Doomscrolling: Feed Me Bad News

The ability to capture and hold people’s attention is a valuable asset. Captivating a room, enthralling an audience, or convincing you that one more episode is worth the tradeoff for a ruined sleep schedule. Every silver lining has a cloud of course, and when that captivation relates to the endless stream of negativity available online, we end up suffering the affects of the newly coined “doomscrolling.” Bad news is in no short supply, but how do we avoid getting addicted to it? Has the internet fed our feelings of hopelessness to the point of no return?

It’s important for everyone to be well informed about current events, I think. The general availability of information is something which the internet does very well, and it also affords us the ability to fact check, cross reference and see through the sensationalism. Doomscrolling occurs when we make habitual the seeking out of negative or distressing information in an obsessive manner. Given how well bad news sells and the fact that we spend an average of two hours per day on social media, it’s arguably too easy to fall foul of this phenomenon. The feelings of uncertainty and dread however can spill over from our screens to the real world and have a genuine negative effect on our mental health. It stands to reason, continuously engaging with today’s bad news would give anyone a bleak outlook.

The damage from doomscrolling propagates, too. The cynicism it breeds leads us to be more likely to share the dread and negativity, whether the articles fueling these feelings are factual or otherwise. I’ve been a huge proponent of curbing the spread of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Despair) for years, but it’s more prevalent now than it’s ever been. If something has a great headline engineered to make someone feel uneasy, it’s subsequently a greater likelihood to spread unchecked. While seeking alternatives to doomscrolling is a personal responsibility, we can all do better about what we post to our feeds. With side affects including anxiety, unease, sleeplessness and stress, we’d all do well to limit fixating on the negatives going on in the world; especially given how one dimensional and inaccurate of a view that breeds.

How do we shrug off this harmful behavior then? Being mindful of your media consumption is a great first step. While it’s useful to follow the news, maybe limit yourself to half a dozen stories per day. You could even pick one story per outlet to avoid getting sucked into any one source’s potential bias. If you find yourself especially prone to doomscroll before bed, try charging your phone in another room overnight and use more traditional reading material as a sleep aid. Your eyes will thank you for this too! Should the call of the technology-based negativity get too strong, it might be wise to simply limit your screen time altogether; there are apps to download and even features natively baked into our phones to help this endeavor.

Our overall mental health is incredibly important, and should be treated as such. The way we absorb news (or really anything at all) shouldn’t feel all-consuming or leave us with lasting feelings of dread. Checking ourselves to ensure our engagement stays healthy can prevent this habitual and damaging behavior. Be informed, be kind to yourself, use the resources available. Remember also when you’re witnessing the never ending feed of terrible information, that in reality the world isn’t so bad when viewed through a lens wider than that which a screen offers. Sometimes it’s work to find the good, but the payoff is always greater when you do.