The Dangers of Doom Scrolling
The topic of doom scrolling has ironically become popular on social media.
It is best defined as using your phone to scroll through negative or distressing information on popular media platforms. Meanwhile it is often joked about, doom scrolling can have negative effects on your mental and physical health. However, we can address doom scrolling as a habit, just like any other behavior with context and consequences.
Once you understand doom scrolling, you can change your habit of doing it.
What is Doom Scrolling?
Doom scrolling starts with pulling your phone from your pocket or bag and opening social media, such as Instagram, Youtube, Facebook, and Snapchat. These apps have shaped their platform to allow you to easily go from content to content with continuous streams of videos or pictures.
You have little control over what content is shown, as your behavior elicits a response from the "algorithm". If you spend more than a moment on a distressing subject, like school shootings or political rantings, your stream of content will introduce you to more of the same. Doom scrolling is based on momentum. It is a force driven by the most primal relationship we have: threat and attention.
The Negative Effects of Doom Scrolling
Threatening or distressing media pulls our attention more than anything peaceful or calming. Our brains are wired for survival, to maintain our basic well-being, and social media has a way of evoking that instinct to gain your attention, which earns them money.
Distress drives attention, but also releases hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. Both send the body into a distressing state. At the same time, social media can be a source of distraction, allow you to both feel more distressed and more distracted in the same place. That's why doom scrolling gets progressively worse.
This isn't just speculation. Plenty of studies on doom scrolling during the COVID-19 pandemic showed a significant portion of individuals who watched “problematic” news media were likely to be experiencing moderate to severe levels of physical and mental distress. This mental distress is paired with negative effects on the body’s cardiovascular and immune systems.
Doom scrolling is dangerous for your mental and physical health.
Context is Everything
To understand an unhealthy behavior, you must explore why it exists in the first place.
Social media is often used as a method of numbing ourselves to unpleasant experiences. For example, if you find yourself just standing on a metro going to work, you might be tempted to pull out your phone and scroll through Instagram. Boredom or racing thoughts are distressing, and social media may be the numbing solution. Each day presents plenty of opportunities to feel distress, thus having plenty of opportunities to doom scroll.
Doom Scrolling in the Morning
The morning can be anxiety-producing. You wake up and evaluate what the rest of the day will demand from you. If you expect a lot, this can be overwhelming and lead to anxious planning. As a result, you might pull out your phone, doom scroll to try and push the anxious thoughts out, but be increasingly perturbed by the negative media on your phone.
Once you put the phone down, you are exactly where you were before you doom scrolled, but somehow you feel worse. If the morning appears like a frightening time to sort your to-do list, then it’s important to sit in that moment and address the issue at hand instead.
The key to changing habits is not just changing your behavior, but understanding the barriers to healthy actions.
You must address anxiety before doom scrolling, not doom scrolling before anxiety. Alternatives to doom scrolling can range from mindfulness practices to doing one item on your list at a time. I'd consider the following:
#1 Choose one task and strictly fulfill that one task.
#2 Set a time in your schedule to plan your day, and not do it continuously and mentally.
#3 Make a list of 3 things you are grateful for and 3 things you look forward to.
The morning is a time to prepare you for your day, not a time to bear the weight of results not yet produced.
Managing Anxiety & Boredom
Doom scrolling is often looking at your phone to distract yourself from a feeling. That feeling, more often than not, is anxiety.
Look to find ways to manage the emotion rather than find a distraction that worsens your experience. Take time for deep breathing with 5 second inhales and 8 second exhales. Voice your feelings with a friend or express them in a journal. Recognize that you have the urge to distract yourself, find out what from, and then manage that anxiety. It’s easier said than done, but if you can learn to process anxiety when it comes, then you are much less likely to doom scroll, which only makes the situation worse.
The opposite of a situation filled with anxiety is a situation filled with nothing and consequential boredom.
Boredom can allow intrusive and negative thoughts to creep into your consciousness. It can be a negative label, that if you ever find yourself bored, you are actually being “lazy” and “unproductive.” These negative thoughts can be combined with an urge to use your time in some way, thus social media seems like the next best option.
Again, it's best to acknowledge what you feel in a nonjudgmental way, then help yourself manage it. Boredom is often necessary, being a rest for your brain and body when immersed in a world of stimulation and attention grabbing. There is nothing inherently wrong with boredom, and it does not indicate laziness or sloth. On the contrary, I encourage making time to be bored, even just 10 minutes or taking a silent drive to or from work.
Boredom is necessary for a restful and creative life. However, much of boredom is associated with silence, which can allow increasingly anxious thoughts to appear, especially before bed.
Doom Scrolling at Bedtime
Doom scrolling in bed is a notoriously unhealthy habit.
It’s the end of your day, and you lay there and try to quiet your mind until you drift off into sleep. This can be blocked by negative thoughts of yourself, the day you just survived through, or the difficult day you must overcome when you wake up. These create physical distress, and urge the body and brain to find a way to compensate.
The response to late night distress can be doom scrolling, which can present negative and distressing content that makes you feel worse. Your body can become even more stressed, releasing cortisol. While cortisol is a stress hormone, it also is the hormone that helps jolt you into waking up in the morning. Needless to say, a boost of a waking hormone is not conducive to falling asleep. This causes a delay in falling asleep, which may cause more anxiety. You may not get much sleep, and wake up more anxious due to being overwhelmed and even more fatigued. Then, doom scrolling is an available option to spin this cycle of anxiety more and more.
Sleep is one of the most vulnerable parts of your day.
You are intentionally lying down and doing nothing to then lose consciousness. Sleep deserves thoughtful attention. At night, I'd encourage you to explicitly address your anxiety before you lay in bed. You can try mindfulness and grounding exercises to get you “into your body” and out of your thoughts for the night. It may be best to set boundaries with your phone and put it in another room. Even the blue light from phone screens have shown to delay sleep cycles in the brain. While it may seem uncomfortable to not have your phone with you, your sleep is worth protecting.
Address your pre-sleep anxiety, create a conducive space to sleep, and keep yourself from reaching for your phone, you will thank yourself tomorrow.
Bring it All Together
Doom scrolling is dangerous to your immediate and long term physical and mental health. It is not a behavior that occurs in isolation. Doom scrolling has a function, and that’s to distract you from how you’re feeling and what you’re thinking. To address this, you must first look at the anxiety you’re wishing to avoid and the context in which it appears. Then, you can make active choices to engage in alternative actions that will be conducive to your mental health.
