What Is Doomscrolling?
You check your phone to see one headline. Maybe you wanted to know if the weather changed, or if there was an update on something you heard about earlier. Ten minutes later, you’re still scrolling. Fifteen minutes. You’ve moved through news stories, comment sections, social media threads, and updates about things you weren’t even looking for. When you finally put the phone down, you feel heavier than when you picked it up.
This pattern has a name now: doomscrolling.
The term was coined in 2018, but it didn’t become part of everyday language until the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, when millions of people found themselves doing exactly this, often without realizing how common the behavior had become. By 2023, Merriam-Webster officially added it to the dictionary.
Doomscrolling describes what happens when you keep consuming negative, worrying, or stressful information online, often for much longer than you intended.
What Doomscrolling Means
Doomscrolling is the habit of repeatedly scrolling through bad news, upsetting updates, or troubling content, usually on your phone or computer. It’s not the same as staying informed. Staying informed means you check a few sources, get the information you need, and move on.
Doomscrolling is different. It’s the cycle that keeps going.
You read one article, then another. You check the comments. You switch to a different app and see a related post. You go back to the original story to see if anything changed. The information keeps flowing, and you keep following it, even when you’re not finding anything new or helpful.
It shows up in familiar places: scrolling through news headlines late at night, refreshing social media feeds to see reactions to an ongoing crisis, reading thread after thread about a conflict or disaster, or falling into comment sections where people argue about the latest controversy.
According to a 2024 survey by Morning Consult, about 31% of American adults who use social media say they doomscroll regularly. Among younger generations, that number rises significantly: 53% of Gen Z and 46% of millennials report the behavior. This isn’t a rare pattern. It’s something many people recognize in their own lives.
Why It Often Starts With Good Intentions
Doomscrolling usually doesn’t begin because you want to feel worse. It starts because you want to understand what’s happening.
When something uncertain or unsettling is unfolding in the world, updates feel important. You want context. You want to know if the situation changed, if there’s new information, or if people are responding differently than they were an hour ago. That first check makes sense.
But negative information naturally holds attention. Your brain notices threats more readily than reassurances. That’s not a flaw in your thinking. It’s how attention works. When you see something alarming, your mind wants to know more. One update leads to the next. A headline leads to an article. An article leads to a discussion. A discussion leads back to another headline.
Before long, you’re not gathering information anymore. You’re still scrolling, but you’re not sure what you’re looking for.
The behavior often shows compulsive patterns that resist people’s intentions. You’re not choosing to keep going because it feels good. You’re following a pattern that’s already in motion.
Why Doomscrolling Can Feel Draining
A steady stream of problems, conflict, and concern takes up mental space. It doesn’t always announce itself. You don’t necessarily feel it in the moment. But after a while, the weight becomes noticeable.
You might finish scrolling and realize you feel more tense than you did before. Your thoughts might feel cluttered. Small worries that weren’t there earlier start lingering in the background. You carry that mental static into the rest of your day, or into the next morning if you scrolled before bed.
You might check your phone during a work break to see what’s happening in the world and return to your desk feeling unsettled about things you can’t influence. You might start your morning scrolling through updates and notice your chest feels tighter than it did when you woke up.
You might finish reading a long thread about a distant crisis and realize you haven’t retained much of what you read, just a vague sense of dread.
The most common time people doomscroll is right before bed. You might lie in bed scrolling through one troubling story after another, then wonder why your mind won’t settle when you finally turn off the light. The information doesn’t stay on the screen. It follows you into the quiet.
The effect builds gradually. One session doesn’t necessarily change how you feel. But when it becomes a regular pattern, the mental clutter accumulates. You might snap at someone over something small, or feel exhausted even though you haven’t done anything physically demanding. You start each day carrying a little more than you did the day before.
Recognizing the Pattern
Doomscrolling is the habit of repeatedly consuming negative information online, often for longer than you meant to. It usually starts with good intentions. You want to stay informed, to understand what’s happening, or to feel like you have some sense of control during uncertain times.
But the cycle rarely delivers what it promises. Instead of clarity, you often end up with more noise. Instead of reassurance, you carry more worry.
Most people are not trying to make themselves feel worse. They’re looking for information or understanding. Recognizing the behavior for what it is doesn’t require judgment. It just requires noticing when the scrolling outlasts the intention.
This article is part of the Sports & Entertainment category, where entertainment, leisure, and cultural experiences are explored.
