Doomscrolling is a normal response to a world where news is constant and often overwhelming.
While staying informed is important, repetitively consuming negative content, especially at night or first-thing in the morning, can be detrimental to your mental and physical wellbeing.
Understanding why this happens and how to interrupt the cycle can help you regain a sense of balance and control.
What is doomscrolling? (and why your brain does it)
Doomscrolling is when we constantly scroll through distressing or negative online information, such as the news, even when it’s making us feel worse. It can also refer to aimlessly scrolling through online content or repeatedly checking apps, emails or push notifications.
But if doomscrolling makes us feel worse, why do we do it?
The brain is wired for threat detection because detecting danger early has allowed humans to survive over millennia. Today, distressing content acts like a ‘modern predator’ and is flagged by the brain as urgent and dangerous.
It activates the amygdala, the alarm system in the brain that’s responsible for detecting danger and activating the fear response (our fight/flight response). Once this is activated, the brain shifts into ‘search mode’ and scans for more potential threats.
Dopamine reinforces this seeking behaviour, not by making us feel good, but by creating anticipation that something important is just one scroll away.
Doomscrolling can also be driven by a desire for control. When things feel uncertain, repeatedly checking for updates can create the sense that you’re staying prepared for danger.
Any emotionally activating or captivating content can increase doomscrolling. The platforms’ algorithms are optimised for engagement, not wellbeing, and content that triggers fear, anger or outrage is prioritised because it draws users in.
Why it’s bad for you: the ‘drip-feed’ of cortisol
Looking through the news and online content keeps us connected and informed about the world, but doomscrolling is obsessive and leads to chronic stress exposure.
Physiologically, your stress response is constantly activated. Your body is continuously releasing stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, keeping you in a heightened fight-or-flight state.
This can have a significant physical and mental toll on you. It can lead to:
Sleep disruption
Prolonged exposure to blue light (emitted by phones and other screens) can suppress the production of melatonin, the hormone that regulates sleep. Blue light alone can disrupt sleep, but when you pair that with an active threat response, our minds become hypervigilant and prone to rumination.
Mean world syndrome
Overexposure to negative news or other content can give us the perception that the world is more dangerous or hostile than it really is. This impacts our mood, trust, sense of safety and behaviour.
Vicarious trauma
The brain processes distressing images and videos as if you’re personally experiencing them. So even when the events are happening on the other side of the world, it can lead to trauma symptoms such as intrusive thoughts, increased anger or anxiety, and hypervigilance.
Mental and physical symptoms
The constant activation of the threat response can increase anxiety, low mood, catastrophising, emotional exhaustion and feeling helpless. Physically, it can cause restlessness, muscle tension, fatigue, headaches, digestive issues and heart palpitations.
‘Just 5 more minutes’ – 5 relatable signs you’re trapped
Doomscrolling doesn’t always feel like a problem in the moment. It can feel like you’re just staying informed or taking a quick break from what you were doing.
If you recognise yourself in any of these everyday examples, scrolling may have shifted from a choice into something that feels harder to stop.
1. The bedtime loop
You aim to go to sleep at 10pm but pick up your phone thinking ‘just a few minutes’. Before you know it, it’s 11.30pm and even though you feel tired, it’s difficult to put the phone down.
2. The morning dread
The first thing you do when you wake up is to reach for your phone and check the news or social media. Even before you’ve gotten out of bed, you start the day with a sense of tension, unease or gloom.
3. The numbing scroll
When you experience an uncomfortable emotion or sense of loneliness, you turn to your phone and scroll to distract yourself. Instead of this making you feel better, you feel flatter, anxious or drained afterwards.
4. Losing track of time
You scroll for long periods without any intention. You become so absorbed that you only realise later that you’ve been scrolling for a long time and don’t remember much of what you’ve seen.
5. ‘Only 5 more minutes’
You’re aimlessly scrolling through the news or social media and although you know you should put the phone down. You tell yourself ‘Only 5 more minutes’ again and again.
How to stop: simple techniques to step back
Implementing digital boundaries can give your brain and body the chance the return to normal. Consider some of the following tips:
Activate greyscale
Turning on the greyscale (black and white) function on your phone makes apps less visually stimulating and therefore easier to disengage from.
Use app timers or digital wellbeing tools
Most smartphones include built-in features designed to help you manage screen time, such as Screen Time (on iPhone) or Digital Wellbeing (on Android). These tools allow you to set daily limits for specific apps, track how much time you spend scrolling, and introduce small interruptions that prompt you to pause.
Curate your feed
Setting psychological boundaries within the apps can balance what type of news or content you’re seeing. That can include
- Muting or unfollowing accounts that trigger distress
- Not ‘hate-engaging’ (commenting on posts you dislike)
- Teaching the algorithm what to show you by only liking, commenting or sharing content that you want to see more of
Physically distance yourself from your phone
Having your phone next to your bed or on your desk while you’re working can make the temptation to scroll higher. If you physically remove the device from your immediate environment, it forces you to pause before automatically picking it up.
Micro-boundaries
Depending on your habits, you can implement your own boundaries, such as not looking at your phone/news/socials after 9pm, only checking the news once a day, or waiting to look at your phone until you’ve had breakfast.
Replacing the scroll: what to do instead
Although it’s not healthy, doomscrolling does meet certain needs such as stimulation, distraction, emotional regulation and having a (false) sense of control.
That’s why it can be helpful to replace doomscrolling with something that gives a clear end point and is emotionally safer, yet stimulating. For example:
- Read a book
- Do a short puzzle or game
- Try body based activities such as a 5-minute stretch, brief walk or breathing exercise
- Listen to music, sketch, journal or make a cup of tea
When digital anxiety becomes too much
For many of us, doomscrolling is an occasional habit that’s hard to break, but is generally manageable. But for some, it can start to feel compulsive, especially when you’re feeling anxious.
Your digital anxiety may be more significant if you notice:
- Repeatedly checking for updates even though you’ve already refreshed all your feeds
- Feeling compelled to check the news or social media throughout the day, without realising it consciously
- A sense of relief when you’ve checked updates, followed by more anxiety
- Difficulty concentrating because your attention keeps returning to your phone
- Increased feelings of fear, dread or helplessness after scrolling
- Using scrolling to manage anxiety or uncertainty
- Worsening of your mental and physical health as a result of scrolling
If this feels familiar and difficult to manage on your own, it may be helpful to speak to a mental health professional. Support can help you understand what’s driving the urge to keep scrolling and develop more effective ways to respond to anxiety and uncertainty.
At Priory, our clinicians offer a safe, confidential space to explore these patterns without judgement, and to build practical strategies that support both your mental wellbeing and your relationship to technology.
