Have you ever picked up your phone to check one thing, only to look at the time and realize an hour has passed? Maybe you opened Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, or another social media platform while at home or during a break at work. One post became another, and before you knew it, you were still scrolling.
Social media can help us stay connected, entertained, and informed. However, when scrolling becomes excessive or begins affecting our mood and daily functioning, it may be time to examine our relationship with our screens. Excessive social media use can influence mood, attention, sleep, and self-esteem, particularly when the content we consume leaves us feeling overwhelmed or emotionally drained.
What is Doomscrolling?
Doomscrolling is the habit of repeatedly consuming distressing or negative news and online content, sometimes for much longer than we intended. You might wake up and immediately reach for your phone, repeatedly refresh your feed throughout the day, or find yourself reading one upsetting story after another.
There is a reason negative information can be difficult to ignore. Our brains naturally pay attention to potential threats as a way of helping us understand and prepare for danger. During periods of uncertainty, searching for more information can also create a temporary feeling of being informed, prepared, or in control. However, what begins as information-seeking can turn into an automatic cycle that leaves us feeling even more anxious or overwhelmed.
Social media can make that cycle especially difficult to interrupt. Features such as infinite scrolling, notifications, and personalized recommendations encourage continued engagement. When you repeatedly search for, watch, or interact with a particular type of content, your feed may increasingly expose you to similar material.
When Scrolling Starts Affecting Your Mental Health
Doomscrolling can contribute to increased anxiety, irritability, sadness, difficulty concentrating, and feeling mentally unable to “switch off.” It can also affect the body through problems such as disrupted sleep, headaches, and neck or shoulder tension.
And negative news isn’t the only content that can affect us.
Fitness, beauty, career, relationship, travel, and lifestyle content can create a comparison spiral. We see someone else’s promotion, vacation, relationship, appearance, home, or accomplishment and begin measuring our own lives against what we’re seeing. The problem is that we’re often comparing our everyday lives to carefully selected moments from someone else’s.
You may begin wondering: Am I behind? Am I doing enough? Why don’t I have that yet?
Comparison can create a cycle in which feeling inadequate leads to more scrolling in search of reassurance, inspiration, or information, only to encounter even more opportunities for comparison. Over time, this pattern can contribute to self-doubt, anxiety, dissatisfaction, and feeling disconnected from your own progress.
Breaking the Scrolling Cycle
The goal doesn’t necessarily have to be deleting every social media account. Instead, consider becoming more intentional about when, why, and how you use them.
Before opening an app, ask yourself, “Why am I opening this right now?” While scrolling, check in again: “How do I feel compared with when I started?” Noticing the pattern is an important first step.
You can also create boundaries by setting app limits, turning off unnecessary notifications, establishing phone-free spaces, or keeping your phone away from your bed. Consider curating your feed by muting, unfollowing, or blocking accounts that consistently leave you anxious, angry, inadequate, or overwhelmed.
It can also help to make scrolling slightly less convenient. Move distracting apps away from your home screen or replace your phone alarm with a physical clock. Most importantly, identify something you can do instead. Reading a physical book, completing a puzzle, taking a walk, exercising, journaling, listening to music, or connecting with someone can fill the moments when you might otherwise automatically reach for your phone.
Social media does not have to disappear from your life for your relationship with it to change. Sometimes, a healthier relationship begins by simply noticing when scrolling stops serving you.
If social media or doomscrolling is contributing to anxiety, depression, isolation, difficulty sleeping, low self-esteem, or problems with everyday functioning, you don’t have to manage those concerns alone. Capital EAP is available to provide support and help you develop strategies for managing stress and creating healthier habits.
For additional information and practical strategies for reducing doomscrolling, you can also explore here.
By: Demetria Desir, MHC Intern