Go on social media and scroll for a little bit, and then suddenly a whole hour has passed. It’s called doomscrolling and it’s more common than most think.
Doomscrolling is the act of spending an excessive amount of time reading large quantities of negative news online. Doomscrolling can also be defined as the excessive consumption of vertical, short-form videos for a long period of time, often without knowing how much time has passed.
According to researchers at Caldwell UNC Health Care, doom scrolling is seen as responsible for a decrease in attention span, productivity, fatigue and mental health.
Doomscrolling is shown to contribute to feelings of stress, anxiety, and depression. Many find doomscrolling to be addictive as it gives dopamine and temporarily relieves anxiety despite making it worse later, said author Matt Glowiak, who specializes in anxiety, personality and depressive disorders.
Doomscrolling acts as an escape from the problems of the world for many. Symptoms of doomscrolling tend to be irritability, lack of productivity, poor concentration and mental fatigue.
Doomscrolling has had a much bigger impact on students than originally thought.
Students have even seen these symptoms.
Ignite freshman Liva Gabbard said she sees positives and negatives.
“It can affect students negatively by clogging their minds, but it can have some positive effects by helping educate them on important matters,” Gabbard said.
While teens scroll on social media and see news, they’ll never know if it’s the full story or true unless it’s fact checked, which many kids don’t think to do. Students can be sitting there doomscrolling on whatever platform they chose and not even know it.
According to a CNN 10 article, part of it has to do with teens’ own attention process having a negative bias when it comes to information.
Looking at the issue from an evolutionary perspective, it could be related to wanting to be more alert to threats, the article says. Social media companies’ algorithms are designed to make people want to spend more time on their site so, when teens see negative things over and over, it is because the algorithm thinks that is what teens want.
Since it’s still a relatively new issue, there is not much known about it, however there are ways to fix doomscrolling, such as limiting screen time, shifting focus to different things than scrolling.
