What Does ‘Doomscrolling’ Mean?

I confess that I am a doomscroller. A big doomscroller. 

If you aren’t sure what that means, the definition uploaded to Urban Dictionary in March 2020 by a user who goes by PenelopePenguin, is perfect: 

‘Doomsurfing’ or ‘Doomscrolling’?

The practice has also been called “doomsurfing,” but “doomscrolling” has won as the word people use to describe — or bemoan — the behavior. 

You can see on Google Trends that both words emerged around the same time in late March, but in late May, “doomscrolling” as a search term took off, and “doomsurfing” just continued to sputter along. 

People were using the word “doomscrolling” before March—Merriam-Webster traces it back to at least 2018, but that first definition on Urban Dictionary was written about two weeks after the NBA shut down and Tom Hanks announced he had the coronavirus, which in my mind, marks the date when people in the U.S. started to realize that COVID-19 was serious.

Doomscrolling existed before the pandemic, it just got a big boost as a result of the pandemic. Kind of like sourdough starters and Zoom calls.

‘Scrolling’

Taking a closer look at the word itself, I’ll start with the easy part. ‘Scrolling’ first referred to physical written scrolls like the kind you see in movies about treasure hunters or ancient monasteries. 

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