Digital OCD: The Untheorised Ritual

We are only beginning to understand what the digital space is doing to the structure of obsessive-compulsive experience in adolescents. Clinically, we see it all the time: the fifteen-year-old who scrolls Reddit threads looking for moral confirmation. The seventeen-year-old who replays TikTok videos to check whether a reaction was “normal.” The fourteen-year-old who checks and re-checks WhatsApp messages for signs of betrayal. These behaviours are often mislabelled as “screen time issues” or “digital hygiene problems.” But in truth, many of these rituals are structurally obsessive—and urgently in need of symbolic understanding.

It is time we take seriously the idea that the digital world has become the new arena for compulsive repetition, doubt, control, and symbolic defence.

Not because of the content—but because of the structure.

Beyond the Surface: What Are We Actually Seeing?

When a young person with OCD begins scrolling forums in search of certainty—say, around their sexual orientation, moral standing, or relationship behaviour—they often describe it in exactly the same terms as a classic compulsion:

• “I just want to be sure.”

• “Once I start, I can’t stop.”

• “I know it doesn’t help, but I feel like I have to.”

• “What if I miss something important?”

The structure here is unmistakable. Just like hand-washing, door-checking, or mental reassurance loops, these digital actions are driven by:

• intolerable uncertainty,

• a need to prevent psychic catastrophe,

• and the temporary relief provided by the act of checking.

Yet because the action involves a screen and not soap, we too often file it under “screen addiction,” “technology overuse,” or “poor emotional regulation.” We fail to ask: what psychic function is this digital space serving?

What is the Adolescent Looking for in the Feed?

This is not a rhetorical question. In our work with obsessional adolescents, we must ask:

What is the feed replacing?

What is being checked for, symbolically?

What position is the young person holding themselves in, in relation to the screen?

One possible answer is that the feed becomes a kind of infinite superego. There is always more to see. Always one more opinion, one more example, one more possible contradiction. The adolescent is not merely looking for comfort—they are trying to make moral sense of themselves in a space that never stops moving.

In this sense, the digital scroll may function like a psychic tribunal. The adolescent re-submits their internal question to the court of anonymous others, over and over. “Was that wrong?” “Am I normal?” “Is this okay?” And like the obsessive mind itself, the feed never gives a definitive answer. It only multiplies the possibilities.

The Maternal Breast That Never Empties

Another metaphor worth exploring is that of the unweaned breast—a concept Melanie Klein and later André Green associated with the fantasy of inexhaustible nourishment.

For some obsessive adolescents, the feed functions as an infinite breast: endlessly giving, never saturating. This is not simply a source of comfort, but of profound ambivalence. The adolescent returns again and again, seeking certainty or containment—but the very act of returning deepens the dependence. The act of scrolling, like compulsive cleaning or confession, becomes a form of psychic suckling—an attempt to fill the gap, but one that can never be fulfilled.

And this is where we see the deeper structure of psychic masochism. The adolescent is not simply being soothed by the feed—they are submitting to it. They are offering their question to a maternal object that does not metabolise it. And this failed metabolisation only intensifies the need to return.

The Illusion of Autonomy, The Reality of Entrapment

Digital compulsions often present with a veneer of autonomy: the young person appears to be choosing their content, following interests, learning about the world. But underneath this apparent agency is something far more rigid—a ritual structure driven by fear, guilt, and moral confusion.

The adolescent is not “curious” in the epistemophilic sense. They are searching—often compulsively—for something that will let them off the hook. For many, the fantasy is that one day they will find the definitive post, the perfect thread, the final message that will make them feel okay.

But this is the fantasy of the obsessional structure: that closure is possible.

What Happens in Therapy?

What often happens in therapy is that we try to address the content. We ask what the adolescent is watching, or offer behavioural strategies for reducing screen time. But unless we understand the symbolic function of the digital ritual, our interventions remain flat.

Instead, we might ask:

• What are you hoping to find when you check?

• What does it feel like when you don’t check?

• Is it harder to stop, or harder to start?

• What would it mean if you were never certain?

And perhaps more importantly, we must begin to tolerate the affect that lies underneath the digital compulsion—often a mix of dread, longing, and moral fear. The adolescent needs us not just to limit the screen—but to name the terror that drives them towards it.

Why This Matters Clinically

We are not talking here about digital minimalism or healthy tech use. We are talking about a generation of adolescents whose symbolic rituals are being enacted inside digital architectures—scrolling, searching, watching, re-checking—all with the same structural qualities Freud saw in his early cases.

And we are not yet theorising it.

This is our task now: to develop a symbolic and structural understanding of digital rituals, and to reflect that understanding in our clinical work.

Because if we continue to treat digital OCD as “screen overuse,” we risk missing the very heart of the matter: a young person’s attempt to survive unbearable psychic tension—one click at a time.