Six Things You Can Do to Reduce Doomscrolling

“Doomscrolling is like clickbait on steroids.

Neuroscience shows us that the human brain is wired for negativity and pays extra attention to anything that might harm us. That’s why all those scare-inducing headlines about spiking COVID cases, outrageous political maneuvers, looting, and rioting keep you glued.” Daniel G. Amen MD

We are on our phones and computers a whole lot more since COVID; one survey found that screen time in the United States increased by 55% from 2019 to 2020. The pandemic also coincided with a rise in misinformation, which fueled emotions like anger, fear, and anxiety that kept us doomscrolling.

Anand, Kumar et al. in Perspectives in Psychiatric Care April 20, 2021 reported, “In the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, which has created anxiety and more significantly uncertainty, people on the majority of occasions end up spending a lot of time listening, viewing or surfing persistently for COVID-19 news over the internet, which is saddening or disappointing and makes one feel anxious, apprehensive, uncertain about the future, sad and angry and still they are not able to stop themselves from doing the same, and this has been termed as the phenomenon of doomsurfing.”

Doomsurfing/Doomscrolling simply puts is spending an excessive amount of screen time devoted to finding and reading negative news online. The term doomscrolling showed up before the pandemic on Twitter in 2018, but has taken off since COVID 19. It can lead to compulsive behaviours including spending hours a day online feeding this appetite for doom. Saying it may have negative consequences for your wellbeing and mental health is an understatement. The internet needs a warning label on it like that on a pack of cigarettes.

Doomscrolling can reinforce negative thoughts and a negative mindset, something that can greatly impact your mental health. Consuming negative news has been linked in research with greater fear, stress, anxiety, and sadness.

Here’s a very typical scenario. Imagine it’s late and you know you should go to bed. It’s been a busy day and you have been glued to the news feeds and social media groups, you’ve been looking for more news, obsessed with developments, politics and having the latest tidbit of news about whatever you are following that day, or is exploding in the news cycle.

You become more and more interested in the latest developments of this story, it could be COVID 19, the latest story about a congressman caught with his pants down, a celebrity meltdown, conflict and war, climate change, and so on. The story doesn’t matter, it has captured your attention. Before you know it, you have gone down the rabbit hole and you want more.

It’s like witnessing a car wreck, we just can’t avert our gaze.

The negativity bias takes hold, or more precisely we can’t shake it. The negativity bias is a mindset that leads to the act of constantly looking at the negative events in life instead of positive or optimistic ones. It can be attributed back to our brain’s wiring which leads us towards expecting bad things will happen more often than good ones do without any evidence whatsoever.

Further, the negative bias Kendra Cherry in Very Well Mind writes, “Our tendency to pay more attention to bad things and overlook good things is likely a result of evolution. Earlier in human history, paying attention to bad, dangerous, and negative threats in the world was literally a matter of life and death. Those who were more attuned to danger and who paid more attention to the bad things around them were more likely to survive.”

Before the internet, our consumption of news by-and-large was limited to the morning paper and the evening news. There wasn’t a never-ending onslaught of sensationalized headlines and one story grimmer than the next from all kinds of different sources, some unaccredited. Before you know it, you’re in a vicious cycle, doom begets more doom and drives ratings.

You become invested in doomscrolling. It is downright Pavlovian your daily swipes of your device begin to resemble classic conditioning. A ping from our device notifies a reward, and we salivate with anticipation.

But you think, what’s the harm of checking my phone quickly, or you don’t think at all, it’s a conditioned response. As you do, a news notification pops up and the headline grabs you instantly, so you click and start reading. It’s a horrendous story and the details are devastating, and you’re hooked.

What started as a casual browse soon turned into an all-consuming fascination, boarding on obsession and before you know it your click count had increased exponentially as you read more of these articles. There are so many questions flooding up from the depths of cyberspace and you want answers.

Sound familiar?

Doom is like a narcotic, and we crave and chase after it.

Signs of doomscrolling of include fixating on negative news for hours checking the news multiple times a day and often from multiple sources; feeling the urge to check the news repeatedly because you feel like you’ll miss something important. There is a bit of FOMO (fear of missing out) happening in this phenomenon. You’re afraid to go offline because you fear you’ll miss something.

Do you neglect other parts of your life and feel on edge or sad most of the day after reading the news?

When scary things happen in the world like pandemics, war, and social unrest — things feel out of control, we become frightened, and we seek certainty. We turn to the news to find out more about the story, we want to know what’s happening. Subconsciously, our brains tell us if we keep reading the news, maybe we will see something that will provide an answer. But all it seems to produce is more questions and obsession with breaking news.

The problem is: there isn’t always new information or positive news to make you feel better. So, when this behaviour becomes compulsive, all you might really be doing is just consuming more and more bad news, over and over. And that can keep you in a state of hyperarousal.

The COVID-19 pandemic is making doomscrolling more of an issue because the evolution of pandemic life happened so quickly. We were relying on constant news updates to stay informed, which likely created a habit that became hard for us to break as COVID stretched on — checking in daily or even hourly when there’s no new information about what could be coming next.

It becomes a vicious cycle, and we find it hard to break free, it has a hold over us.

Six things you can do to decrease doomscrolling

• Don’t reach for your phone first thing in the morning. Turn your phone off (if you can) leave it in another room. Put physical distance between you and your phone.
• Set aside a specific time to check your phone. Try to budget how much time you spend scrolling for news stories, set up a screen tracker and set a time limit (20 minutes for example). Give yourself enough time to read the news, and no more than once a day (not first thing in the morning, nor last thing at night — reading in the morning can set you up for a foul mood to follow you for the rest of the day, and doomscrolling before bed can affect your sleep).
• Embrace mindfulness and check in on yourself. When scrolling stories stop occasionally and check. Ask yourself what types of emotions am I experiencing and what thoughts come to mind. Observe and identify your thoughts and emotions while scrolling.
• Make yourself stop scrolling. Put the phone down and go into another room. Again, distance yourself from your device.
• Find another activity to replace “doomscrolling.” You don’t even have to put down your phone, you could switch to a language or a learning app for example. Imagine the difference for your mind between spending a half hour on Duolingo learning a new language let’s say to a half hour spent on CNN, FOX, or another cable news network.
• Try to scroll through uplifting, hopeful sites and stories instead. Follow hopeful sites and seek out positive news stories.

Try these six practices and see if they make a difference. If you have a predisposition toward doomscrolling and your negativity bias takes over regularly recognize some of this might be a part of your personality traits and characteristics. You don’t need to cultivate a pollyannish positivity version of yourself. Positivity is not the direct opposite of negativity. For some it’s less about developing positivity than building self-awareness and self regulation.

Some people have an optimism bias, and that bias can create its own source of issues, but that’s a topic for a future blog. It is possible for us to reduce negativity without, at the same time, increasing positivity. Conversely, it is possible to be low on positivity without being high on negativity.

Developing a positive outlook might be a personal goal, but don’t think you have to replace negativity with positivity. It’s not a zero-sum game, rather it’s about finding a balance between needing to know and your mental health.

I hope you find that sweet spot.