Where it sits
Checking the news to stay informed is healthy. Doomscrolling is the far end — reading past the point of usefulness, into helplessness.
How it unfolds
The trigger
Something worrying happens — or you're just tired and low — and you open the app 'to check quickly'.
The pull
The feed is engineered to be endless and to surface whatever keeps you reactive; alarming posts rise to the top.
The false promise
Each post hints that the next one will finally resolve the dread — so you keep scrolling toward a reassurance that never comes.
The spiral
Negativity bias makes bad news feel more important; anxiety rises, which makes you scroll more, which raises anxiety.
The depletion
You surface an hour later drained, no better informed, and more anxious than when you started.
How to recognise it
Tap each one you recognise. Nothing is saved or sent — it stays on your device.
Doomscrolling is a very common habit, not a personal failing — the feeds are designed to be hard to leave. If anxiety or low mood feels persistent or overwhelming, a doctor or mental-health professional can help; in a crisis, contact your local emergency or crisis line.
Tell it apart
| Aspect | Doomscrolling | Staying informed |
|---|---|---|
| Ends when | Never (infinite feed) | You're up to date |
| Leaves you | Anxious, drained | Aware, settled |
| Driven by | Compulsion | Intention |
| Sources | The raw feed | A few trusted ones |
Checking the news to understand the world is healthy; doomscrolling is reading past the point of usefulness into helplessness. The tell is whether you feel more informed or just more anxious.
| Aspect | Doomscrolling | Brainrot |
|---|---|---|
| The content | Distressing news | Low-value filler |
| The feeling | Anxiety, dread | Numbness, fog |
| Why you stay | Vigilance | Inertia |
| Dictionary status | Macquarie Word of the Year, 2020 | Oxford Word of the Year, 2024 |
| Names | The behaviour | The content and its effect |
| Requires bad news | Yes | No |
| Coined | 2010s | 1854 |
Doomscrolling is compulsive consumption of distressing news specifically — the feed hurts and you keep reading anyway. Brainrot is the broader slang for low-value content mush and the dulled feeling it leaves behind. One is anxious; the other is numb.
What it doesn't mean
The feed is engineered with infinite scroll, and ranked to exploit our negativity bias, so that it is hard to leave — it's a design problem, not a character flaw.
Past the point of being informed, it mostly raises anxiety without adding anything you can act on.
What it really means
Doomscrolling is what happens when an anxious mind meets a feed with no bottom. You open the app for a reason — to check, to know, to feel a little less powerless — and the design does the rest. There is always one more post, and each one whispers that it might be the one that finally settles you. It never is, so you keep going.
The trap is built from two parts. The first is negativity bias: our brains are wired to treat threatening information as urgent, so alarming posts grab attention and feel important to keep watching. The second is the infinite feed itself — engineered to never end and tuned by algorithms that learn what keeps you reactive. Put them together and you get a loop that manufactures the very anxiety it promises to relieve.
Naming it helps, because the habit survives on feeling like a personal weakness when it is really a designed outcome. You are not lacking willpower for getting stuck; the feed was built to be sticky. The way out is rarely heroic — it's small frictions, a phone left in another room, a few trusted sources instead of the raw torrent. The feed will always be bottomless. You don't have to reach the bottom to feel informed.
Where it comes from
ruin, dread
to move through a feed
A modern compound: dread, scrolled through without end.
- c. 2018
The word begins circulating online.
- 2020
Explodes during the pandemic; a Macquarie Word of the Year.
In real life
- You told yourself you'd check the headlines for five minutes. It is now ninety minutes later, you feel worse, and you have learned nothing you can act on.
- Every time you reach the bottom of what you've seen, your thumb flicks up on its own — the feed refills, and the small hope of relief restarts.
- You're exhausted and want to sleep, but putting the phone down feels like leaving a door unlocked, so you keep watch over a feed that never closes.
Questions
Q01What is doomscrolling?
Doomscrolling is compulsively scrolling through negative news or social media even though it worsens your mood. The feeds are bottomless and algorithmically tuned toward alarming content, so the habit is easy to start and hard to stop.
Q02Why do we doomscroll?
A mix of negativity bias (our brains treat bad news as urgent), infinite-scroll design, and algorithms that reward emotionally charged content. Under stress we seek information to feel in control — but an endless feed never delivers the closure we're chasing.
Q03How do you stop doomscrolling?
Small frictions help: set app time limits, keep the phone out of the bedroom, follow a few trusted sources instead of the raw feed, and schedule short 'news windows'. Replacing the reach-for-phone cue with another small action reduces the automatic loop over time.
Q04Is doomscrolling bad for your mental health?
Research links heavy doomscrolling with higher anxiety and lower wellbeing, and it commonly disrupts sleep. It isn't a clinical diagnosis, but it can meaningfully affect mood — and cutting back tends to help. Persistent distress is worth discussing with a professional.
Q05When did the word doomscrolling appear?
It emerged around 2018 and spread widely during the 2020 pandemic, when the news felt both frightening and endless. The Macquarie Dictionary named it a Word of the Year for 2020.
Sources
- Word of the Year 2020 (Committee's Choice: doomscrolling) — Macquarie Dictionary.
- Doomscrolling — Wikipedia.