How 'Doomscrolling' Impacts Your Mental Health—and How to Stop

According to psychotherapist and coach Tess Brigham, MFT, doomscrolling is mindlessly scrolling through negative news articles, social media posts, or other content-sharing platforms.

Essentially, it's reading one negative story after another. One Canadian study has even called this phenomenon “social media panic.”

Although it may seem as if 2020 and all its hurdles (the COVID-19 pandemic, political tensions, and social injustice, to name a few) inspired the term “doomscrolling,” it actually likely sprung up on Twitter in 2018, and has been a cultural term ever since.

How to Know When You're Doomscrolling

If you’ve spent several minutes or perhaps even hours engrossed in reading stories or posts online—and they tend to be of the distressing variety—it’s likely that you’ve spent your time doomscrolling.

Who Is Most Likely to Doomscroll?

Brigham says that those who struggle with anxiety or anxiety-related disorders (these can include panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder [PTSD], obsessive-compulsive disorder [OCD], and social anxiety disorder) are especially prone to doom scroll because “anxiety is about control or the lack of control.”

“The more anxious we feel, the more we try and control the situations and people around us," says Brigham. "Being informed seems like a good way to control what’s happening around us, but it actually just creates more anxiety and fear.” 

Why Do People Doomscroll Even Though It Harms Their Mental Health?

If deep down it’s affecting our mental health in a negative way, why do we continue to doom scroll?

She points to a feeling of, “If I know what’s happening, I can be better prepared when things get bad,” as a reason for doomscrolling. The fear is that something terrible might happen that you don’t see coming; doomscrolling seems to be an effective way to stay prepared.

“We are hardwired to survive and to see the things that could potentially harm us,” Brigham further explains. “That’s in our DNA, and our ancestors needed this ability in order to literally survive. While our world is very different, we still have this drive to keep ourselves safe, which we think we’re doing by reading negative news stories.”

How Doomscrolling Negatively Impacts Your Mental Health

Daily doomscrolling isn’t a wise idea if you’re striving for good mental health. “It’s bad for your mental health because there is no real benefit to doomscrolling,” Brigham notes. “It only makes you more anxious and paranoid about the world around you.”

Doomscrolling prevents you from paying attention to your thoughts and feelings, which is additionally detrimental to mental health. And, you may not even be fully conscious of how much it’s impacting you.

“While you’re scrolling through all these articles,” she says, “you may not be aware of how all of this negative information is affecting your psyche, but once you close your eyes and try and go to bed, your mind is spinning with terrible images.”

How to Stop Doomscrolling

As tempting as it is to consistently consume negative news stories, there are ways to turn scrolling into a positive experience. “One way to make it positive is to only visit sites you trust to report on events in a fair manner,” Brigham says.

“Some news sites are just sensational and want to shock or scare you, so avoid those outlets and focus on places where you know you’ll get honest, accurate information. Limit your intake. You can stay informed by watching one show or even reading a summary of the news of the day,"  says Brigham.

If you’ve found yourself in a swirling vortex of doomscrolling that takes place multiple times a day, it’s time to do a mental health check-in and apply Brigham’s tips and tricks so you won’t go down the rabbit hole.