It’s 11 p.m. One last check of the phone before bed. A quick scroll through Facebook and someone posted about the latest gas prices. You see a headline about unemployment rates. There’s another about a new hurricane on the way. Now you’re Googling global warming. It’s 11:45 and you’ve been reading about the latest actions of the opposing political party. You have to get up for work at 6 a.m. and are now lying awake stressing over the state of the world, unable to fall into the restful slumber you need to rock tomorrow’s presentation.
Welcome to the world of doomscrolling. This habit that involves endlessly consuming negative news or social media content is something 64% of Americans have admitted to doing. But while it may seem harmless—”I’m just keeping up on what’s going on in the world”—scientists are starting to recognize that doomscrolling may come with some harmful effects. While the term is relatively new, the psychological and neurological effects of constant digital stimulation are increasingly being studied by neuroscientists, psychologists, and public health researchers.
What exactly is doomscrolling?
Doomscrolling is defined as the compulsive, excessive consumption of negative or distressing news, often to the point where it makes you feel anxious or sad. The term became popular in 2020 during the pandemic while we found ourselves at home during lockdown. It has become increasingly common in the smartphone era where people now have access to current event details in the palm of their hand at all times.
Staying informed is important. But more information, especially when it’s constant and unfiltered doesn’t always lead to better understanding.
People most often doomscroll on social media but it can also involve obsessively checking news sites. It’s basically when you fall down a rabbit hole of reading about negative news, have a hard time stopping, and walk away feeling more stressed out afterwards. Many people hide behind the notion of needing to stay informed but doomscrolling goes deeper than that. Experts link it to the fact when we’re feeling negative, we seek out negative news to reconfirm how we feel.
Related: How stress affects your entire body
How social media platforms encourage endless scrolling
If you feel like you can’t quit doomscrolling no matter how much you try, you're not alone. It’s not a lack of willpower. There is a science behind digital engagement and it’s meant to keep you glued to your phone or tablet.
Social media platforms are strategically built using principles from behavioral psychology. The goal? To keep you engaged for as long as possible. One of the most powerful ideas behind this is the use of variable reward loops. Similar to pulling the lever on a slot machine, you don’t know what you’ll get when you refresh your feed—sometimes it’s a funny cat video, sometimes it’s breaking news about something happening in the world, sometimes it’s pictures of your best friend’s kids. This unpredictability is one of the most effective ways to keep people logging on to see what’s next.
Algorithmic feeds give priority to content that sparks strong emotional reactions—and this isn’t limited to happy posts. Anything that enlists a strong feeling, whether that’s outrage, fear, or joy, gets priority. Then, there’s the fact that you can scroll all day long and never get to the bottom of your feed. This infinite scroll design is purposeful, giving you the ability to run out of content to explore without any cues to stop. And all those notifications, whether they’re dings or visual cues, trigger dopamine responses, getting us excited to engage with a platform to see what it has in store for us. Each alert is designed to pull you back into the app, reinforcing a habit loop where checking leads to scrolling, scrolling leads to intermittent rewards, and the cycle repeats. Over time, these cues become automatic, making disengagement feel surprisingly difficult.
Pair all of this with the brain’s negativity bias which is our tendency to react more strongly to and focus more on bad news versus good and you have the perfect recipe for spending hours online reading one stress-inducing headline after another.
What constant scrolling does to the brain
Doomscrolling doesn't just cause stress in the moment. It can have measurable effects on your brain and body over time. Studies are showing that constant exposure to high volumes of negative, fast-moving information can negatively impact our stress levels, attention span, moods, and even sleep. That’s because our brains weren’t wired to wake up in the morning, reach for our phones and take in everything from updates on the trending true crime headline to the latest parenting advice, all before breakfast.
It’s not the information itself that’s harmful, it’s the volume, speed, and lack of context that can overwhelm how we process it.
Some of the impacts this constant consumption of negative news can have on us include:
Revving up our stress response: Studies have shown that prolonged exposure to distressing news coverage can further amplify stress and contribute to emotional fatigue. This may lead to elevated cortisol, increased anxiety, and heightened vigilance, a state where the brain remains constantly on alert and scanning for potential threats.
Decreasing our attention span: Rapidly switching between posts, videos, and headlines can fragment attention. And some people get so into keeping up that they’ll have multiple devices going at the same time, such as a tablet and television or television and phone. Simultaneous use of two or more digital devices or rapidly switching between them is so common that it has been coined “media multitasking.” These practices lead to an overwhelm of information coming in at once, which can result in reduced focus, decreased working memory performance, and difficulty sustaining deep concentration.
Impairing emotional regulation: Exposure to emotionally charged content on social media and digital platforms has a negative impact on our mood and perception. Evidence suggests this can lead to increased rumination, a heightened negativity bias, and difficulty disengaging from distressing information.
