Have you been “Doomscrolling” like the rest of us? 5 tips on how how to stop.
Have you been “Doomscrolling” like the rest of us? Here are a few tips on how I stopped the spiral.
2020, what a year! COVID-19, delayed election results, a president who isn’t conceding defeat and a rapidly approaching Christmas season. Even if you are not based in the US, there are plenty of reasons for us to be doomscrolling through our social media feeds, seeking out that dopamine hit it usually provides.
What is “Doomscrolling”?
Have you found yourself scrolling endlessly through your various social media feeds? Has TikTok been telling you that you’ve had enough scrolling for the day, or worse, has your ScreenTime report sent chills down your spine? Don’t worry — me too!
Doomscrolling is the tendency to continue to surf or scroll through bad news, even though that news is saddening, disheartening, or depressing.
I find myself doomscrolling most days; it’s become even more apparent since starting my own business and trying to be more effective with my time.
What is it doing to my brain?
Our responses to stress are governed by our amygdala, a part of our brain that is responsible for self-preservation. In times of stress or trauma, our amygdala activates our fight or flight response. This changes the way our brains think in several ways.
One of these ways is that it causes us to seek more information. Hence, we can ascertain what actions we need to take to survive this stressful situation.
The aggravating factor, in this case, is the bad news on our newsfeeds, often the news is physically distant to us — but still traumatising mentally. There are usually a few solutions we will seek out that will release the feeling of stress we are experiencing.
Our minds will encourage us to continue to consume this media, looking either for more information on the aggravator or for something that breaks this stress cycle and stimulates a dopamine release. This pattern can end up being quite a negative spiral as the urge results in us continuing to scroll, or switching to another app to search for an alternate stimulant.
How do I stop scrolling?
So now that we understand a little bit more about why we doomscroll, what can we do about it? The following list has given me some personal comfort in my attempts to control my media consumption.
1) Deactivate problematic notifications
Using the screentime app on my iPhone, I can see that last week I received over 1400 notifications from various apps. This resulted in me picking up my phone over 900 times (that’s over 128 times a day!).
Once I worked out the worst culprits for this, I deactivated push notifications stopping that unrelenting feeling that you need to check your phone.
These articles will guide you through how you can deactivate your notifications, and begin reclaiming your time:
2) Schedule a Check in with the news once a day
Once I deactivated the notifications, I then used my calendar app to schedule a time to be able to check the news. By being more conscious in my media consumption, I expect to be able to control better the number of times I seek out this information, lessening the 128 times per day I used to pick up my phone.
3) Indulge elsewhere
One of the best outcomes of being able to reclaim my time was being able to decide to invest time in more productive activities such as other hobbies, being able to focus on my business, writing this article, reaching out to friends, journaling, gardening and being generally more active (which in itself has a host of benefits for mental health!).
While you’re journaling gratitude or speaking with people close to you, why not ask them for help with the next point:
4) Ask a friend for a summary
We all seem to have that one friend who is super interested in what is happening in the world. Check-in with them, see how they are coping through this period. If you are trying to avoid checking the news so regularly this is a great time to ask your friend for an update on the worlds current events. You can even ask them to filter out some of the negativity if you aren’t quite ready for that yet.
5) Know the future will improve
As with all things, time shows us how situations will change. We can often reflect on other times in our lives that we had similar feelings of dread or similarly high levels of stress. We can see how time has improved our perception of these situations, and the healing effect that it can have.
As 2020 comes to a close and 2021 brings with it a sense of renewed hope. I hope you can see how this positivity and growth will also benefit our collective communities.
About the Author
Nick van Luyt is an HR professional with over 8 years of experience in people management, process effectiveness, and the Australian Industrial Relations and Human Resources framework. Nick is passionate about sharing this knowledge and expertise with his readers.
Check out more articles Nick has written here:
