Doomscrolling: what it is, why it hooks you and how to stop
Doomscrolling is scrolling on and on through bad news or negative posts, even though it makes you feel worse. It is hard to stop because the brain gives negative information extra weight and the feed never runs out, so what helps is a fixed end for the news and a step between you and the feed.
October 2026 · 7 min read
You open your phone to check one thing. Forty minutes later you are deep in a thread about a crisis you cannot change, feeling a little worse with every swipe, and still swiping.
That is doomscrolling. It is not a diagnosis, and it is not a flaw in your character. It is what happens when a brain that watches for danger meets a feed that is built never to end.
Where the word comes from
Doom plus scrolling. The word spread in 2020, when the pandemic gave everyone a reason to refresh the news all day. Oxford Languages listed it in its report on the words of that year: compulsively scrolling through social media or news feeds that bring bad news.
Merriam-Webster gives 2020 as its first known use and added doomscroll to its dictionary in September 2023. Its definition stresses the cost: spending excessive time on online content, especially news, that leaves you sad, anxious or angry.
Why it is so hard to stop
Bad news weighs more. Psychologists call it negativity bias: people give greater weight to negative things than to positive things of the same size. A threat in your feed feels urgent in a way good news rarely does, so you keep checking whether it got worse.
The feed has no last page. Aza Raskin, who designed infinite scroll in 2006, told the BBC in 2018 that he felt guilty about how it keeps people on their phones far longer than they meant to be. Without an end, there is no natural moment to stop.
It feels like preparing. Reading one more update feels useful, as if knowing more keeps you safe. But the tenth update on the same crisis rarely changes what you can do, and the worry stays.
It starts with a reflex. Many unlocks happen before you have decided anything. Your thumb opens the app, and the feed takes it from there.
What the research says
Doomscrolling is a young research topic, and most studies are surveys. They show connections, not causes. With that in mind:
- In two studies with more than 900 adults, doomscrolling was linked to anxiety, weaker self-control and fear of missing out. It was less common than the researchers expected and went with slightly less positive emotion, but not with lower overall well-being (Sharma, Lee and Johnson, 2022).
- In a survey of 1,100 US adults, 16.5% showed severely problematic news consumption, and that group reported more mental and physical ill-being than the rest (McLaughlin, Gotlieb and Mills, 2022). A follow-up by the same team found a smaller severe group, 7.5%.
- Across three studies with more than 1,200 people, the link between doomscrolling and well-being, including life satisfaction, ran through psychological distress (Satici and colleagues, 2023).
- Among students in Iran and the United States, doomscrolling went along with more existential anxiety in both countries (Shabahang and colleagues, 2024).
The direction is consistent: more doomscrolling, more distress. Whether the scrolling causes the distress or the distress drives the scrolling, these studies cannot say.
How to stop doomscrolling
- 1
Give the news a fixed time
Pick one or two moments a day for news, for example after breakfast, and use a format that ends: a newspaper, a daily briefing, the evening news. A finished edition gives you a last page.
- 2
Turn off news alerts
Breaking news notifications pull you back into the feed at random moments. Switch them off and read the news when you decide to.
- 3
Keep the phone out of bed
In bed, scrolling eats into sleep. In a study of 844 adults, phone use at bedtime was linked to worse sleep (Exelmans and Van den Bulck, 2016). Charge it in another room.
- 4
Check in after five minutes
Ask yourself: do I know more, or do I just feel worse? If it is the second, that is your cue to close the app.
- 5
Plan what comes instead
Boredom and worry will still show up. Decide now what fills the gap: a walk, a call with a friend, a few pages of a book, cooking. Something with an end that keeps your hands busy.
- 6
Put a step in front of the feed
A short pause before an app opens works. In a six week field study of the app one sec, which makes people wait a moment before a chosen app opens, users opened those apps 57% less, and in 36% of attempts they closed the app again right away (Grüning, Riedel and Lorenz-Spreen, 2023).
Where Amba comes in
Amba is that step, made physical. The apps you pick stay blocked until you tap the Amba tag with your phone and choose how long you need. When the time is up, they close again.
The reflex still comes. It just meets a decision instead of a feed.
Questions about doomscrolling
Start with tonight
Charge your phone outside the bedroom tonight and switch off news alerts. Two changes, five minutes, and the feed loses its two easiest ways in.
Sources & further reading
- Oxford Languages (2020). Words of an unprecedented year.
- Merriam-Webster. Doomscroll (dictionary entry).
- Rozin, P. & Royzman, E. B. (2001). Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 5(4).
- BBC News (2018). Social media apps are 'deliberately' addictive to users.
- Sharma, B., Lee, S. S. & Johnson, B. K. (2022). The dark at the end of the tunnel: Doomscrolling on social media newsfeeds. Technology, Mind, and Behavior, 3(1).
- McLaughlin, B., Gotlieb, M. R. & Mills, D. J. (2022). Caught in a dangerous world: Problematic news consumption and its relationship to mental and physical ill-being. Health Communication, 38(12).
- McLaughlin, B., Gotlieb, M. R. & Mills, D. J. (2024). Problematic news consumption and its relationship to mental and physical health: A replication study. Health Communication, 40(10).
- Satici, S. A. et al. (2023). Doomscrolling Scale: Its association with personality traits, psychological distress, social media use, and wellbeing. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 18(2).
- Shabahang, R. et al. (2024). Doomscrolling evokes existential anxiety and fosters pessimism about human nature? Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 15.
- Exelmans, L. & Van den Bulck, J. (2016). Bedtime mobile phone use and sleep in adults. Social Science & Medicine, 148.
- Grüning, D. J., Riedel, F. & Lorenz-Spreen, P. (2023). Directing smartphone use through the self-nudge app one sec. PNAS, 120(8). One author created one sec.