(upbeat music)
It's late.
Something stressful happened today.
You pick up your phone just to check.
And 20 minutes later, you've read about three crises.
You had no knowledge of an hour ago
and you feel much worse than when you started.
And the question isn't why you did it.
The question is why it felt like the right thing
to do at the time because it did.
Doom scrolling doesn't feel like self-destruction
when you're doing it.
It feels like self-care.
It feels like you staying informed, being responsible,
not bearing your head in the sand.
And that feeling, the sense that you're doing something
useful when you scroll is the most important thing
to understand about why this behavior is so hard to stop.
Today, we're gonna talk about what Doom scrolling
actually is, what's happening in your brain
and nervous system when you do it.
Why it paradoxically feels helpful in the short term
while making everything worse in the long term
and three practical ways to interrupt the cycle.
Hi, I'm Dr. Judy Ho, clinical and forensic neuropsychologist
and your host on Savvy Psychologist.
This show is all about real psychology
that you can actually use.
We'll help you face life's challenges
with an evidence-based approach,
a sympathetic ear and zero judgment.
So what is Doom scrolling exactly?
While Doom scrolling is the compulsive consumption
of negative digital news for extended periods,
I mean, repetitive, prolonged, and difficult to stop,
it's often driven by uncertainty,
emotional discomfort, and the need for more information.
This term exploded during the height of the COVID pandemic,
but the behavior has roots in something much older than that.
About one in six people show signs
of problematic news consumption,
severe enough to impact their stress, anxiety,
and overall mental and physical health.
During the early pandemic,
digital news use jumped up about 35%,
and social media use nearly 47%.
And those numbers haven't come back down
the way people expected.
Research consistently finds Doom scrolling is most common
in people with higher trait anxiety,
lower self-control, and higher neuroticism
on the big five personality traits inventory.
People who tend to experience negative emotions
more intensely are particularly vulnerable to Doom scrolling.
But here's what I actually see in clinical practice.
Clients almost never tell me that Doom scrolling
is their problem.
They describe it as just staying informed,
and that self-awareness gap is part of what makes
this so hard to address.
When we look at the patterns together,
it's almost always the same.
It happens most of the times of highest-dress or lowest mood.
So that means that my clients are not Doom scrolling
when they feel pretty good.
They generally Doom scroll
when they're already emotionally depleted.
And that's important because it's at those moments
that it most easily feels like self-care
or just trying to relax and decompress
when actually it's doing something quite different.
So here's the paradox in why Doom scrolling feels like helping.
It's technically a form of emotional regulation.
That's right, so when we're anxious uncertain,
we're feeling out of control,
scanning for threats is a hard, wired human survival response.
Information seeking in the face of threat feels active,
feels productive, feels protective,
and the illusion of that control is real
and is part of the appeal.
Knowing what's happening, even when what's happening
is terrible, feels better than not knowing at all.
The primary psychological driver here
is something researchers call intolerance of uncertainty.
That's the deep discomfort with not knowing.
Doom scrolling temporarily soothes that discomfort
by providing some information.
But the problem is that negative news is essentially infinite.
New threats emerge constantly
and each piece of information generates new uncertainties.
So the more we scroll to soothe the discomfort,
the more anxious we actually become.
The negativity bias adds another layer.
Our brains are wired to prioritize negative information.
So this is a survival mechanism from a time
when missing a threat was much more costly
than missing an opportunity.
So negative headlines are indeed more attention grabbing,
more emotionally activating,
and more memorable than positive ones.
Platforms know this, news, programs know this,
and they optimize for it.
And it's clear why we get drawn in.
It really is more intellectually interesting
with all other things considered
when we're talking about consuming negative information.
This is a completely normal human response
to something that's as old as time.
But now in the internet age,
Doom scrolling can feel like self-care.
And unfortunately it does function in harmful ways over time.
Research shows that if you doom scroll a lot,
it predicts lower engagement in your life,
more ruminating thoughts,
and this is particularly true for people
who are already more emotionally reactive
to negative information.
So why does this happen?
I want to tell you a little bit about the neuroscience
of what's happening in your brain when you doom scroll.
