Information consumption and civic behaviour have changed too. People increasingly rely on social feeds and personalised recommendation systems for news and political content, which can create echo chambers or accelerate misinformation. The UK government and regulators have emphasised platform responsibility and safety frameworks to counter harms (for example, policies developed under the online harms agenda). Regulatory action and media-literacy programmes aim to modify both platform incentives and individual behaviour—by nudging better verification habits, improving transparency of content curation, and limiting certain exploitative mechanics—but behavioural change at scale requires both policy and grassroots education.
Mental health, attention and sleep are recurring behavioural concerns. Heavy late-night use, exposure to emotionally charged content, and compulsive checking correlate with poorer sleep and higher stress indicators in multiple UK studies. Conversely, digital tools also enable positive behavioural changes: accessible mental-health apps, teletherapy, online peer support and cognitive training platforms can increase help-seeking and reduce barriers to care when integrated with health services. The net effect depends on design quality, evidence base, and equitable access.
Finally, inequalities shape and are shaped by digital behaviour. Digital skill, device access, and online literacy influence whether technologies empower or disadvantage individuals. Older adults and economically disadvantaged groups may face exclusion from services migrating online, while younger, more connected users face different psychosocial risks. Policy responses in the UK increasingly emphasise inclusive design, digital skills training, and targeted support to reduce these behavioural disparities.
Conclusion and behavioural implications. Digital technologies rewire everyday behaviour in predictable ways: they fragment attention, amplify social comparison, reshape work rhythms, and change information ecosystems. At the same time they offer unprecedented tools for education, health and civic engagement. Mitigating harms and reinforcing benefits requires coordinated interventions: better product design that protects attention and consent, robust public education in digital literacy, organisational norms for healthy digital work, regulatory frameworks that reshape platform incentives, and continued evaluation of mental-health outcomes. In the UK context, where strong public institutions and active regulation intersect with high platform uptake, there is a practical route to steer behavioural change toward public good—if policy, industry and communities act in concert.
