‘Doomscrolling’ is damaging your mental health - why you shouldn’t try to quit.
‘Doomscrolling;’ incessantly scrolling through doom-and-gloom internet content as your mood sinks into anxiety, frustration, despair. But you just. Can’t. Stop.
TL;DR
Prolonged immersion in scrolling through negative news content on social media is eroding your resilience and can lead to increased anxiety and depression.
Trying to quit doomscrolling entirely is unlikely to succeed right now, in an era of accelerated news and social isolation.
Bringing in tools of empowered change - small changes - by creating intentionality and boundaries to this habit can help maintain and improve your mental health.
6:30 am. I wake up, roll over in bed, and grab my iPad, promising myself just a “quick glance” at emails. OK, and maybe just a “quick peek” at the Facebook newsfeed - just a quick glance. 7:39 am: I promise myself, maybe just one more quick read about the outrageous Trump tweets, the cratering economy, the latest COVID news, the latest crime and violence in my home city. 8:17 am. Oy. I can barely get out of bed. My sunny, optimistic self is now submerged in a sea of negative Tweets and posts, sunk in a molasses of despair.
‘Doomsurfing.’ My daughter in law Amelia wakes at 2 am to feed our newest, beautiful, granddaughter. Not wanting to wake anyone by putting on the lights, Amelia grabs her phone to pass a little time while nursing and checks the news on various sites. 30 minutes later, the baby is once again fast asleep. Not so much for the new mama - upset by the barrage of chaos and grim updates, she finds herself struggling with insomnia and existential anxiety.
Do you recognize yourself in this?
Doomscrolling. Doomsurfing. Are you finding yourself going down the rabbit hole of incessantly refreshing your news feed, spending hours binging on a barrage of dystopian news? This oh-so-common habit has become socially “normalized” and is increasing during this unprecedented rapid-fire cacophony of sensationalist headlines. How many of us obsessively scroll through disturbing Tweets and posts - COVID. Politics. Gun violence. Wildfires. In this last week, the rapidity of the changes, and thus the doomscrolling, became especially intense.
Research indicates that this vicious cycle of negativity is fueling significant mental health challenges in a time already defined by uncertainty and fear. Doomscrolling and excessive social media use slowly erode our sorely-needed resilience, fueling anxiety, depression, and poor sleep quality (especially if, like me, you sometimes “can’t resist” peering at the news just one more time, right before bedtime.) There is also evidence that immersing ourselves in these streams of bad news creates an ongoing “dark filter” of despair that colors our subsequent perception of neutral or even positive experiences. Because of this, ,mental health professionals are identifying and decrying this phenomenon and encouraging people to “quit” doing it, stay off the internet, break the habit.
Late night doomsurfing. Just. Can’t. Stop.
Even though we know better.
But people aren’t “quitting.” We’re drawn to those screens of doom like moths to dystopian flames.
Given this toll on your emotional well-being, should you immediately resolve to quit reading distressing news? Or quit ‘doomscrolling?’
Nope.
My advice right now: stop telling yourself to quit.
In my decades as a family physician, I learned that simply advising someone to quit a bad health habit rarely (or never) succeeds in creating sustainable changes in behavior. Ask any doctor how successful they have been by simply giving smokers stern advice to quit, or telling obese patients to lose weight. About ZERO percent success. So simply admonishing yourself to “quit” your hyper-focus on the news is probably doomed to fail. And then you’ll likely feel even worse about yourself, defeating the whole goal of protecting your mental health against further erosion.
A critical question: why is it so hard for us to quit? This is an important issue to address before you tackle changing any health habit. An honest assessment of how you benefit from a habit will empower you to make changes aligned with your values and needs. Take a moment to acknowledge all the reasons you might actually benefit from constantly surfing and watching the news. They may include:
Your powerful, primitive amygdala. Our brains are primarily and powerfully hardwired to scan for threats to survival, responding with that familiar “fight or flight” rush of adrenaline. This scanning and vigilance is nearly impossible to eliminate entirely, especially when we are surrounded by real ongoing threats to our health and wellbeing as a society and as individuals. Your primitive survival brain will continue to drive you to scan for new threats, allowing that hyper-vigilance to triumph over your slower, more evolved prefrontal cortex (i.e., healthy cognitive processing!) by hijacking your emotional life unless you do some pretty muscular work to wrestle that control back.
You may feel a competitive “rush” to be first to know news, then report, repost, and comment on social media. It’s a form of social sharing, and a form of social hierarchy, to be “in the know.” It’s the digital equivalent of being at the proverbial “water cooler” at work - and with the increased isolation during the pandemic work from home era, this form of social currency has a lot of importance. Being “out of touch” with breaking news could feel pretty lonely. If you are not in the loop, you may develop a strong sense of FOMO (fear of missing out) that can also have a measurably negative impact on feeling good.
