How to Finally Stop Doomscrolling
Everyone’s done it: you pick up the phone in a perfectly good mood, only to be bombarded with notifications and social media messages informing you of the worst news and the most outrageous hot spots humanity has to offer. Now you feel terrible, but instead of putting your phone down, you dive deeper, your anxiety growing with every move and touch. This happens several times a day, and yet we still find ourselves constantly reaching for our phones.
Why do we do this and how can we stop?
This phenomenon is commonly known as “doomscrolling.” The term has been around since at least 2018, but was popularized in 2020 by journalist Karen Ho amid the pandemic. That’s when Ho created an event-scrolling bot on the site formerly known as Twitter; The bot reminded people several times a day to put down their phones and take care of themselves. (The bot, like most good things, is not active on Elon Musk’s X.)
“Doomscrolling robs you of the energy you need to really focus on the things that matter and also take better care of yourself,” Ho told Scientific American in an interview back in 2021. This has been true during the pandemic and it is true. now, in a year of chaotic elections and widespread global conflict.
Last month I wrote about how to identify and break your negative loops , and I’d say that doomscrolling is exactly that: a habit you’ve developed yourself that makes all your days a little worse. Here are some tips on how to identify the causes of your doomscrolling habit and replace them with something healthier.
The Science of Doomscrolling
According to an article by Bhakti Sharma et al. from the University of Florida , “doomscrolling refers to a state of media use that is typically characterized by people compulsively scrolling through their social media news feeds with obsessive attention to anxious, depressive, or other negative information.”
I think most of us can admit that we do this from time to time. Whether it’s disturbing political news or videos from conflict zones, we tend to seek out negative news, and social media algorithms tend to reward it. And there’s a reason for this. According to Sharma et al, doomscrolling is “a habit that emerged in response to global and local crises unfolding in endless and targeted news feeds.”
In other words, doomscrolling is a habit that arises in part because of the way the places where we get information about the world are organized. What you interact with on services like Twitter, Tiktok, and Instagram influences the types of information you’re likely to see in the future. This means that any terrible world event that you follow closely will likely appear more and more in your timeline. And social media, unlike newspapers and even blogs of the past, has no end – the algorithm will show you something new as long as you keep scrolling.
The most perverse thing is that doomscrolling starts with good intentions: you want to keep up with the news, to be aware of what is happening in the world. But a combination of human nature and algorithmic triage can make it all too easy to focus only on the terrible things happening in the world, as if that’s the whole story.
The first step is to recognize when you start this bad habit. Then you need to decide that you want to stop and develop a strategy.
Recognize your triggers
It’s important to recognize when your mindless social media use has turned into scrolling, and to do this you need to think about what makes you pick up your phone and how you feel when you do it. Do you tend to open X or Facebook when you’re bored and quickly sinking into a well of bad feelings? Does the thought of missing the latest news make you anxious, only to open your phone and read news that also makes you anxious? These are signs that you may be struggling with addiction to your device.
Replace doomscrolling with something else
So the next step in stopping your doomed scrolling is replacing your habit with something else is key. Instead of picking up your phone and scrolling through terrible news on X and reading about terrible people on Reddit, choose a stimulating activity that won’t make you feel bad. When you find yourself turning to social media in a moment of downtime, instead play an online puzzle (or a pen-on-paper crossword), or stand up and move your body for a few minutes, or even watch a little TV (but maybe , not news) or play a video game.
Keep your phone out of sight
Once you find something to do instead of scrolling, make sure you don’t pick up your phone while you’re doing it. You can rely on self-discipline, or you can force the issue by leaving it in another room or otherwise limiting access to it.
It’s a good idea to find an activity that prevents you from using your phone. “I watch a lot of TV shows and movies with subtitles—in foreign languages—because [during them] you can’t look at your phone,” Ho told Scientific American . (I recommend a Danish show called Seaside Hotel , which you can watch if you make a donation to your local PBS station).
Set a schedule for using news and social media and stick to it.
Another approach you can take is to change the way you consume news. You can do this by scheduling your news consumption , which means committing to only reading the news at certain times each day. I believe it can also be helpful to avoid getting news from social media; instead, go directly to the home page of several newspapers or other news sources you trust, or even stick to hard copies of weekly news magazines instead. In my opinion, paper publications tend to cover a wide variety of topics, not just the ones the algorithm picks for me, and they have a defined end point (when I get to the last page, I’m done.)
Focus on local news and action that truly impacts your life.
If global and national headlines make you feel anxious about events that you cannot control or influence in any way—and that may not even directly affect your life in the short term—switch to reading local news. The topics covered will be far more meaningful to your life than any national political drama, and you will have far more power to make a difference.
By the way: have you ever thought about making the world a better place? The classic recipe for constant anxiety is to read negative news and do nothing in response. I recommend finding an organization to donate your time to, if possible. Volunteer at your local library, work to register voters to vote, or help provide services and advocacy for vulnerable populations—anything that will help you focus your energy on making things better rather than just dwelling on the mess we’re all in.
Replace doomscrolling with joyful scrolling.
Finally, if you can’t tear yourself away from your devices, you can try setting up your social media feeds so that they aren’t built solely on alerting you to all the terrible things happening all the time, i.e. aim for joyful scrolling. instead of a doomscroller . Follow lots of accounts that post things that make you happy. If you’re spending too much time on an algorithmically driven platform like X, hang out somewhere more fun (or at least less stressful) instead (for me, it’s Mastodon ). And wherever you go, take advantage of tools like blocking and the mute function (my social media got a lot better when I blocked all messages with the word “Musk”).
Bottom line
The specifics will vary from person to person, but in general, breaking the habit of rewinding involves noticing when social media is making you unhappy and consciously working to prevent it from happening. What you pay attention to is perhaps the most important decision you can make: it shapes your consciousness. So if filling your attention with upsetting news makes you unhappy, feed it something else.