What your streaming vs. scrolling habits reveal about your mental health
We all know that spending too much time on screens is unhealthy, but do different screens have different impacts on our mental health? The answer, according to a 2025 Hers study, is yes.
In fact, one simple question, "Do you prefer streaming TV or scrolling social media?" reveals key differences in our self-perceptions, emotional stability, mental wellness, and more. So which one is better? Well, it's complicated.
When it comes to screen time, binge watching Netflix and scrolling TikTok are not apples-to-apples, so it makes sense that their impact on our mental health isn't either. Here's a look at three key differences in streamers' vs. scrollers' mental health profiles.
Scrollers Have a Higher Self-Image Overall
When it comes to how people perceive themselves, those who prefer scrolling social media to streaming TV were notably more upbeat on several criteria. They feel more attractive (63% of scrollers rate themselves as a 4 or 5 on attractiveness on a 5-point scale vs. 57% of streamers), healthy (62% vs. 57%), and sexual (54% vs. 49%). Scrollers were also more likely than streamers to agree with the statement, "I love the way I look right now" (41% vs. 37%).
However, this higher self-perception isn't necessarily translated to feeling more secure. Scrollers actually report feeling slightly more insecure than streamers (25% vs. 22%, respectively), perhaps giving a nod to the negative impacts of comparison culture.
Both streamers and scrollers reported feeling equally confident, with 65% of scrollers describing themselves as such (a 4 or 5 on a 5-point scale) vs. 64% of streamers. That said, the areas where each group felt more confident differed.
For example, scrollers have more physical confidence. They reported feeling more confident socially (24% vs. 22%), physically (21% vs. 19%), and sexually (17% vs. 15%). Streamers, on the other hand, ranked themselves as more confident in their caregiving (24% vs. 20%), overall mental wellness (20% vs. 17%), and philosophical sense of self (16% vs. 14%). They were also more likely than scrollers to name "emotionally stable" as a top personality trait (13% vs. 10.5%)
While the differences in these percentages aren't necessarily statistically significant alone, taken together they paint a picture of two different types of self-confidence-one more physical and social and the other more emotional and philosophical.
Streamers Are More Proactive About Their Mental Health
Mental health is more top-of-mind among those who prefer streaming TV vs. those who prefer scrolling social media. 25.5% of streamers say they have experienced more stress, anxiety, and burnout in the past five years vs. 21% of scrollers, and 26% of streamers say they've experienced a mental health condition in their life as compared to 23% of scrollers.
Furthermore, streamers were 50% more likely than scrollers to say "stressed" is one of their top personality traits (15% vs. 10%) and, outside of money, "my mental health" is a bigger stressor for streamers (18%) vs. scrollers (14%).
Streamers are also more likely to recognize the role their mental health has on their overall confidence: 18% say their mental health impacts their confidence (either for better or for worse) vs. 14% of people who prefer scrolling social media.
Perhaps because mental health is top-of-mind among streamers, they also report being more proactive about it. 23% say that, in the past five years, they've been more proactive about their mental health as compared to 21% of scrollers. And 14% of streamers say they're "at my full potential" with regard to their mental health vs. 12% of scrollers.
Whether you're more of a streamer or a scroller, there are things you can do to be more proactive about your own mental health, including limiting screen time to get outside, choosing streaming platforms that are better for your mental health, and only following accounts on social media that make you feel good.
Scrollers Are Younger and More Diverse
It's important to note that there are also demographic differences between scrollers and streamers that could account for some of the results in this study. Those who prefer scrolling to streaming are younger on average-36.5 years old vs. 40.7 years old-with a higher concentration of 18-24 year olds than those who prefer streaming (22% vs. 13%).
Scrollers are also more diverse, with 47% being people of color vs. 40% of streamers. And despite their age difference, scrollers reported higher household income than streamers ($94,000 annually vs. $88,500).
