Doomscrolling: caught in the pull of bad news

What is doomscrolling?

Doomscrolling is compulsively getting stuck scrolling through the negative, usually on your own: feeding yourself a stream of bad news, drama and upsetting clips you can't look away from — and an hour later you feel anxious, drained and somehow worse, yet keep going anyway. It's exactly this scrolling on through the negative even though it doesn't do you any good that has even earned its own name.

How common is this?

Common and rising — widespread enough to be studied across large groups, with reviews linking it to worse wellbeing. WHO Europe also notes that heavy, passive scrolling goes hand in hand with lower wellbeing among teenagers. The compulsive negative scroll is a recognised modern trap — so your child isn't alone.

How can you recognise doomscrolling?

The clearest signal is scrolling past the point where it still helps. A few concrete signs that scrolling has turned into doomscrolling:

• The longer the scrolling goes on, the worse you feel — but stopping still doesn't happen.
• You actively seek out distressing or upsetting content.
• What's left at the end is a feeling of anxiety, exhaustion, or that the world is unsafe.

When these signs come together, the line from normal scrolling to doomscrolling has been crossed.

What does doomscrolling do to you?

It raises psychological tension and is linked to lower life satisfaction, more anxiety and a lingering unease. The body stays in a kind of quiet, constant alert — a sustained low-grade stress state that never settles. That's draining, even if outwardly you're just sitting calmly on the sofa.

Why is stopping so hard?

Because the brain is wired to scan for threats — and the feed delivers an endless supply of them. So doomscrolling hijacks an ancient survival instinct. On top of that: a low mood makes you seek out content that matches it — which deepens the pull. This isn't a willpower problem, but a very human reflex that gets exploited here.

What actually helps?

What helps most isn't confiscating the device, but deliberately breaking the pull and changing the inputs. What works:

• Interrupt the pull physically: when the "worse, but can't stop" feeling appears, stand up, change rooms or activity.
• Set time limits for the apps where the scrolling most easily tips over.
• Curate the feed: mute accounts that reliably make you feel worse.
• Deliberately bring in other content too, instead of only following the negative.
• Acknowledge how strong the pull is — that eases the pressure and makes countering it easier.

Why do these steps work?

Because doomscrolling is a kind of trance you slip into — a physical interruption (standing up, moving) snaps it more reliably than just "deciding to stop." And curating the inputs cuts off the supply of the threatening content the brain can't help scanning for — so the loop dries up at its source. What's decisive is the how: what teens help decide, they carry along.

What's worth talking about?

An honest question rather than an accusation — in a calm moment. Questions that open a conversation:

• "How do you actually feel after you've been on the phone a while — better or worse?"
• "Are there accounts that drag you down — shall we mute them?"
• "What would help you climb back out of a scroll hole like that?"

This is exactly where Digital Mastery comes in: both sides rate the same everyday life and see where the phone really becomes an issue — a fair basis for a conversation as equals instead of the next argument.