Health & Wellness Digital Wellbeing

Overcoming Screen Addiction

A practical course for rebuilding attention, boundaries, and digital self-control

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Quick Course Facts
19
Self-paced, Online, Lessons
19
Videos and/or Narrated Presentations
6.6
Approximate Hours of Course Media
About the Overcoming Screen Addiction Course

Overcoming Screen Addiction is a practical Health & Wellness course designed to help you understand digital dependence without shame and build healthier screen habits. You will learn how apps capture attention, how habit loops form, and how to create realistic boundaries that support focus, sleep, relationships, and mental energy.

Rebuild Attention And Digital Self-Control Through Health & Wellness

  • A practical course for rebuilding attention, boundaries, and digital self-control through clear, step-by-step behavior change skills.
  • Learn how to audit screen time honestly, identify triggers, and separate useful technology use from automatic use.
  • Build healthier routines for mornings, evenings, work, family life, social media, gaming, and streaming.
  • Create a personal screen recovery plan that supports long-term Health & Wellness and relapse prevention.

Overcoming Screen Addiction teaches practical tools for reducing compulsive screen use and building a healthier relationship with technology.

This course begins with the foundations of digital dependence, helping you understand screen addiction without blame or judgment. You will explore how apps, notifications, feeds, dopamine rewards, and habit loops shape attention, so you can recognize when screen use is helpful and when it starts working against your wellbeing.

You will then map your current patterns by auditing screen time, identifying emotional drivers, and examining the connection between screens, sleep, and mental energy. Through practical Health & Wellness strategies, you will learn how to design a low-friction recovery environment, manage notifications and app limits, and build phone-free routines that are easier to maintain.

As the course progresses, you will practice behavior change skills for managing urges, handling boredom and stress, rebuilding focus, and replacing excess screen time with better rewards. By the end of Overcoming Screen Addiction, you will have a personalized plan for stronger boundaries, better attention, and more intentional digital self-control in daily life.

Course Lessons

Full lesson breakdown

Lessons are organized by topic area and each includes descriptive copy for search visibility and student clarity.

Foundations of Digital Dependence

4 lessons

Lesson 1: Understanding Screen Addiction Without Shame

18 min Preview
This lesson frames screen addiction as a learned pattern of attention, emotion regulation, habit, and environment rather than a personal failure. Students learn how digital dependence develops, why sh…

Lesson 2: How Apps Capture Attention

20 min
This lesson explains the main design patterns apps use to capture and hold attention. Students learn how notifications, infinite feeds, recommendations, social feedback, streaks, autoplay, and frictio…

Lesson 3: Dopamine, Rewards, and Habit Loops

21 min
This lesson explains why screen habits can feel automatic even when a person genuinely wants to stop. Students learn how dopamine supports motivation and learning, why variable rewards make apps espec…

Lesson 4: When Screen Use Becomes a Problem

18 min
This lesson defines what it means for screen use to become a problem without relying on shame, labels, or simple screen-time totals. Students learn to distinguish heavy but functional use from depende…

Mapping Your Current Patterns

4 lessons

Lesson 5: Auditing Your Screen Time Honestly

22 min
This lesson helps learners build an honest baseline of their current screen use before trying to change it. Instead of relying on vague impressions like I am on my phone too much , learners will revie…

Lesson 6: Identifying Triggers, Cues, and Emotional Drivers

21 min
In this lesson, Professor John Ingram helps learners map the specific situations, cues, and emotions that tend to precede compulsive screen use. Rather than treating screen addiction as a vague lack o…

Lesson 7: Separating Useful Use from Automatic Use

19 min
In this lesson, Professor John Ingram helps learners distinguish between screen use that serves a clear purpose and screen use that runs on habit, impulse, or avoidance. The goal is not to label all t…

Lesson 8: Screens, Sleep, and Mental Energy

20 min
This lesson examines how screen habits affect sleep quality, next-day attention, and mental energy. Learners will map the specific evening and morning patterns that make screens harder to control, wit…

Building Better Boundaries

3 lessons

Lesson 9: Designing a Low-Friction Recovery Environment

22 min
In this lesson, Professor John Ingram shows how to make screen recovery easier by redesigning the environment around daily device use. Instead of relying on motivation alone, students learn to reduce …

Lesson 10: Notifications, Feeds, and App Limits

20 min
This lesson turns digital boundaries into specific settings you can apply today. You will learn how notifications, infinite feeds, and weak app limits pull attention away from your chosen priorities, …

Lesson 11: Phone-Free Mornings and Evenings

18 min
This lesson helps learners create phone-free bookends around the day: the first part of the morning and the last part of the evening. Rather than relying on willpower after waking or before sleep, stu…

Behavior Change Skills

4 lessons

Lesson 12: Managing Urges Without Giving In

23 min
This lesson teaches a practical response plan for moments when the urge to check, scroll, play, or watch becomes strong. Students learn to treat urges as temporary body-and-mind events rather than com…

Lesson 13: Replacing Screen Time with Better Rewards

21 min
This lesson teaches a practical replacement strategy for reducing compulsive screen use: identifying the reward screens are providing, then choosing healthier rewards that meet the same need with less…

Lesson 14: Rebuilding Focus and Deep Work

22 min
This lesson teaches a practical method for rebuilding focus after heavy screen use has trained the mind to expect constant novelty. Students learn why deep work feels difficult at first, how to design…

Lesson 15: Handling Boredom, Stress, and Loneliness

23 min
This lesson teaches learners how to handle three common emotional triggers for compulsive screen use: boredom, stress, and loneliness. Instead of treating these states as problems to erase, the lesson…

High-Risk Digital Habits

2 lessons

Lesson 16: Social Media, Gaming, and Streaming Boundaries

24 min
This lesson focuses on three high-risk digital habits: social media, gaming, and streaming. Each can be enjoyable in moderation, but each is also designed to stretch sessions, reduce stopping points, …

Lesson 17: Family, Work, and Relationship Agreements

20 min
This lesson helps learners turn personal screen-control goals into clear agreements with the people and institutions most affected by their habits: family members, partners, roommates, friends, and co…

Long-Term Digital Wellbeing

2 lessons

Lesson 18: Preventing Relapse and Adjusting Your Plan

22 min
Relapse prevention is not about never slipping; it is about recognizing risk early, responding quickly, and returning to your plan without shame. In this lesson, Professor John Ingram shows how to ide…

Lesson 19: Creating Your Personal Screen Recovery Plan

24 min
In this lesson, students turn the course concepts into a concrete personal screen recovery plan. The focus is not on perfection or total abstinence, but on building a realistic system for attention, b…
About Your Instructor
Professor John Ingram

Professor John Ingram

Professor John Ingram guides this AI-built Virversity course with a clear, practical teaching style.