How do you stop doomscrolling?

You stop doomscrolling by changing the design of your day rather than by summoning more willpower: more distance from the phone, fewer triggers, set times for the news, and a better default within reach. If you keep failing, the most useful thing to understand is that you are not failing at willpower. You are losing to design. Doomscrolling, the act of scrolling through a feed of distressing news long after it has stopped feeling good, is the predictable result of two forces meeting: a product built to hold your attention, and a brain built to watch for danger. Once you see the mechanism, the way out becomes a set of small, practical changes rather than a daily act of self-discipline.

How to stop doomscrolling in 7 steps

7 changes, each one making the feed a little harder to reach and something else a little easier. Each is explained further down the page.

1. Charge your phone in another room overnight, and use a real alarm clock, so the late-night scroll means getting out of bed.
2. Keep the phone out of the room while you work. In a 2017 study, a smartphone that was merely present, switched off and face down, reduced people’s available cognitive capacity.^[3]
3. Turn off non-essential notifications, so the feed cannot summon you.
4. Log out of the most magnetic apps, or move them off your home screen, so opening them is a decision rather than a reflex.
5. Check the news at set times, once or twice a day for a set length, instead of grazing all day.
6. Cap short video. YouTube’s Shorts feed limit can be set to zero, though you can dismiss it.^[5] Use your phone’s own app limits for the rest.
7. Put something better where the phone usually sits: a paper book, a notebook, or shoes by the door for a walk without earbuds.

What is doomscrolling?

Doomscrolling is scrolling on and on through bad news or distressing posts, even though it is making you feel sad, anxious or angry. The “doom” is the content and the “scrolling” is the feed that never ends. Merriam-Webster, tracking the word in 2020, described it as the feeling when you cannot stop scrolling through news you know will upset you, and noted an earlier cousin, “doomsurfing”, for the same habit on the wider internet.^[4] It describes a habit, not a medical condition.

When did doomscrolling become a word?

2020 is when it went mainstream, as people scrolled through pandemic news late into the night. The word is a little older: the Quartz reporter Karen Ho, who spent 2020 posting nightly reminders to stop doomscrolling and go to bed, traced a use on Twitter back to October 2018.^[4] Merriam-Webster added it to its dictionary in September 2023.^[4]

Why is doomscrolling so hard to stop?

2 forces make it hard, and the first is older than the internet. In the 1950s the psychologist B. F. Skinner described what happens when a reward arrives on an unpredictable schedule rather than a fixed one.^[1] An animal that is rewarded every single time loses interest quickly once the rewards stop. An animal rewarded on a variable schedule, sometimes yes, sometimes no, never quite knowing, keeps going far longer. This is called variable-ratio reinforcement, and it is the most powerful schedule for producing persistent behaviour.

A social feed is a variable-ratio machine. Most of what you scroll past is forgettable. Occasionally something lands: a laugh, a useful fact, a jolt of outrage. You cannot predict which swipe it will be, so you keep swiping. The uncertainty is the point.

Does bad news hold your attention more than good news?

Yes, and that is the second force: the negativity bias. Across decades of research, people have been shown to weight negative information more heavily than equivalent positive information.^[2] Threats are more attention-grabbing than reassurances, because for most of human history missing a threat was more costly than missing good news. A feed optimised for engagement therefore drifts, on its own, towards the alarming, because the alarming is what holds you. Doomscrolling is what you get when a variable-ratio reward system is pointed at a brain that cannot look away from danger.

None of this is a personal flaw. It is the expected output of the system you are inside.

Is doomscrolling bad for you?

Yes, it can be. Compulsively scrolling distressing content is associated with worse mood and heightened anxiety, and it displaces sleep, reading and rest. It is not a medical condition, and this is not medical advice. If you feel persistently low or anxious, speak to a clinician.

What actually stops doomscrolling?

4 changes to your environment, because the problem is environmental. Trying harder rarely lasts. Changing the design of your day does.

Add friction. The most reliable single change is physical distance from the phone. In a 2017 study, simply having your own smartphone present in the room, even switched off and face down, measurably reduced people’s available cognitive capacity.^[3] The reach for it is automatic, so make the reach harder. Put the phone in another room while you work and overnight. The first two minutes of the urge are the hardest, and they pass.

Remove the trigger, not just the symptom. Turn off non-essential notifications, so the feed cannot summon you. Take the most magnetic apps off your home screen, or log out so opening them takes deliberate effort. Greyscale, app timers, and leaving the phone in a drawer all work for the same reason: they insert a gap between the urge and the action.

Schedule it instead of banning it. A total ban tends to fail and then collapse into a binge. A window works better: decide you will check the news once or twice a day, at set times, for a set length. You still stay informed. You stop grazing.

Have a better default ready. The urge to scroll is really an urge to fill a small gap of discomfort or boredom. If the easiest thing within reach is a paper book, a walk without earbuds, or a notebook, your hand goes there instead. You are not relying on resisting the feed. You are making something else the path of least resistance.

How do you stop a Reels or Shorts habit?

Make the short-video feed harder to reach, then cap whatever is left. Four steps work for Reels, Shorts and TikTok alike:

• Remove the shortcut. Delete the app, or log out, so opening it becomes a decision rather than a reflex.
• Use the built-in cap. The YouTube app has a Shorts feed limit under Settings, then Time management, and it can be set to zero. You can dismiss the reminder when it appears, so it is a nudge, not a lock.^[5]
• Use your phone’s own app limits for the apps that have no cap of their own.
• Fill the gap. The urge usually arrives in small idle moments, so keep a book or notebook where the phone normally sits.

Stronger medicine works too. In a 2025 randomised trial, blocking all mobile internet for two weeks improved sustained attention, mental health and wellbeing, and 91% of participants improved on at least one of those.^[6] The caveat: that trial blocked mobile internet in general, not short videos specifically. This is not medical advice.

How do you stop doomscrolling at night?

1 move matters most: charge your phone in another room overnight, so the late-night scroll means getting out of bed. Set a fixed cut-off time, leave a paper book by the bed as the easier option, and use a real alarm clock so the phone never needs to be on your bedside table.

The deeper point is that the gap you are trying to fill with the feed is not a problem to be solved. The quiet, slightly restless feeling that sends you to your phone is the same feeling that, left alone, becomes thinking, planning, and rest. Doomscrolling is what happens when that feeling gets hijacked. Getting it back is most of the work, and it is the subject of How to Be Bored Again.