If you have found yourself getting lost down a rabbit hole of reading negative posts on your social media news feeds, you’re not alone.
Doomscrolling is a damaging activity to which we are all vulnerable. If you find this habit triggering bad feelings, limit your screen time, set boundaries for news consumption, and spend more time doing things that make you feel good.
Social media gives you a sense of staying connected to your loved ones all the time and helps overcome loneliness in times when no one is around. However, despite its power to help people stay in touch with each other at the click of a button or the touch of a finger, its limitations and harmful effects may outweigh its benefits. Considering, the world of social media can be presented in a way that it seems more attractive than the real life, it can have detrimental effect on people with low esteem or disorders like depression and anxiety. Besides, one may connect less in real life if they get used to socialising on internet, giving them a false feeling of keeping in touch. Not meeting people in real life can take a toll on mental health and lead to loneliness, anxiety, depression and related issues.
Staying glued to social media and keeping track of constant flow of information may also negatively impact brain. In fact, tendency to surf or scroll through bad news, even though it is saddening, disheartening, or depressing, is termed as doom scrolling or doom surfing. During Covid times, this became more common when people tracked news related to virus and there were frequent developments.
Doomscrolling can lead to an unhealthy obsession with negative news and social media content, like recent tragedies and natural disasters.
An unhealthy obsession is something that you put all your time and energy into, and when you don't do it, it can make you feel bad and unable to function. If you feel like you consume too much negative news, you should try to redirect your attention to something else that does not involve your phone or computer—such as a fun new creative hobby.
When individuals have heavy social media use, studies show that this leads them to feel less socially connected. In a study published by the Canadian Journal of Behavioral Science, passive engagement with social media that involved not posting, but only viewing people’s posts was associated with lower efforts to seek social connection, reduced well-being, and higher stress.
As we check ‘stories’ or posts, we may worry about missing an event, an inside joke, or something that makes you feel left out. The human need to belong is so strong, that continuously feeling like this can make you develop an increased sense of loneliness or exclusion as we see people having a good time- which might only be one second of their life’s highlight reel.
Not only does doomscrolling come about from a lack of self-control, but it can make you feel a lack of control over the events that are going on in the world around you.
When you're addicted to doomscrolling, you likely wake up in the morning and the first thing you do is look for bad news. Furthermore, you likely continue to doomscroll all day until it is the last thing you do before you go to sleep at night. Overall, doomscrolling is like a vicious cycle. You might also feel more nihilistic, which may leave you with little motivation to peform important daily tasks.
Whether you love reading books, exercising, cooking, meditating, gardening, or something else, doing what you love makes life much more enjoyable. However, consuming negative content can lead to a lack of motivation.
If you're not motivated to do the things you used to enjoy doing daily, you might find that your quality of life decreases. In such circumstances, it's worth scheduling time away from your phone; you can use a tool like Google Calendar.
Doomscrolling, especially a few hours before bedtime, can ruin your sleep health. When you binge on bad news, it's difficult to get it out of your mind, leading to problems falling asleep and staying asleep and even insomnia. Need some help falling asleep after doomscrolling?
In fact, anxiety often goes hand in hand with sleep problems. So if you suffer from anxiety, and you're making it worse with doomscrolling, chances are your sleep quality is going to be seriously affected.
The truth is that an innocent news post can turn into mindless doomscrolling. And when you snap out of it, you realize that you've been consuming these bad news stories and articles for hours and hours on end.
There's no denying that doomscrolling can negatively affect your mental health and wellbeing in so many different ways. So it's important to take the correct steps and use some handy mobile apps to keep it in check before it gets unmanageable.
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