Cheer Yourself up With Some Fun
As we learned pretty early this year, what starts with a quick check on what’s going on in the world can quickly turn into a scroll of fate session . Not that there was a monopoly on bad news in 2020 (the end of 2016, and then the entire 2017-2019 years remained in force), but this year it comes especially quickly and quickly.
If at this point you haven’t come across the term “scrolling doom,” then at least you did. While it does not yet meet the criteria for an official entry in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, the website’s operations unit says the word “doomscrolling” refers to “the tendency to keep watching or scrolling bad news, even though the news is sad, discouraging or depressing.”
But if we can get depressed and anxious when watching bad news, does that mean we can feel better watching good news (or at least what we like)? Of course, why not. It’s called “entertainment,” and that’s what it includes.
How to replace the scroll of doom with the scroll of joy
It’s relatively simple: instead of searching the Internet for what makes you upset, angry, or worried, look at what makes you happy, calm, or cheerful. Keep in mind that joy is a matter of personal preference, so the joy of one person viewing a new crop of holiday engagement photos posted on social media may be the next person’s scrolling version of doom.
You probably already have a good idea of what kind of content you should entertain. Maybe you love to travel and looking for potential trips on Airbnbs can put you at ease. (Or maybe you’re so sad that you can’t travel that you can’t look at all the places you don’t go.) There are also classics like cute animal photos, old maps, and search photos of already matured celebrities from their youth.
And just as scrolling through doom can have a negative impact on our mental health, scrolling through the joys can help us feel less awful. “Interspersing our consumption of negative news with uplifting and inspirational content will help combat [bad] feelings,” says Emma Kenny, a psychologist working with Visit Iceland on their new entertainment campaign , in a statement emailed to Lifehacker. “Taking the time to engage in positive content can have an almost immediate effect on our emotional state, so joy is the perfect antidote.”