However, on almost every other marker, these two groups appear very similar, making their differing mental health markers arguably more psychographic than demographic.
For example, there was no significant difference in where they lived, with equal representation among both groups across the country. They were equally likely to be politically aligned with the Democratic, Republican, or Independent parties. And there were as many parents and nonparents in both groups. Scrollers skewed slightly more female than streamers (53% vs. 51%), but not significantly.
Data and Methodology
This study is based on a 7,100-person online survey, which included (1) 5,000 18-to-65-year-old respondents in the top 50 metropolitan areas (100 respondents per city); (2) 5,000 18-65-year-old respondents in each of the 50 states (100 respondents per state); and (3) a nationally representative sample of 500 18-to-65-year-old respondents to contextualize results. These three categories are not mutually exclusive; some respondents fall within more than one category. The study was fielded in January 2025.
Findings were analyzed by 190 demographic and psychographic cuts, including city, region, gender (when Hers refers to "women" and "men," we include all people who self-identify as such), age, race and ethnicity, relationship status, parenting status, sexual orientation (heterosexual, bisexual, gay, lesbian, pansexual, asexual, queer, etc.), fandoms (music, sports, etc.), and fitness and diet preferences, among other areas of interest.
All data in this study are from this source, unless otherwise noted. Independent research firm, Culture Co-op, conducted and analyzed research and findings.
This story was produced by Hers and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.
© Stacker Media, LLC.
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We thought through what clothing might be in the dome and how people might wear that clothing without making it too much of a story about like, my God, crazy apocalypse. It was about keeping humanity to it, so it doesn't just become a visual story about the insanity of this idea that people may live underneath the earth in a dome. So it was about keeping it something that people could really relate to. That meant being very true, but maybe with really good tailoring. Zoe, did people bring lipstick with them to the dome? Zoe Hay: We wanted to make sure that people had their creature comforts with them, that there would be things down there to make people feel better, to feel calm. Women and men would have those products available to them in a limited amount. We equated it to a CVS in 1984. Glenn Ficarra: Everybody brought something there, brought stuff there in bulk. It's stuff that you'll notice if you look hard enough, but the cars, they were just bought in bulk. It's only the billionaires who probably got all the good stuff stacked up in the basement. So you didn't have as many fights about lipstick as you did about cars? Fogelman: One of the things that's very cool about this show is that there was more big-picture thought than necessarily you're seeing at every moment on screen. Our department heads and our directors had rules of our world. We have Bibles and papers that were written on the kind of infrastructure politically of the world. You don't see all of it in every frame, but hopefully it has a subcutaneous effect on the entire thing because the people who were making it had a lot of thought behind everything. Hoberg: I remember hour-long conversations about what television programs did they let people watch down there? It never made it to air, but just every detail was discussed. Fogelman: There's a scene where the kids are listening to music in the library. And the thought behind it was if there was too much pop culture from before and not enough created down below, at a certain point it could devastate people because everything you're listening to and seeing is made by dead people ostensibly. And so the thought was that there was a certain amount of media in houses and in rooms and in programs. But if you wanted it, you sought it out at a special place in the library. You just see a kid listening to music in the library, in the listening section, and that's where Cal goes to make his final mixtape. Speaking of music, Sid, what themes did you want to evoke with your score? Siddhartha Khosla: I was just trying to make Glenn, John and Dan happy! The beauty of working with these guys is that they treat music like it's anything else we've just talked about, like discussing it early on before even shooting a frame of anything. Dan sent me a script and then I wrote this little melody off of that script. The guys seemed to like it, and then we spent several months trying to develop it together. John would send a text saying, 'Hey, can you write me a piece of music that feels like we are trapped and we can't escape?' I recorded violins and cellos and percussion and all sorts of other instruments and looped them and messed them up. I got to feel like I'm in a band again working with these guys. So that's always special. On most television and