Disrupting sleep: Doomscrolling at any time of the day comes with a price, but when it’s done before bed, it can also affect our sleep. Blue light exposure at night can suppress melatonin production, which can make it take longer to fall asleep. Reading distressing content can stimulate your brain and put you in a state of arousal, which can keep you up thinking about current events all night.
A historical perspective: media and the brain
Concerns about how all the media we’re consuming is affecting our brains aren’t new. The invention of modern day technology from radio to television to video games to the internet has raised questions about its impact on attention and cognition. Studies on television viewing have linked heavy exposure in adolescence and viewing high-paced television before age 3 to attentional deficits later in life. And research on digital media use has found it to be associated with more fragmented attention and reduced working memory performance.
Today's digital environment introduces several new factors that amplify these effects:
Constant constant availability: Remember the days of having to wait an entire week for a new episode of your favorite television show? Or being bored and scrolling the internet only to find that there was nothing new you wanted to engage with? Those days are long gone. With endless scroll features on social media, countless platforms to engage with, and no shortage of news headlines, we’re exposed to more digital media than ever these days.
Personalized algorithms: You’ve been searching for a new couch and now you can’t log onto social media without seeing ads for sofas, loveseats, and sectionals. Now imagine what happens if you’ve been busy reading up on the latest news tragedy. Today’s algorithms are designed to tune into what’s on your mind. And if that’s emotionally-charged content, they’ll keep providing you with more and more content to feed your doomscrolling habit.
Unprecedented volume of information: We used to have to wait to see what details made the newspaper or the evening news to stay up to date. But nowadays we can pick up our phones and find out about endless things going on all over the world in real time. The amount of information we encounter on a daily basis can overwhelm the brain’s ability to filter and prioritize input.
How to tame your doomscrolling habit
Doomscrolling can be hard to quit but taking steps to quell the habit can help you to have a healthier relationship with social media. Here are a few things to try:
Set boundaries around news consumption: Instead of obsessively checking all your social media accounts and searching for headlines throughout the day, limit yourself to only checking in at certain times. Maybe you take a mid day break or do a check in at the end of your workday. Anytime you find yourself trying to engage outside of your scheduled time, redirect yourself and remind yourself that you will be able to check in at your designated time.
Related: 9 science-backed strategies to help maintain a healthy brain
Make it harder to engage: If you find yourself doomscrolling in the waiting room at the doctor’s office, at a red light, and throughout your entire work day, limiting access to the apps could be a great help. Uninstall social media from your phone or keep your phone across the room, making it harder to actually log on and engage. If you check it on your desktop at work, log yourself out so that you have to actually go through the extra steps of typing in your password each time, making it harder to use the platform.
Avoid scrolling close to bedtime: Set yourself up for your best nights sleep by putting down your phone close to bedtime. Not only will this help you to avoid blue light but it will prevent you from reading distressing headlines that may keep you up at night.
Turn off non-essential notifications: A lot of times we aren’t even thinking about our accounts but those pesky notifications that we have a new “like” or message suck us in. Turn off notifications and silence your phone so you aren’t tempted as they pop up and chime throughout the day.
Balance digital consumption with offline activities: Prioritize activities where you won’t be plugged in, such as reading, taking a walk, or grabbing coffee with a friend. These can help you to reset your attention.
Cultivate periods of uninterrupted focus: If you’re having a hard time focusing on a task like a work project, you’re not alone. Research has found that the average person switches tasks or is interrupted about every 47 seconds, making sustained focus increasingly difficult. Try setting timers and performing a task uninterrupted. One popular method is the Pomodoro Technique, which involves focusing on a task for 25 minutes, then taking a break.
Tailor your feed to lean on the positive side: Curate your feed with accounts that make you feel good, whether that’s following yoga and meditation influencers, food content, or checking in on a live cam of baby eagles in a nest. Having some feel-good content that pops up when you scroll can help to tame some of the harshness of the doom and gloom that is plentiful online.
Check in on your mind
Your mental and cognitive wellbeing are an important part of your overall health. While lifestyle habits like sleep, stress management, and digital behavior can help support and optimize these areas, some people may also want a clearer picture of what’s happening inside the brain.
For some people, reducing digital noise is one step towards better mental clarity. For others, having structured, clinically grounded insights can provide a different kind of reassurance.
In addition to whole body MRI screening, Prenuvo offers an Advanced Brain Health Scan which can help evaluate structural brain health as part of a broader view of the body. Whole body MRI can screen for hundreds of conditions across multiple organ systems, while brain imaging can provide insight into neurological structures and patterns that may support conversations about long-term health.
Related: Brain volume as a window into your brain health
To learn more about Prenuvo’s Whole Body Scan and Advanced Brain Health Scan and how they can help support a more proactive approach to your health, book a call with a member of the Patient Services Team.