The amygdala, which is your brain's emotional
and alarm center,
responds to negative news the same way
that it would respond to a really personal immediate threat.
So your cortisol and your adrenaline will spike
and the body goes into a state
of low grade physiological arousal.
Essentially it's a form of fight or flight.
And of course this is functional,
it's productive when the threat is immediate and actionable
like when you're trying to run out of a burning building,
but it's damaging when the threat is global,
ongoing and completely outside your control.
And that's the nature of most news.
You're activating a crisis response
to something you can't actually do anything about right now.
And the more you doom scroll,
the more you keep activating it over and over.
And here's the neurological trap.
Cortisol arousal narrows your attention
and increases your attention
for threat relevant information.
That means a cortisol spike from one bad headline
actually makes you more likely
to seek out more bad headlines.
So that is a doom loop.
Each piece of negative news primes a brain
to want more negative news.
And that's why doom's rolling is so hard to stop mid-session.
You know what I'm talking about
when you're reading articles on your phone
and there's a hyperlink to the next article,
to the next article and just keep clicking hyperlink
after hyperlink.
This is the phenomenon I'm discussing right now.
You're genuinely in a different physiological state
than when you started.
You're not making the same choice you made
when you first picked up the phone just to be informed.
I read a study that I thought was so interesting
because it showed that doom scrolling
specifically evokes existential anxiety.
So if you've missed that episode,
I recorded that a few weeks ago.
I'll link to it in the show notes below.
But existential anxiety is that sense of emptiness,
loss of purpose and meaning and even hopelessness.
And that's just beyond anxiety and depression symptoms.
The content that dominates news feeds like climate,
conflict, societal and community breakdown
that activates the existential concerns
around mortality, meaninglessness,
and just what makes us uniquely human
and the fact that everything can feel scary all at once.
So this is really important information.
What this study is telling us is that
it's not just making you anxious
about specific events that's happening right now.
It's threatening your sense that life has meaning
and that things can truly be okay.
It can rob you of your sense of hope for a better future
and that's a very deep impact.
There's one genuine buffer.
The research has also identified
which is psychological resilience.
So people who have higher resilience
were significantly less likely to doom scroll
even when they're not feeling their best.
So having resilience doesn't eliminate anxiety
about current problems.
It just changes the person's behavioral response to it.
And this is important because it means
that the intervention isn't just about limiting news
because you do have to stay informed.
It's about building internal resources
that you can come back to
which makes that compulsive information
seeking less necessary in the first place.
My clients who doom scroll most
are almost always the ones who tell me
that they feel most out of control
in areas of their lives that are important to them.
So their phone becomes a place
where the illusion of agency lives.
They might think to themselves,
I can at least know what's happening
even if I can't change it.
So this is a great segue
into the three practical tools of the day.
Remember, the tools are not going to be
about restricting news or deleting apps.
They're about changing your relationship
with the anxiety and stress
that drives this behavior in the first place.
The first tool is name it in the moment.
And I call this the two second pause.
One of the most powerful tips
against compulsive behavior is that moment
of awareness before the behavior.
So most doom scrolling begins automatically
without a comment.
conscious decision, the phone just comes out
before the thought even arrives.
So this two-second pause interrupts that automatic cycle
by inserting just enough prefrontal executive function
engagement to make that behavior more noticeable.
Before opening a news app or social media,
pause for two seconds and ask yourself one question.
Am I scrolling toward information or a way
from a negative feeling?
If the answer is a way from a negative feeling,
whether that's boredom, anxiety, loneliness,
or restlessness, then that's a signal to pay attention to.
I'm not saying that you can't do it
under those circumstances, but it is important to notice
what's actually going on underneath.
And if you're using this for emotion regulation,
make sure to vary your repertoire
of emotion regulation strategies.
It's not that you can't do scroll
from time to time when you're feeling stressed.
It's that you're really cycling
other emotion regulation tools with this particular one also.
And this tip works because when you label an emotional state,
what neuroscientists call affect labeling,
this reduces the amygdala activation.
So that part of the brain that is very emotionally charged,
it reduces it from spiking too much,
putting a word to the feeling literally reduces its intensity.
