Doomscrolling

What it is

Researchers define doomscrolling as persistently attending to negative news in a feed, past the point of being informed, even though it makes you feel worse.¹ The word spread in 2020, when a pandemic and a stream of crises met infinite scroll, and dictionaries have since added it. The behaviour is older than the word; what's new is a feed that never ends and a phone that's always within reach.

A 2022 study that developed the first validated doomscrolling scale, tested on panels across several countries, found it is distinct from ordinary news use. It clusters with online vigilance, fear of missing out, habitual and passive social media use, anxiety and low self-control. Men, younger adults and the politically engaged scored higher.¹

Why it's so hard to stop

• Negativity bias. Human attention weights threats more than good news; a headline that alarms you is harder to look away from than one that doesn't. Feeds learn this from your behaviour and serve more of it.
• Unpredictable reward. Most posts are dull, a few are gripping, and you can't tell which is next. That variable schedule is the same mechanism that keeps people at slot machines, and the "online brain" review in World Psychiatry names it as the internet's core hook.²
• No stopping cue. A newspaper ends. A broadcast ends. A feed reloads. Without a natural end, stopping has to be a decision, and at 11:40 pm decisions are exactly what you're short of.
• The illusion of control. Reading one more update feels like preparing. It rarely changes anything you'll do tomorrow, but the feeling of vigilance is soothing for a moment, which is why the scroll continues.

What it does to you

A study that followed people day by day through the pandemic, using 1,117 daily observations, found that days with more social media consumption were followed by more depression and post-traumatic stress symptoms, and the link was strongest in people with a history of trauma.³ Doomscrolling scores in the validation study correlated with anxiety and with poorer self-control.¹

Then there's sleep, because doomscrolling happens in bed. Bedtime device use roughly doubles the odds of too little sleep in young people across 125,198 participants,⁴ and evening screen light delays the body clock and dulls the next morning.⁵ Poor sleep makes the next evening's scroll more likely. The loop closes.

Signs it's become a habit

• You open a news or social app without deciding to, especially in bed or on waking.
• You keep reading after you feel tense, low or angry.
• You find it hard to say what you learned, but easy to say how it made you feel.
• You've missed sleep, or been late, because the feed didn't end.
• You've tried to stop and found the app open again within minutes.

How to build a stopping point

1. Give news a time, not a tab. Read it once or twice a day at a fixed time, ideally not the last hour before sleep. Outside that window, pause the apps.
2. Put a pause in front of the app. A short, escapable wait before a feed opens cut opens by 36% and attempts by 37% in a six-week field study.⁶ The wait gives the urge time to peak and pass, which it does in about two minutes.
3. Take the colour away. Greyscale cut total screen time by about 38 minutes a day in a week-long randomised trial, mostly from social and browsing.⁷ Grey feeds are surprisingly easy to close.
4. Decide the length before you open. "How long this time?" answered up front, and counted down on screen, turns an open-ended scroll into a session with an end.
5. Keep the phone out of the bedroom. Or make the home screen go quiet at a set hour. This is the single change with the strongest evidence behind it.⁴
6. Replace, don't just remove. "When I want to scroll, I'll read a chapter instead" is an implementation intention, and plans of that shape roughly double follow-through.⁸

Sources

1. Sharma, B., Lee, S. S., & Johnson, B. K. (2022). The dark at the end of the tunnel: doomscrolling on social media newsfeeds. Technology, Mind, and Behavior, 3(1). psycnet.apa.org
2. Firth, J., et al. (2019). The "online brain": how the Internet may be changing our cognition. World Psychiatry, 18(2), 119–129. wiley.com
3. Price, M., et al. (2022). Doomscrolling during COVID-19: the negative association between daily social and traditional media consumption and mental health symptoms. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
4. Carter, B., et al. (2016). Association between portable screen-based media device access or use and sleep outcomes. JAMA Pediatrics, 170(12), 1202–1208. jamanetwork.com
5. Chang, A.-M., et al. (2015). Evening use of light-emitting eReaders negatively affects sleep, circadian timing, and next-morning alertness. PNAS, 112(4), 1232–1237. pnas.org
6. Grüning, D. J., Riedel, F., & Lorenz-Spreen, P. (2023). Directing smartphone use through the self-nudge app one sec. PNAS, 120(8). pnas.org
7. Holte, A. J., & Ferraro, F. R. (2020). True colors: grayscale setting reduces screen time in college students. The Social Science Journal. tandfonline.com
8. Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999). Implementation intentions: strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54(7), 493–503.

This article is for general information and is not medical advice. If the news is affecting your sleep or mood for weeks at a time, talk to someone qualified.