What Is Doomscrolling?

What doomscrolling means

Two things together turn ordinary scrolling into doomscrolling. The content is negative: a crisis, a war, a disaster, an outrage, bad news about money or the climate. And the scrolling carries on past the point where it is telling you anything. By the fortieth post about the same story you are not learning more. You are checking that nothing worse has happened.

People also use the word more loosely, for any long, aimless scroll that leaves them feeling worse, whether the content is news or not. The dictionaries allow for that. Merriam-Webster's definition covers news "or other content", so a midnight hour of other people's highlight reels counts too.

Where the word came from

The earliest known use is a tweet from October 2018, usually credited to the writer Ashik Siddique. It stayed niche for a year and a half.

Then the pandemic arrived. In the spring of 2020 Karen K. Ho, then a finance reporter at Quartz, began posting a nightly reminder telling her followers to stop doomscrolling and go to sleep. NPR profiled the habit, and her, that July. Ho has always said she did not coin the word, but she did more than anyone to spread it.

The dictionaries followed. Dictionary.com listed it as its top trending word in August 2020, Australia's Macquarie Dictionary named it the Committee's Choice Word of the Year for 2020, and Merriam-Webster, which had been watching it since 2020, gave it a full entry in September 2023 (summary of the history). A sister word, doomsurfing, appeared at the same time for the same habit on news websites.

Why we doomscroll

Bad news grabs us harder

People react more strongly to negative information than to positive, and news is no exception. In a 2019 study across 17 countries on six continents, people watching real news clips showed stronger physiological arousal and attention for negative stories than for positive ones. Feeds are ranked by what holds attention, so that bias gets amplified.

Checking feels like staying safe

When something frightening is unfolding, refreshing feels productive, as if missing the next update would leave you exposed. The researchers who built the first Doomscrolling Scale found that doomscrolling went with online vigilance, a constant readiness to check for updates, and with fear of missing out.

The feed never ends

A newspaper ends on the back page and a bulletin ends after half an hour. An infinite feed has no last item, so the decision to stop never presents itself. Aza Raskin, often credited with inventing infinite scroll, has said he regrets it (see the history). We go into this in why willpower loses to infinite scroll.

It becomes a habit

Repeat it enough and it stops being a choice. Once a habit forms, the cue alone can trigger the routine without any goal behind it, which is why you can find the app open without remembering deciding to open it.

What research says it does to you

The evidence is newer than the word, but it points one way.

• A few minutes is enough to lower mood. In a 2021 experiment published in PLOS ONE, people who spent just a few minutes reading COVID-19 news on Twitter or YouTube reported less positive mood and less optimism than people who saw no news. People who scrolled stories about acts of kindness for the same time did not show the drop.
• Social media, more than other news, tracks with symptoms. A 2022 daily diary study of 1,117 daily reports found that days with more social media use went with more depression and PTSD symptoms. Traditional media such as TV and newspapers did not show the same link.
• Heavy doomscrollers tend to be more distressed. A 2023 study of 378 adults found that higher Doomscrolling Scale scores went with more psychological distress, lower wellbeing and more problematic social media use.

Most of this research is correlational, so it cannot say for certain which way the arrow points. Distress probably drives doomscrolling as well as the other way round, which is part of what makes the loop hard to break.

Signs you are doomscrolling

• You keep scrolling a story you already understand, waiting for an update.
• You refresh the same feed several times in a few minutes.
• You feel worse than when you started, and carry on anyway.
• You look up and far more time has gone than you thought. People are poor judges of this: a meta-analysis of studies comparing logged and self-reported use found the two rarely match.
• It happens in bed. In a survey of 844 adults, phone use in bed went with taking longer to fall asleep.
• You open the app without remembering deciding to.

Doomscrolling and related terms

What to do about it

Knowing the word helps, because a habit you can name is easier to notice. The next steps are practical:

• How to stop doomscrolling: ten ways to reduce it, each backed by a study.
• What to do instead of doomscrolling: thirty ideas, sorted by how much time you have.

Common questions

What is the meaning of doomscrolling?

Doomscrolling means continuing to scroll through bad or upsetting news, usually on social media, long after it stops being useful. The word combines doom and scrolling. Many people also use it for any long scroll that leaves them feeling worse.

Is doomscrolling one word?

Usually, yes. Merriam-Webster lists it as one word, doomscrolling, and that is the most common spelling. Doom scrolling as two words is also widely used.

Who coined the term doomscrolling?

The earliest known use is a tweet from October 2018, usually credited to the writer Ashik Siddique. The word was popularised in 2020 by Karen K. Ho, a Quartz reporter who posted nightly reminders to stop doomscrolling.

Is doomscrolling an addiction?

It is not a recognised diagnosis, and no diagnostic manual lists it. Researchers measure it with questionnaires such as the Doomscrolling Scale and find it closely linked to problematic social media use, fear of missing out and psychological distress.

What is the opposite of doomscrolling?

A 2021 study called it kindness scrolling: deliberately reading stories of people helping each other. Unlike reading pandemic news, it did not lower people's mood. Some people call the same idea hopescrolling.

Why is doomscrolling bad for you?

Even a few minutes of negative news can lower mood and optimism, heavier doomscrolling goes with more anxiety and distress, and scrolling in bed delays sleep. It also takes time, which is easy to underestimate because people rarely judge their own screen time accurately.

Sources

1. Merriam-Webster. Doomscrolling, dictionary entry. www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/doomscrolling
2. Wikipedia. Doomscrolling: history of the term and dictionary recognition. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomscrolling
3. NPR (2020). Your 'Doomscrolling' Breeds Anxiety. Here's How To Stop The Cycle. www.npr.org/2020/07/19/892728595/your-doomscrolling-breeds-anxiety-here-s-how-to-stop-the-cycle
4. Morning Consult (2024). How Americans Feel About Doomscrolling. pro.morningconsult.com/analysis/doomscrolling-impact-users-mood-2024
5. Soroka, S., Fournier, P. and Nir, L. (2019). Cross-national evidence of a negativity bias in psychophysiological reactions to news. PNAS, 116(38). doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1908369116
6. Sharma, B., Lee, S. S. and Johnson, B. K. (2022). The dark at the end of the tunnel: Doomscrolling on social media newsfeeds. Technology, Mind, and Behavior, 3(1). doi.org/10.1037/tmb0000059
7. Satici, S. A., Gocet Tekin, E., Deniz, M. E. and Satici, B. (2023). Doomscrolling Scale: its association with personality traits, psychological distress, social media use, and wellbeing. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 18(2). doi.org/10.1007/s11482-022-10110-7
8. Buchanan, K., Aknin, L. B., Lotun, S. and Sandstrom, G. M. (2021). Brief exposure to social media during the COVID-19 pandemic: Doom-scrolling has negative emotional consequences, but kindness-scrolling does not. PLOS ONE, 16(10). doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257728
9. Price, M., Legrand, A. C., Brier, Z. M. F. et al. (2022). Doomscrolling during COVID-19: The negative association between daily social and traditional media consumption and mental health symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 14(8). doi.org/10.1037/tra0001202
10. Wood, W. and Neal, D. T. (2007). A new look at habits and the habit-goal interface. Psychological Review, 114(4). doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.114.4.843
11. Parry, D. A. et al. (2021). A systematic review and meta-analysis of discrepancies between logged and self-reported digital media use. Nature Human Behaviour, 5. doi.org/10.1038/s41562-021-01117-5
12. Exelmans, L. and Van den Bulck, J. (2016). Bedtime mobile phone use and sleep in adults. Social Science and Medicine, 148. doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.11.037