Psychologists claim that our brain is programmed to give priority to bad news. This phenomenon has a name in psychology: it is called doomscrolling, and experts say it is on the rise. More and more people display excessive and obsessive consumption of negative news through their mobile devices.
To understand the term, we will say that it comes from ‘doom’ (condemnation), and ‘scrolling’ (act of scrolling down with your finger on social networks). During the pandemic, this trend became very visible since citizens were constantly looking for updates on the health tragedy. Now it has returned, with users in a loop looking for shocking and alarmist information.
The obsession with instant information, a growing phenomenon
Today, doomscrolling has a fertile field thanks to pocket electronic devices, the Internet, social networks and a large number of users fueled by the need for immediacy, also in terms of news. Citizens want to be constantly informed, specifically about everything related to global conflicts or climate change.
Social networks encourage (a lot) this search for immediacy to become an unstoppable addiction, thanks to many factors, including its attractive presentation design. The idea is to keep users’ attention, and they achieve it to such an extent that psychologists have been quick to warn about the risks that this phenomenon has on the control of emotions and mental health in general.
What are the consequences of doomscrolling on mental health?
In times of uncertainty, with catastrophes about which we receive information and video images at every moment and through a thousand different channels, the consequence for users is the generation of intense emotional responseswithout forgetting the stress and anxiety that are implicit.
Hearing bad news all the time causes in many cases one to look for more details, more versions, videos from another perspective… multiplies the feeling of anguishsomething that could also affect the quality of sleep, in addition to causing users a deep feeling of helplessness.
This is how you can minimize the addictive effect of doomscrolling
Experts share some tips that could help control those negative emotions caused by constant addiction to sensational information. First of all, they advise that we try set limitslimiting the time we see news on our devices. Outside of that period of time, we should not navigate in search of catastrophes.
Another fundamental measure is to always inform ourselves in pages from reliable, verified and serious sources. In order not to have a lot of ‘down time’ that makes us fall back into the temptation of feeding ourselves with bad news on a loop, we will have to look for hobbies that entertain us, relax us, and remove our negative focus. Hobbies in these cases are essential.
We can also try to search positive news that offsets the bombingor negativity, and inspire us in the opposite direction. To achieve the purpose, we can make use of special applications or functions of our devices that help us reduce the time we spend viewing the news, and that offer us breaks from time to time.
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