isn’t even entertainment—it becomes a hiding place.
From silence.
From thoughts.
From feelings that might hurt if thought about.
But here’s the irony: our numbness doesn’t come from a lack of emotion. It comes from too much of it.
The American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that heavy use of social media, especially fast, short-form content, is linked to higher feelings of isolation and weaker emotional engagement. A major study on young adults showed that the more time people spent online, the more socially disconnected they felt.
Thus suggesting that digital interaction doesn’t actually meet our emotional needs. Hence we end up becoming unemotional. We don't feel as much emapthy anymore. It’s not that we don’t care. It’s just that our brain is tired. And the tiredness shows up not as exhaustion, but as emptiness.
So what’s the way back?
Not a detox.
Not deleting apps.
But just slowing down.
Watch one reel—and pause. Let a moment settle before you move to the next. Look up more often. Once you're done scrolling, sit for a minute and ask yourself, "What all did I see?" "What emotions do I remeber?" "Can I name them?" "Was I present in this moment?"
Just like we slow down in our daily lives, when we let conversations breathe, when we take the longer route home and sometimes just do one thing at a time.
Sit with your feelings for just a few seconds more and let your brain process them.
Emotions don’t grow in rush. They grow the way old trees do... quietly, slowly and patiently. Nourishing us and the world around us as well.
But reels… they turn our heart into a highway. Everything passes but nothing stays. So maybe the real solution is not quitting reels, but reclaiming space.
A little corner of your day where the world is not flickering. Where no sound is chasing you. Where a single thought is allowed to finish its journey to your heart.
Put the phone down sometimes. Let silence sit next to you like an old friend. Let your heart breathe without competing with a hundred tiny stories.
Because when life slows down, emotions don’t just return. They return richer. Fuller.
And finally yours!