Breaking the Scroll: How to Stay Engaged Without Digital Exhaustion

This article was developed through insights gathered during our monthly therapist roundtable at Viewpoint Calgary Psychological Services. We extend our gratitude to the following therapists who contributed their expertise and perspectives: Cindy Woolfrey, Samantha Rintoul, Lesley King, Zhongxue He (Joanna), Cathy Jackson and Nicki Rimke. These collaborative discussions allow our team to share evidence-based approaches and practical wisdom that we hope will be helpful to the couples and families in our community and beyond. 

We open our phones for "just a minute" and suddenly we're thirty minutes deep into footage of atrocities, natural disasters, and human suffering. We tell ourselves we're staying informed, being responsible global citizens. But when does awareness cross the line into something darker?

The mental health professionals of Viewpoint who gathered for this month's roundtable have witnessed a troubling pattern: a dramatic rise in what they call vicarious or secondary trauma. "People whose nervous systems are reacting to intense exposure, repeated exposure of other people's traumatic incidents to the point where they live with thoughts that they can't get rid of," explains Cindy. "They start to experience things as though they themselves have experienced the trauma."

This isn't about being too sensitive or lacking resilience. This is about basic human biology colliding with technology our brains were never designed to handle. And it’s happening to most of us, to some extent with this persistent digital exposure. 

The Attention Crisis Nobody Talks About

Here's what most people don't realize: attention is a limited resource. It actually requires energy from your brain. Cathy –  a new addition to the Viewpoint team specializing in neuropsychology –  puts it bluntly: "Your brain can't attend to everything all the time. Your body physiologically cannot do it."

When we pour that precious cognitive energy into consuming negative content, we're left depleted for the things that actually matter in our lives. The result? "A lot more hopelessness, a lot more nihilism," says Cathy. "People are feeling ‘well what's the point’ because the world is going completely the wrong way."

The problem intensifies because of how algorithms work. Click on one concerning story and suddenly your feed becomes an endless scroll of similar content. "It distorts our perception of what is actually going on in the world because you're only getting the bad feeds," Cathy notes. We end up believing the world is worse than it actually is, trapped in what Nicki calls "an anxiety loop" where we keep reading, hoping that more information will somehow protect us.

The Paradox of Digital Connection

There's a cruel irony at play. We turn to social media seeking connection, yet often end up more isolated. "When we're doing things virtually, a lot of the time we just focus on our own opinion," observes Joanna. "We don't have that much time to understand each other, to create that bond with each other."

This loss of genuine human connection makes us more vulnerable to trauma, not less. We need that sense of shared humanity to process difficult information, but the very platforms delivering the trauma often strip away the human element that would help us cope with it.

Lesley frames it clearly: "Media can draw our attention away from us so easily and so quickly without our consent, without our realization, and without our approval really."

You Can't Therapy Your Way Out of a Broken System

Samantha offers a reality check that cuts through: "We cannot therapy our way out of a broken system, but we can give people tools to cope with it."

So what do those tools actually look like?

First, understand that protecting your peace is not the same as being ignorant or uncaring. Lesley suggests thinking about your wellbeing as a wheel that needs balance: sleep, social contact, exercise, food, and yes, your media diet. "We can often look at it that way of making our media consumption just one part of life, like our food consumption."

Nicki offers a simple rule of thumb: if you've read more than 3 articles about the same topic today, that's your cue to stop. Instead of spiraling into information you can't act on, she suggests redirecting that energy toward what's actually within your control. You can't stop a war halfway across the world, but you can stock your local food bank. You can't fix systemic injustice alone, but you can volunteer in your community. These small, tangible actions help reconnect you to the humanity that doomscrolling strips away.

The key insight? Small actions by many people create meaningful change. As Samantha puts it: "Each of those small actions of hope compounds."

Replacing the Habit, Not Just Restricting It

Here's where most people fail: they try to simply cut back on social media without addressing the underlying need it's meeting. "Find out what those needs are and then take a look at what you can replace that with," advises Cathy. "Just stopping something is not enough because then there's a hole."

Cindy applies this same logic to parenting: "We often hear from young people, but I'm bored, there's nothing to do. Because no different than us as adults, they've lost track of the other things that they did."

What hobbies have you abandoned? When did you last connect with someone face to face? What activities used to bring you joy before your phone became your default companion?

The Way Forward

The path isn't about disconnecting entirely. "Social media is a reality of life," Samantha acknowledges. Instead, it's about asking yourself crucial questions: What is the purpose of this? Is this fueling connection? How is it impacting me emotionally?

And perhaps most importantly, as Nicki suggests: Are your online interactions aligned with who you want to be as a person? "I can walk away from an interaction feeling like, no matter how it went, I was true to myself."

It’s not  just “protecting your peace”. That's reclaiming your humanity in a digital world that often strips it away.