So this two-second pause is creating the moment
of awareness that automatic behavior generally bypasses.
So what I tell my clients is,
you don't have to stop scrolling after the pause.
Sometimes you might do it anyway,
that's fine, it's just about having the awareness
of what you're doing.
And that in itself can help you to slow down
and not hyperlink quite so much
when you get into the midst of it.
The second tool is a schedule news window,
so contain it rather than eliminate it.
Again, I understand that you have to stay informed.
Trying to eliminate news consumption entirely
is both unrealistic and unnecessary.
So again, let's help you to be informed in a way
that feels manageable and helpful.
One thing that I found really helpful for my clients
is to schedule news windows.
This addresses the compulsion
without demanding abstinence completely.
So designate one or two specific times per day for news.
I suggest 15 to 20 minutes and setting a timer.
So have a specific start and end time.
And outside those windows,
those types of apps are going to be closed.
So this key variable that works is being intentional about it.
You chose this time and you are in control of it.
You're not being pulled in just because you have nothing else
to do or because you're feeling extremely stressed.
And this compulsion to check
is often driven by this intolerance of uncertainty
as I already mentioned.
So if it's not really driven by genuine informational need,
then the scheduled windows trains your brain
to tolerate the gap between the checks.
And that's also very helpful.
I would also suggest that if you are going to schedule
these news feed time frames that you don't do it late night
before you're falling asleep,
because that can be really stressful.
A lot of times people can't stop
or they can't settle their mind to go to sleep.
And another time that probably isn't the best
is the first thing in the morning.
In fact, I actually suggest that for the first 10 minutes
in the morning, you don't pick up your phone at all.
I know that sounds like it's really hard to do,
but it can make such a difference
in terms of how you start your day.
So really steer clear of those early morning windows
or late night windows.
And otherwise schedule 15 to 20 minutes
and see how this works for you.
The final tool is to replace the behavior
by addressing the underlying feeling directly.
As I mentioned, doom scrolling is an emotional regulation tool.
It's an attempt to manage stress, anxiety, uncertainty,
the need for control.
And so we understand that.
We respect that.
But the most sustainable intervention
is to identify what's actually needed
and what's going to work better
and to meet that need more directly.
When the doom scrolling urge hits,
identify the underlying feeling first
and then ask yourself,
what would actually help you to address this?
So if you're anxious about something specific,
can you take one concrete action on that thing
even a tiny one right now?
If you're uncertain about something outside your control,
can you do something that restores a sense of agency
somewhere else in your life?
If you're feeling lonely or disconnected,
can you reach out to a person
rather than open your news app?
The channel switching principle
we talked about in the brain rot episode applies here too.
So if you haven't listened to that episode,
I'll make sure to link to it in the show notes below.
But the brain rot episode talked about switching
from cognitive passive consumption
to physical, relational, or creative activities.
And that's a neurological reset.
So this could be things like a five minute walk,
a text to someone you've been meaning to check in with,
a few minutes of something that you do
with your hands like knitting or doing a puzzle.
These are going to help you to regulate your emotions better.
There's a tactile element to it
that can be very calming for people
and activates the rest and relaxation parts of your brain.
Try these out and let me know how they go.
Leave me a review on Apple podcasts
or email our team at
[email protected].
That's a wrap on today's savvy psychologist.
Remember, we all dooms roll sometimes, you're human,
and you're born with a brain
that was built for a very different information environment.
We don't want you to stop caring about the world.
We want you to find a relationship with the world's problems
that doesn't leave you too depleted
to do anything about them.
And remember, insight without action is just interesting.
So take one thing from today and do something with it.
Savvy psychologist is a quick and dirty tips podcast.
Thanks to the QDT McMillan team.
Subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts.
You can also find the show on YouTube
and follow us on socials.
I'll meet you back here next episode.
Before I let you go, a quick but important note.
This podcast is for educational and informational purposes only.
It's not a substitute for working
with a licensed mental health professional
and nothing here constitutes clinical advice
or establishes a therapeutic relationship.
If you're struggling, please reach out
to someone who can truly support you.
PodcastTranscript AI