How Doomscrolling affects your brain
Nowadays, everything is one click and one scroll away. Doomscrolling is the very definition of overly consuming curated content that exudes negativity by constantly scrolling and mindlessly clicking.
The Doomscrolling Phenomenon
As the scorching sun rises over the windows, so are our hands on their way to our cellphones. Waking up in the morning without the blaring radiations of our cellphones feel scarcely complete to start the day.
Scrolling through your phone early in the morning first before everything is a universal experience, a consensus routine that most - if not all - partake in.
Even outside your home, any place would always have a definite chance that you will glimpse a crowd with people bowing their heads to their phones, with their fingers constantly scrolling and pressing through, either while walking or sitting. Decades ago, it would have been a clump of paper used as a medium for any source of entertainment, communication, and productivity, instead of now a handheld brick made out of rare earth minerals. Presently, we are living in a technological world, albeit not yet as advanced as a highly technical science fiction would depict it; however, it is as addicting and convenient as one from the 21st century would gladly accept.
What is Doomscrolling?
Doomscrolling or doomsurfing is a recently established phenomenon—born from the upended pinnacle of the COVID-19 pandemic—that one might say is a driving tool that maneuvers a person’s state of mind. It’s a word that exactly describes our empty stomachs constantly seeking and excessively consuming curated social media content online, which particularly are negative news or pieces of information like tragedy, crisis, or disaster.
With all the political conflicts, climate disasters, and even community-wide problems like school shootings, most people nowadays like to search for the whats and the whens, keeping themselves aware and up-to-date during distressful circumstances and uncertain times.
One click and one scroll away on TikTok, Twitter, or Facebook, we can easily scan through information to remain vigilant and generate definitive explanations and contingency plans for the fear of the unknown we have yet to know about any circumstances. What’s worth noting about technology is its convenience, and it brings you endless opportunities to satiate your doomed hunger for scrolling.
Teen and young adults are susceptible
Adolescents of today are inherently technopiles and digital maestros.
Not once will you see a teenager putting down their cellphone unless necessary, because truthfully for them, it’s difficult.
This is due to brain differences between an average adult and a teenager. According to a brochure publication from National Institute of Mental Health, the brain only finishes maturing into adulthood by your mid-to-late 20s. This means that most of your teenage years are spent on processing the parts of your brain, and the last one to mature is the part behind one’s forehead—the prefrontal cortex.
The prefrontal cortex is responsible for reasoning and behavior regulation. It’s the one that weighs your choices and options, the voice in your head that tells you, “Are you doing this right? Is this what you should really do? Why? Is this a great idea?” For teenagers who have yet to have a mature prefrontal cortex, they are most likely to engage in impulsive and dysfunctional acts. Thus, it is scientifically known that teenagers would have a harder time breaking their doomscrolling behaviors.
How this behavior cause adverse effects on your brain
This vigilance over circumstances, however, can lead to a hypervigilance behavior that makes us compulsive about scrolling. We want to know more, view more, and read more to make sense of the crisis, but it leads us to more demoralizing news that reinforces negative thoughts and feelings in our brains. We continually seek out information to soothe our fears and turmoils, but this will only compact you into a self-destructive cycle.
You are what you consume, and if you are binging negative pieces of social media content like a marathon for Netflix movies, your brain might absorb the wrong and unhealthy viands unfit for you.
Mentally, engaging in doomscrolling can trigger anxiety and stress. The brain absorbs negative stimuli and actively switches on the body’s stress response and release of cortisol hormones. Scrolling and seeing negative events that evoke emotional reactions such as sadness, fear, and anger may also amplify stress and anxiety. Experts have also observed fear and paranoia, insomnia, and depression to be triggered and affected by doomscrolling.
Deep in the brain, its neural functions may also be affected and exacerbate the mental implications from doomscrolling. Dr. Amit Shah, a neurologist in Mumbai, observed that due to repeated exposure to negative stimuli:
Neural pathways may change and lead to an easy access for triggering anxiety and fear responses.
Amygdala, responsible for emotion regulation, may increase more activity in processing fear and anxiety and lead to susceptibility of weakened mental health.
Prefrontal cortex may have decreased function, leading to difficulty in managing one’s emotions and rational decision-making.
Break the cycle
Changing behaviors overnight is impossible. However, having the energy to bring forth effort and determination to change oneself is the most possible thing a person can successfully accomplish over time. Doomscrolling is more than engaging with negative content found online—like its very name, it dooms people’s behaviors and state of mind. Unhealthy as it is, breaking the cycle of doomscrolling is a significant mental health matter.
Harvard experts, Dr. Nerurkar and Dr. Mollica, from Maureen Salamon’s article, an executive editor at Harvard Women's Health Watch, suggested strategies on setting limitations and boundaries with your phones. If you’re to sleep or eat dinner with the family, keep your phone out of reach. If you’re at work, keep an arm’s length away from it. Professional hours should mean that there is a fine line boundary between you and your phone—don’t be afraid of keeping it silent for once in a while. Setting a line between your phone and some time in your day can provide less viewings of negative social media content, allowing you to see more of reliable curated content from other sources such as the TV.
Social media is a convenient place that has all the possible information and content that you need for leisure and entertainment; however, it is still important to place yourself first and above the satisfaction it provides you. Curate your feed, set time limits, and practice engaging more in life outside technology. In today’s time brimming with crises in many parts of the world, it is important to be vigilant and aware, but it should be paired with mindfulness.
Break the cycle of doomscrolling with the opposite of it all—positive contents and reliable sources.
About the Author
Zahara De Robles is the Founder and Associate Editor of NWU Journals. She is currently a first-year college student in the University of the Philippines.