film, composers come in really late in the process. But getting to come in really early in the process allowed us to experiment. Not only had you worked with the crew before, but obviously also Sterling K. Brown. What did he bring to the role? Fogelman: Oh, he's awful. Terrible guy, terrible actor. [Laughs.] He's the best. I mean, he's such a force as an actor. I love him in this role. It's so different than what we had just done together for so long. And he's a tremendous leader on set. He leads with his infectious laughter. It's a fun place to go to work because the most famous, biggest force on the set is the world's nicest guy. And everybody follows that lead, so it's a real pleasure always coming to set when Sterling's there. There's never any tension. And he's so good at his job. It's very rare that you find somebody who's as good at their job who's also that nice and generous. So he makes it easy. John, how did you approach writing episode 107, which was such a complicated one with its multiple timelines? Hoberg: I was lucky that one came up for me — there's a batting order. I wanted that one so bad because it had everything that I love in it. It really was just trying to find little bits of humanity sprinkled throughout that so people aren't superheroes at all. There's a speech writer who's mad on the last day of the world that a callback in his speech is being cut. Someone's annoyed that the CIA is interrupting them in front of the president. I felt like finding those little moments of humanity help at least me ground how I felt as I was writing it. Like these are actually really people in this thing and they're all in over their head. Zoe, is there one look you're proudest of? Hay: I would have to say the librarian. That was such a challenge from the very beginning before we even started shooting, Dan asked us to do a test on him, and I think we came up with about maybe 20 different looks for him, different mustaches, beards, wigs, all kinds of stuff. And then we sort of settled on the few transitions that he had, but he's a tall guy and it's hard finding disguises for him where you could lose him in the crowd visually. I think we succeeded because I don't think anybody really spotted him. Fogelman: It was such a big part of it because he's in the first episode as the assassin and then he's living in plain sight as a different character throughout the entire series. If you start going, oh, it's the librarian, it ruins it. Occasionally a person would write on Reddit, I think they're in an underground bunker; once in a blue moon somebody would hit on something. But I don't think anybody ever saw him. We had a premiere screening months ago and his own mother and agent said, we just wish we could see one that you were in — and he goes, well, I was actually in that one. And his own family didn't realize that he was the guy that played the assassin after having watched the pilot. So that was very cool. because the whole thing would have fallen on its face if it hadn't worked. Was it always intended that it was going to be him? Fogelman: I didn't know who it was going to be at the very beginning when I wrote the pilot. But then right when we gathered the writers room, one of our writers said, I think it would be cool if it was someone hiding in plain sight. What if it was a librarian? And then we're like, how are we going to do that? Then we were casting with an eye on who could pull off the performance and also who could be malleable to what Zoe was going to do to him. Requa: Some faces aren't that hideable. There were so many conversations that ended with … 'and if this doesn't work, we're [screwed].' You really do like to write yourself into corners. Fogelman: Once in a while, I'll think to myself, God, it would be really nice to just write something linear. Ficarra: We always say that. What did you all learn from making the first season that you're bringing now to the second season? Ficarra: Cut the script down early. I still haven't learned. Hoberg: I haven't learned that. Fogelman: One of the things is, you learn by the response to show. And so obviously we end our first season with Sterling heading out into the world. And that was always part of the plan. But you start learning that people love our bunker and they love our cast down there and they love the dynamics of those folks. So for season two, we're going to be out sometimes with Sterling, but we're also going to make sure we live with the stuff people love in the bunker as well. And finding that balance. It was an exciting thing to discover that it's not just that people are tuning out when Sterling's not on camera on his A storyline. People love Sinatra and Sarah Shahi and Jon Beavers and James Marsden. They love all the storylines in the world that was created down below. Give me one word to describe Season 2. Fogelman: It's very ambitious. Hoberg: I was gonna say bigger. Requa: Subjective. Ficarra: Surprising. Khosla: It's incredibly cool. I've worked on the first couple already and it's awesome. This article and video are presented by Disney/Hulu. 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