The Doom Behind Scrolling

There’s a widespread epidemic of doomscrolling and brainrotting. What’s causing it? Photo by Borna Hržina from Unsplash.

You’ve done it before. I’ve done it before. We’ve all done it before. It starts as something simple—you just meant to check the time, or the weather forecast, or a message from a friend or family member. Maybe you were just searching something up—a recent catastrophe, a political crisis, or the latest alien sighting. And then, all of a sudden, the sun is already rising and you’ve spent the last few hours glued to your screen, trapped in a vortex of instant gratification and time you didn’t realize was passing. But why did you, a curious, interesting individual, just waste your precious time watching things you won’t even remember? Why does anyone? What makes us glued to our phones screens day after day during our short, ambitious lives? Well, a complex interplay of psychological and neurobiological factors have answers for that. But lucky for us all, understanding the problem is half the solution.

Where did this problem suddenly emerge from? Many sources state that it all began during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to Anand et al., “[the pandemic] led to a significant increase in the consumption of the internet for work, leisure time activities, and has also generated substantial amounts of anxiety and uncertainty, which has lead individuals to spend a lot of time surfing the internet for the latest news on developments in the COVID-19 crisis”. This action of internet surfing and constantly refreshing for more news became a coping mechanism for many during periods of isolation and pessimism, now known more widely as “doomscrolling”. Doomscrolling, or doomsurfing, which was actually Oxford Dictionary’s 2020 Word of the Year, is defined as “when you binge on news or social media content about troubling things—like a tragedy, crisis, or disaster.” And although the social-distancing phases of the pandemic are over, this word and many other practices still remain embedded in our society.

Getting to know our behaviors means we need to get to know ourselves. Our nervous system, which is responsible for processing the world around us and controlling cognitive and bodily function, consists of the central nervous system (CNS)—our brain and spinal cord—and the peripheral nervous system (PNS)—everything outside the brain and spinal cord. The nervous system uses chemical messengers called neurotransmitters and hormones to send and receive signals. They essentially do the same thing, but neurotransmitters carry chemical signals (“messages”) from one nerve cell to the next nerve, muscle, or gland cell, whereas hormones travel in your bloodstream to tissues or organs and typically work slower than neurotransmitters. 

But how do these mental mechanisms keep us locked in a state of seemingly endless doomscrolling? Well, there are certain neurotransmitters and hormones that result in the way doomscrolling makes us feel. For example, take dopamine, the brain’s “reward chemical.” You might have heard social media and other Internet platforms being associated with this neurotransmitter. This is because every time you refresh your screen and find something new to fixate on, or every time you scroll through TikTok videos or Instagram Reels or, yes, even YouTube Shorts, your brain experiences a quick hit of dopamine. This reinforces the behavior, regardless of how this makes you feel in the long term. Another reason why you’re doomscrolling is due to the brain's limbic system—often referred to as the lizard or reptilian brain—that's dominated by a structure called the amygdala. It promotes self-preservation and drives the fight-or-flight response to danger, fueling us to troll for threats, engaging norepinephrine, a neurotransmitter in charge of alertness and arousal. This prompts you to continue scrolling through the negative, alarming news seen on your feed.

When you’re doomscrolling, you’re feeding your brain a continual stream of cortisol, also known as the stress hormone. Over time, high levels of cortisol exhaust your brain and body, leading to inflammation that can cause a variety of mental and physical health issues, many of which doomscrolling is linked to. As you might guess, all that bad news can, and often does,  take a toll on your emotions and more. Doomscrolling can send your mind racing and lead to burnout. It can also make you feel uncertain, anxious, or distressed. And those feelings, research suggests, can steal your sleep, appetite, motivation, or desire to do things you usually enjoy. Moreover, the practice of doomscrolling has opened doors for other similar phrases: zombie scrolling: mindlessly scrolling on your phone through social media or other content; brainrotting: a decline in cognitive abilities such as attention, memory and mood following the consumption of low-effort, unchallenging content; and being “chronically online”: someone who spends an excessive amount of time on the internet, to the point where their online experiences and interactions significantly shape their perspective and understanding of the world. These phrases represent the changing nature of our digital habits and mental landscapes, capturing not only the behaviors themselves but also the emotional and cognitive costs of living in an always-connected, attention-fractured world.

Doomscrolling isn’t all bad —it first emerged as a way to stay connected and updated with world news, and still remains a credible source of information. However, it’s important to recognize when the hours spent on your phone learning about the latest plane crash, the likelihood of World War 3, or the possible climate crisis that may be the end of the world become needless and excessive. In a society where such a wealth of information is available at our fingertips, it’s necessary to filter the things that are important and the things that are not. So if you find yourself unable to tear away from your screen, here are a few tips: opt out of notifications, keep your phone at an arm’s length away, stop checking your phone compulsively, set up screen time, try a digital detox day, and stay away from your screens in the mornings. Personally, I’ve learned that screen time doesn’t really get me to stop looking at my phone, but it makes me aware of my situation. Keeping my phone at a distance and doing an occasional digital detox day were refreshing, but weren’t really enough to make it a habit. So take a minute and learn what works for you! There’s a ton of material to doomscroll on a brainrot with online, but there are also many creators who are learning to unstuck themselves from the rut that the Internet can be.

Doomscrolling is still a fairly new phenomenon—not enough research has been done on its benefits and detriments, or on the behavior itself. So much so that the Harvard Health Publishing reports that women are more susceptible to doomscrolling than men, while a doctor on WedMD says the opposite. So with this in mind, trust your gut and your body. Take baby steps towards loosening yourself from the grip of doomscrolling. Staying updated and informed is great, but not if it scares you from walking outside or being a part of society. But here’s some good news for you: recognizing the problem is half the solution. So technically, you’re already halfway there.

Bibliography

Anand, Nitin et al. “Doomsurfing and doomscrolling mediate psychological distress in COVID-19 lockdown: Implications for awareness of cognitive biases.” Perspectives in psychiatric care vol. 58,1 (2022): 170-172. doi:10.1111/ppc.12803

Barber, Aaron. “Doomscrolling and Brain Rot | 700 Children's Blog.” Nationwide Children's Hospital, 30 January 2025, https://www.nationwidechildrens.org/family-resources-education/700childrens/2025/01/doomscrolling-and-brain-rot. Accessed 13 June 2025.

Davis, Erik. “An Apocalyptic Meditation on Doomscrolling.” The MIT Press Reader, 1 October 2023, https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/an-apocalyptic-meditation-on-doomscrolling/. Accessed 13 June 2025.

“Neurotransmitters: What They Are, Functions & Types.” Cleveland Clinic, 14 March 2022, https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/22513-neurotransmitters. Accessed 13 June 2025.

Salamon, Maureen, and Toni Golen. “Doomscrolling dangers.” Harvard Health, 1 September 2024, https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/doomscrolling-dangers. Accessed 13 June 2025.

Starkman, Evan. “What's Doomscrolling and Can It Harm You?” WebMD, 6 November 2024, https://www.webmd.com/balance/what-is-doomscrolling. Accessed 13 June 2025.

“What Doomscrolling Is and How To Stop.” Cleveland Clinic Health Essentials, 6 May 2024, https://health.clevelandclinic.org/everything-you-need-to-know-about-doomscrolling-and-how-to-avoid-it. Accessed 13 June 2025.

“Zombie Scrolling and Mental Health.” Newport Institute, 10 October 2024, https://www.newportinstitute.com/resources/mental-health/zombie_scrolling/. Accessed 13 June 2025.