Why doomscrolling happens—and how to break free gently

You’ve already brushed your teeth. The lights are off. The sheets are cool. But your thumb is still scrolling. Headline after headline. Fire. War. Outrage. Illness. Economic collapse. The latest scandal. The next crisis. You’re in bed, but your brain is on high alert. Your heart beats faster, your thoughts race, your shoulders tighten. You know the scroll isn’t helping, but you can’t seem to stop. It feels urgent. Necessary. Responsible. And weirdly satisfying—until it isn’t.

This is doomscrolling. And if you’re wondering why doomscrolling feels so bad, it’s not just the content. It’s the rhythm you’ve fallen into. Or rather, the rhythm your digital environment has trained you to follow. The good news? You don’t need to go off-grid. You don’t need a detox or a dramatic quit. You just need a few gentle design shifts—to your space, your flow, and your mind.

The term “doomscrolling” didn’t enter pop culture until around 2020, but the behavior long predates it. Psychologists now define it as the compulsion to continuously consume negative news, even when it triggers distress. Some call it “doomsurfing.” Others liken it to media self-harm. But at its core, doomscrolling is a loop—a feedback system between your brain’s need for certainty and your device’s delivery of fear.

And it’s not just about “too much screen time.” It’s about being caught in a stimulus cycle that overrides your body’s natural cues for rest, reflection, or release. You scroll not because you’re weak, but because your system is designed to keep you there.

We are biologically wired to detect threats. It’s a survival mechanism that helped our ancestors avoid predators, spot dangerous weather, or notice social rejection cues that could lead to exile.

But unlike the occasional rustle in a prehistoric bush, today’s threats are infinite, abstract, and ever-updating. Each headline about climate change, war, economic volatility, or social injustice activates the same fight-or-flight pathways in your body. The chemicals released—cortisol, adrenaline, orexin—are useful in short bursts. But when activated chronically, they begin to erode your physical and emotional wellbeing.

That tight chest. That 2am wake-up. That sense of dread when you close the app. It’s not “being sensitive.” It’s your body trying to regulate after a flood of unprocessed alarm signals.

Most people don’t doomscroll on purpose. They open Twitter or a news app to “just check” something. But the attention economy doesn’t reward balance. It rewards engagement. The more frightening or emotionally charged the content, the more likely you are to stay. And the more you stay, the more your feed adjusts to show you similar content.

Before you know it, your “news” becomes a tightly curated stream of things going wrong—with little room for context, resolution, or hope. Even social media platforms amplify this effect. Rage and fear get more clicks than nuance and subtlety. As psychologist Sherry Benton puts it, “the more dramatic the news, the more we tend to get lost in it.” So you scroll. And scroll. Not because it feels good—but because it feels like the only way to stay connected.

It’s worth noting: wanting to stay informed is not the problem. Doomscrolling isn’t just about reading bad news. It’s about how that news lands in your body, and what happens when you consume it compulsively, without space to process.

A 2022 study published in Technology, Mind, and Behavior linked doomscrolling to higher levels of anxiety, depression, and problematic internet use. A 2020 Dartmouth study found that students exposed to pandemic news multiple times a day experienced more mental health deterioration than peers who limited their exposure.

Over time, your baseline anxiety increases. Your sleep suffers. Your perspective narrows. You may become more cynical, more irritable, more fatigued—even more susceptible to misinformation. You’re not building resilience. You’re burning through your emotional reserves.

Doomscrolling often displaces something else: bedtime rituals, morning stillness, social connection, real rest. The hour before sleep is particularly vulnerable. It used to be a natural wind-down: a warm drink, soft lighting, maybe a book or quiet conversation. Today, it’s an algorithmic frenzy of overstimulation, often consumed alone, in silence, with no boundary between input and exhaustion.

This isn’t just about preference. It’s about system disruption. When you remove rituals that cue safety, closure, or containment, the body doesn’t know when to shift into repair mode. So it doesn’t. You fall asleep wired, not rested. You wake up tired, not reset. The solution isn’t to ban all screens. It’s to build rituals that reintroduce rhythm.

