Can You Catch Anxiety From Your Phone?

The Habit Healers · Mar 26, 2026 · 24m

In 2018, researchers at MIT published a study in Science that tracked how different types of information move through social media. They found that false and emotionally charged content spread roughly five times faster than accurate information.

That number came up in my monthly conversation with Dr. Jud Brewer, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist who specializes in anxiety and habit change. Jud has spent years studying how anxiety moves through populations, and he frames the problem in a way I hadn’t considered before. He treats anxiety like an infectious disease, not as a metaphor but as a…