Sharing our reactions to news with others is a form of building a sense of connection and community. If you post news and get a lot of “likes” and “shares,” you likely feel a sense of well-being and affirmation. It’s real, folks, and many of us have come to count on that in a time of isolation and anxiety.
Finally, a phenomenon psychologists call “intermittent reinforcement” comes into play. There might be that ONE news story out of a hundred that really does bring you benefit, or fits the “need to know” category - and that “intermittent reinforcement” creates an almost unbreakable cycle that further reinforces the bad habit. And so, we scroll again and again, while our sympathetic “fight or flight” response fires away with outrage, anxiety, and chronic stress.
You may have other reasons you can identify as feeling satisfying, or beneficial, in your scrolling and news scanning. Only you know your inner voice and needs. Fill in this blank if you can!
OK, so now that you’ve acknowledged all the reasons that doom scrolling satisfies your needs, should you simply throw your hands in the air and continue the habits that cause you anger, stress, despair, poor sleep?
Definitively; NOPE.
I suggest you try reframing this habit with language of empowerment and self-care. Walk yourself to a healthier place of balance and control in a world that feels scarily out of balance and control. Let’s bring intentionality and values and self-care and self-compassion back into the scenario with a few reframing tips.
Take a break to recharge your emotional battery.
Take time to be compassionately curious about your own “whys” of news scrolling. Do you simply want to keep abreast of happenings? Or do you need to be the “first to know?” Or are you hoping to find specific content that you need? Bring compassion and humor to this question, without harsh self judgement.
Be intentional in your choices! Set some concrete limits in one or two areas. Look at the pattern of your own reaction to the news cycle and decide what factors you want to control For example, you can decide WHEN you do or don’t want to spend time scrolling; you may decide that late night scrolling gives you insomnia, so you decide to cut off your electronic access a few hours before bed. You can decide WHICH sources of information you want to use, and only look at those. You can decide HOW MUCH time you choose to spend on scrolling the news, and set a timer for yourself with a firm cut off. Set some intentions and try them out. Be flexible with yourself, and make modest and sustainable adjustments in the habit.
Stay aware and in touch with your needs. Before going online, ask yourself what you are looking for, why you are online. And then periodically check in with yourself - have I seen enough? Have I found what I was looking for? Do I need more?
Practice self care, knowing that your mental health needs maintenance and extra support during stressful times. Think about what it takes to restore your equilibrium after reading dispiriting news. Instead of just denying yourself the “news scrolling” time, consider cutting that time in half and then intentionally finding a positive activity to do with the remaining time. Take a walk, pet your cat, hug your child, take a warm bubble bath, listen to a comedy podcast, look at videos of baby goats in pajamas… you do you, whatever works to recharge your battery and restore some positivity. Setting your positive intention for self care ahead of time can help you maintain a sense of balance. Touching base with relationships, with nature, with our own inner wisdom, reminds us that good things in life continue despite downturns of the world news cycle. In general, studies show it takes three positive experiences to offset a negative experience, so make sure you budget sufficient time for this!
Set boundaries for yourself and with others, to know when you need to “change the subject.” Trust yourself to maintain those boundaries. Only you know the cutoff when the news has started to pull you down. You don’t need to go down that rabbit hole - it’s easier to stay away from that edge than to catch yourself mid-fall! Healthy boundaries are empowering and life sustaining. This is a perfect time to practice setting and maintaining them.
A final word about balance:
Feeling informed and knowledgeable can be empowering, but feeling overwhelmed by too much trauma and tragedy serves no positive purpose. Remember that the amygdala’s stress response was intended to help us sprint away from a sudden danger, but in 2020, we are all facing a long marathon of social, political and health challenges, so we need to develop a long-term plan for self-protection. Those extra hours of doomscrolling will not feed your mental health, resilience or stamina. Next time you are tempted to sink into a social media bender, take a deep breath and remind yourself to recharge your battery, refill your gas tank, restore your sense of hope and humor. There will always be baby goats in pajamas and otters holding hands to help you along the way.
Be well, my friends. We will survive this time. Let’s take care of ourselves, and of our friends, by supporting our healthiest selves. Drop me a line if you want to discuss further, or share a baby goat video or a beautiful image to brighten my day! And if you know someone in distress who might need extra support around this or other areas, please invite them to visit my website or reach out to discuss setting up some one-to-one coaching.