Doomscrolling

Doomscrolling is the compulsive, extended scrolling through negative or alarming content — news, arguments, crises — past the point where it informs and into the point where it distresses.

The word spread in 2020, when lockdown news cycles met infinite feeds, and Merriam-Webster and the Macquarie Dictionary both picked it up that year. It describes a loop: anxiety prompts a check, the feed supplies more anxiety, the anxiety prompts another check. The feed has no end, so the loop has no natural exit.

What interrupts it is not information — you already know it is bad for you — but friction at the moment of the check. Turning off news pushes removes a trigger; a pause before the app opens removes the reflex; a time box (“ten minutes, then a reminder”) gives the session an end the feed will never provide.

Related: Cortex app adds a pause before X, Reddit or Instagram opens and asks whether the open is work, leisure or autopilot — the question most doomscrolling sessions never got asked. →

Pause Point →Autopilot scrolling →