Ever since coronavir­us dominated the news, it’s likely you’ve come across snippets of bad news no matter where you’ve looked or clicked. From more cases, new mutations to other cata­strophes – bad news seems to be mounting. Looking away doesn’t seem like an option. This phe­nomen­on is called doom­scrolling. Read on to find out what it is and what you can do about it.

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Doom­scrolling: a defin­i­tion

The term ‘doom­scrolling’ first appeared on Twitter in 2018. The neologism describes the intense or even manic con­sump­tion of negative and alarming news. Some also refer to it as ‘doom­surf­ing’, which describes the same phe­nomen­on.

It refers to the flood of bad news seemingly rolling over us, which is es­pe­cially true for the auto-updating news fees of social networks. Once you click on a bad news story, you discover another. This sensation of being caught in a whirlpool of bad news has been suc­cinctly described by journ­al­ists and bloggers and analysed by sci­ent­ists.

What happens in the brain during doom­scrolling?

Why the feeling that bad news seemingly dominates the media is fairly easy to explain. It’s been well-es­tab­lished that scrolling through our news feeds appeals to our reward centre. Facebook and other social media platforms are well aware and are using this to their advantage. In the worst case, some people may develop an addiction – the fear of missing out (FOMO) is just one of several (ques­tion­able) con­sequences of excessive social media con­sump­tion.

Note

As our awareness of the addictive side effects of social scrolling has grown, counter-movements have arisen. The so-called joy of missing out (JOMO) describes the joy of con­sciously living without social media and the pressure to ex­per­i­ence spec­tac­u­lar things.

With doom­scrolling, however, there is a second psy­cho­lo­gic­al pe­cu­li­ar­ity: namely, our brain is evol­u­tion­ar­ily wired to process and react to negative news quickly and ef­fi­ciently. In the early days, this made sense because negative in­form­a­tion usually alerted us to danger, which then could be quickly averted. This evol­u­tion­ary ability is still anchored in our brains and, in com­bin­a­tion with the al­gorithms of online media, leads to the phe­nomen­on of doom­scrolling.

How to avoid or reduce doom­scrolling

Constant con­sump­tion of bad news paints an often ex­ag­ger­ated picture of the current situation and can lead to de­pres­sion. In com­bin­a­tion with so-called fake news, there’s the danger of drifting into a universe of al­tern­at­ive truths and becoming rad­ic­al­ised. As a first step, you should be aware of doom­scrolling and crit­ic­ally question your surfing behaviour. Are you on the lookout for bad news? Do you click on every new horror story and statistic? Then it’s about time to take coun­ter­meas­ures. Follow these tips:

  1. Set firm time limits within which you doom­scroll and browse social networks. For example, 10 to 20 minutes a day. If you find it difficult to set a limit yourself, use smart­phone apps that let you limit your daily screen time and use of certain apps.
  2. Consider al­tern­at­ive be­ha­viours and rewards, such as ex­er­cising, going for a walk, or reading a good book.
  3. Get friends or family on board to distract you from using your mobile phone and with whom you can talk openly in case bad news over­whelms you.
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In general, avoiding doom­scrolling is about changing your habits. Because habits can become addictive, there is no remedy for doom­scrolling. If you can’t find a good solution, a therapist or other expert in this area can help you to address and avoid dangers lurking on social networks.

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