Tumbling Down The Rabbit Hole: Three Ways to Address Doomscrolling
We’ve all been there: It’s time to wind down for bed, but instead of silencing your phone and closing those eyes, we open the apps for just one more look… next thing you know, it’s 1:00a.m., and you’ve been doomscrolling for the past hour amidst a barrage of unsettling, distressing headlines, posts, reels, etc. At a certain point, you feel that you should stop and finally go to bed, but your eyes remain glued to the screen, wondering which next piece of information will hook you.
Five years ago, we underwent the unprecedented time of undergoing a pandemic through the digital age, with algorithms that served infinite content, locking us into an addictive cycle of scouring for the next piece of information to educate us, shock us, enrage us, and feed our seemingly endless thirst for more; during this time, doomscrolling emerged as a phenomenon that has not since subsided, as more major events continue to unravel post pandemic (Satici et al., 2022). Doomscrolling itself can be viewed as a compulsive habit of scrolling online platforms for negative information that leaves us with a sense of hopelessness, and you guessed it, doom.
While a relatively new field of research, the literature indicates that doomscrolling is linked to increased psychological distress, higher levels of anxiety, overstimulation, and decreased interpersonal and professional engagement (Salamon, 2004; Satici et al., 2022). Thus, theevidence shows that some regulation of it is beneficial for our mental health. Below are some questions you can ask yourself to determine whether doom scrolling is an issue you’d like to address within your own life:
1. What is the content that grabs your attention— Paying attention to the type of content that we’re attracted to can be an important indicator of our lived experience. For instance, if you doomscroll conspiracy posts on your TikTok, perhaps you have recently
undergone a life event that dismantled your worldview, or it evokes a strong curiosity for the hidden underbelly of the society we live in, or it triggers an existential dread you’ve had about the world we live in and your place within it. Exploring these threads can be helpful to better understand ourselves and what inside of us wants to be “fed” by consuming such content.
2. How does doomscrolling make you feel, and does it serve you— Becoming more mindful of your emotions while scrolling can lead us to establishing time management skills and drawing boundaries. While it is important to stay informed, you also want to be judicious with the information you engage with. Doomscrolling by its nature does not serve as added education or enlightenment, but instead more likely on the side of our psychological depreciation. If you notice your mood or energy shifting, or observe a decline in your mental health, you may consider becoming more restrictive in the information you digest.
3. What boundaries seem manageable for you—If you want to take actionable steps in decreasing the hold that doomscrolling has in your daily routine, try setting some bite- sized goals for yourself like refraining from nighttime engagement. Or, try partaking in a more interpersonal activity in its place, like catching up with a friend over the phone or coffee. Whichever way you decide, it’s important to feel like we have agency over the information we continuously seek out and/or let seep into our psyche.
References:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11482-022-10110-7
https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/doomscrolling-
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