Here’s the key mindset shift: doomscrolling isn’t a failure of self-discipline. It’s a symptom of system mismatch. Your nervous system wasn’t built for 24/7 global alerts. Your living space wasn’t meant to double as a newsroom. Your hands weren’t meant to hold the world’s grief at midnight. So let’s redesign—not your personality, but your flow.

1. Change your object default

Objects shape behavior. If your phone is your alarm clock, flashlight, weather update, and evening companion, it becomes your go-to object in transitional moments. The fix isn’t to get rid of your phone—it’s to make other objects more visible.

Place a book, a candle, a soft journal, or even a small craft item beside your bed instead. Something tactile. Something that gives your hands a job that doesn’t involve scrolling. Even better? Replace your morning phone grab with a light-based alarm or a warm drink on a side table. Create options. Your brain will choose what’s accessible.

2. Redesign your scroll ritual

If you’re going to scroll—and most of us will—do it with intention. Set a 15-minute timer in the morning, in a chair, not your bed. Use this time to scan headlines or check updates. Then close the apps and physically stand up. Move your body. Step outside. Start your day. Separating “consumption time” from “wind-down time” helps your body learn the difference between alertness and rest. And if you catch yourself scrolling later than planned? No guilt. Just pause, inhale deeply, and ask: “Is this giving me clarity, or just more noise?”

3. Rewire your feed

Platforms respond to your behavior. If you want your feed to be less doom-heavy, start interacting with different content. Search for climate solutions, not just climate crisis. Follow accounts that spotlight joy, creativity, local resilience. Even small interactions—saving a story, sharing a hopeful update—can shift what the algorithm surfaces. Your feed is not a mirror. It’s a garden. What you water, grows.

4. Introduce “kindness scrolling”

Instead of cutting off scrolling altogether, replace doomscrolling with “kindness scrolling.” That might mean reading a story about a rescued animal, watching a video of a teacher being honored, or exploring a thread about someone rebuilding after hardship. One study in PLOS One found that exposure to COVID-related kind acts did not produce the same mental health decline as exposure to traumatic COVID news. Compassion exposure, it turns out, builds resilience. You’re not being naive. You’re giving your nervous system a break.

5. Rethink your news diet

You don’t need to avoid the news. But you may need to restructure your intake. Choose one or two reliable sources. Designate a time of day for updates—ideally, not first thing in the morning or last thing before bed. Opt for a weekly digest or newsletter if daily news feels overwhelming. And if a headline draws you in, ask: Do I need to know more now—or am I seeking certainty I can’t have? Sometimes, not clicking is the more informed choice.

Most guides will tell you to set screen time limits or delete apps. That’s fine, if it works for you. But real change often begins smaller—in the unnoticed moments between transitions.

The three minutes after brushing your teeth. The 90 seconds between opening your phone and deciding what app to click. The five minutes before you get out of bed. These are design windows. What if you used those moments to stretch, light incense, check in with a plant, sip water, or journal a single line? No app needed. Just a cue to reconnect with yourself before the scroll begins. Design a system that makes peace easier to choose.

You will doomscroll again. That’s not failure. That’s being human in a hyperconnected world. But maybe the next time you catch yourself three clicks deep into a news spiral, you’ll notice. You’ll pause. You’ll choose to stop—not because you’ve reached your limit, but because you remembered you have one.

And in that pause, you might dim your screen. Breathe. Return to your body. Whisper to yourself: enough for tonight. You are not your feed. You are not the crisis. You are a person trying to rest in a world that keeps spinning. That’s not laziness. That’s wisdom.

Doomscrolling isn’t a problem to be punished. It’s a habit that reflects how overstimulated, underheld, and ungrounded modern life can feel. If we can redesign the systems that invite us to stay hypervigilant, we can also design rituals that help us feel safe enough to stop. Not out of fear. But out of care.