We're All "Doomscrolling" These Days—How Can You Stop?

Chances are, you’ve already heard the term “doomscrolling.” Even if you haven’t, I bet you’ve found yourself a victim of its morbid seduction. Your thumb hovers over the infinite scroll of your newsfeed, the glare from your phone lighting your face with an eerie glow, and a sense of despair settles in your belly.

After all, it’s 2020—doomscrolling has become a global pastime.

We can’t seem to tear ourselves away from bad news. We read headline after headline, tweet after tweet, comment after comment, and even though it makes us depressed and sleepless, we scroll on with the morbid curiosity of people driving by a car crash. And lately, there seem to be never-ending social, political, and economic car crashes every day. It’s no surprise that this takes a toll on our mental health.

We scroll on with the morbid curiosity of people driving by a car crash. Except there seem to be never-ending social, political, and economic car crashes every day.

A hot-off-the-press study on American college students’ phone use and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic found that as the news on coronavirus ramped up in March, so did students’ phone use and anxiety levels. In Russia, almost 24,000 people responded to a survey on news consumption about COVID-19, and the results showed that the more time people spent reading coronavirus-related news, the more anxious they were, even when their usual anxiety levels were taken into account.

Thousands of German study participants also demonstrated more depression and anxiety with increased news consumption. Even before the pandemic started, Lebanese research participants had more depression, anxiety, and insomnia when they had more problematic social media use.

Clearly, doomscrolling is not good for us. And unlike other things that are unhealthy in large quantities, like cake and coffee, doomscrolling doesn’t even feel good. So why on earth do we keep doing it?

Why do we doomscroll?

Doomscrolling gives us a sense of control

During times of uncertainty and uncontrollability, we crave any sense of control. When we scroll endlessly through bad news, it makes us feel like we’re getting more and more informed, or that we're doing better and better planning. This may be true for the first few...

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