How Doomscrolling Quietly Wears Down Your Mind
You told yourself you will check Instagram for five minutes or send a snap to your friends just not to break the streak and you end up wasting hours on social media without even realising. After hours you’re in this ocean of social media still scrolling, jaws tight, stomach knotted, moving from one distressing headline to the next. If this feels familiar, you’re not alone. This pattern has now a name in psychological research called as doomscrolling. Doomscrolling is more than simply spending too much time on screen. It is the compulsive consumption of large amounts of negative, distressing, or alarming information online, often while unable to stop. This behaviour has particularly evolved during global events like COVID-19 pandemic, leading to heightened feelings of anxiety and hopelessness.
Signs You Might Be Doomscrolling
Here is a quick self-checklist of signs that your social media habits may have crossed into doomscrolling:
The first thing you do in the morning when you wake up is reach for your phone to check what has happened overnight.
You keep scrolling well past the point of staying informed.
You feel worse and empty after scrolling but you do it again anyway.
You struggle to stop even when you intentionally want to. You tell yourself that you will just “five more minutes” until you lose count of hours.
You feel a need to check “just in case” even when nothing has actually changed.
You doomscroll in bed, either before sleep or right after waking.
You feel restless or anxious if you don’t scroll enough, as you think you might be missing an update.
The Mental Health Effects of Doomscrolling:
Various studies have linked the heavier exposure of doomscrolling to both the symptoms of depression and PTSD symptoms with stronger effects in those who have a history of childhood trauma.
It traps you in a worry loop. Feeling distressed makes you scroll more and more. Scrolling makes you worry more about the future and that worry makes you scroll again and again.
It fuels anxiety, though it may feel like a way to gain sense of control. It doesn’t. It usually just makes anxiety worse.
It causes rumination, because you keep replaying the worst-case scenarios in your head, even long after you have put your phone down.
It causes sleep disturbances, and poor sleep worsens your mood, which makes you doomscroll even more. It is a cycle that feeds itself.
It makes you pessimistic about world, because regularly consuming bad news about world can make world feel scarier than it actually is.
It drains your focus, concentration and even motivation.
Why We Keep Scrolling Anyway
Doomscrolling usually begins with an instinct to make yourself feel safe․ If something scary is happening in the world‚ knowing more can feel like having some measure of control․ However‚ Satici et al․ (2023) found opposite results in three studies that habitual doomscrolling was positively correlated with psychological distress and negatively correlated with well-being and life satisfaction․ The problem is that reassurance never really shows up․ Instead‚ thoughts replay over and over‚ imagining the worst possible scenarios‚ keeping your brain stuck in the crisis long after you've put the phone down․ This was especially true during the pandemic when studies found doomscrolling was not just a symptom of anxiety or a means of avoiding it but that doomscrolling was a direct contributor to psychological distress during a pandemic lockdown. The thing people were doing to cope and the thing that was hurting them were often the same thing․
How to break the cycle of doomscrolling?
Go through the accounts you follow and unfollow or mute the ones that consistently post distressing content.
Give yourself an actual time limit, something like fifteen to twenty minutes once or twice the day to stay informed without falling into open ended scroll.
Stick to a few trusted sources rather than an algorithm-driven feed․
Simply notice the impulse to check one more time without following through․ That moment of noticing is the intervention itself․ You don't have to fight the pull․ You just have to stop long enough to choose something else․
Out of sight is out of mind, keeping you phone somewhere ten feet away creates a friction to get up and retrieving it is enough to break the automatic reach.
Redirect some of the scrolling time toward reading, spending time with friends or people you care about, or walking in nature which offers the added benefits of separating you from the screen while also doing something good for your body as well as your mind.
If some of your friends or family members is regularly sharing distressing news stories with you. It’s reasonable to tell them stop sharing such content with you. You can politely request them to respect your choices and boundaries.
Create a “No phone zone” when you are having meals or conversations with family or friends. It signals to the person in front of you that they have your full attention and removes the doomscrolling temptation altogether during those windows.
The next time you pick up your phone for “just five minutes”, pause and ask yourself what are you actually looking for. Are you looking for information? Connection? Or just trying to escape from the uncertainty? We live in a world where information is just a click away. Staying informed can be empowering but consuming every crisis, headline and notification can come at psychological cost. The solution is not to completely disconnect from the world. It is to give ourselves permission to be intentional about what we consume. Because, in many ways, we become what we repeatedly consume not just physically, but mentally and emotionally as well. Not every update deserves our attention and not everything we read and see online is true. Click baits and emotionally provocative content are often designed to keep us engaged. Ultimately, it’s our choice: we can either stay engaged and make our mental health worse or we can become more intentional about what we choose and protect our minds from the unnecessary noise.
References:
Ackerman, C. E. (2025, September 2). What is doomscrolling? Why we do it & how it affects us. PositivePsychology.com.
Salamon, M. (2024, September 1). Doomscrolling dangers. Harvard Health Publishing. https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/doomscrolling-dangers
Satici, S. A., Gocet Tekin, E., Deniz, M. E., & Satici, B. (2023). Doomscrolling scale: Its association with personality traits, psychological distress, social media use, and wellbeing. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 18(2), 833–847. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-022-10110-7
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: Spring 2022). https://doi.org/10.1037/tmb0000059
Sharpe, A. T. R., Tyndall, I., Poulus, D. R., Obine, E. A. C., & Sharpe, B. T. (2026). The influence of doomscrolling on mental health: A scoping review. Mental Health and Digital Technologies, 3(3), 290–342. https://doi.org/10.1108/MHDT-10-2025-0068