Why do we doomscroll when stressed?

Most of us do not doomscroll on a good day. We do it on the evening after a hard phone call, in the waiting room, in bed with a temperature, at 6am before our feet have touched the floor. That pattern is the clue. Doomscrolling is less a love of bad news than a response to feeling unsettled, and it helps to see why, because the reason it feels useful is also the reason it does not work. (This is general information, not medical or mental health advice.)

This page is about the pull: why stress sends us to the feed. For what the feed then does to your mood and sleep, see what does doomscrolling do to your brain?

Why do I doomscroll when I’m anxious?

502 adults took part in the validation study that answers this best. Researchers built a 15-item scale for doomscrolling, defined as persistently attending to negative news about crises, disasters and tragedies, and found it was closely related to online vigilance, problematic internet and social media use, and fear of missing out. It was also linked to anxiety and poor self-control.^[1] The caveat: this was a survey at one moment, so it shows what travels together, not what causes what.

Vigilance is the useful word. When something feels uncertain, part of us wants to keep watch, as if knowing every development will make us safer. Scrolling offers the feeling of keeping watch without any of the power to change the thing being watched. The feed never runs out, so there is never a moment when the watch is over.

Does doomscrolling make stress worse?

Yes, it can, particularly after frightening events. After the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, researchers surveyed representative samples in Boston, New York and the rest of the US. People who took in 6 or more hours a day of bombing-related media in the following week reported higher acute stress than people who had been directly exposed to the bombings.^[2] The caveat is that this was a survey, not an experiment, though it did adjust for people’s mental health before the attack.

Smaller doses show the same direction. In a 2021 experiment, just 2 to 4 minutes of pandemic news on social media lowered positive mood straight away compared with seeing no news.^[3] The scroll you start in order to feel prepared tends to leave you feeling worse.

Why do I doomscroll when I’m tired?

2 things tend to meet at night: tiredness and a sense that the day has not given you any time of your own. Doomscrolling is linked to poorer self-control,^[1] and the end of a long day is not when anyone’s brakes are at their best. Researchers have named a closely related habit bedtime procrastination, defined as going to bed later than you intended when nothing external is stopping you.^[4] We cover that in more detail in what is revenge bedtime procrastination?

The trap is that tired scrolling costs sleep, and less sleep makes the next evening’s scroll more likely. It is a loop, not a character flaw.

Why do I doomscroll when I’m sick?

No study we could find looks at doomscrolling during illness specifically, so here we are reasoning rather than reporting. Being ill combines everything above. You are lying down with the phone within reach, you have little energy for anything more demanding, and you may be worried, sometimes about the very illness you have. Searching symptoms at 2am is doomscrolling with a personal subject. If you are worried about your health, a pharmacist, your GP or NHS 111 will give you a better answer than a feed will.

Why do I doomscroll as soon as I wake up?

4 and a half hours a day is how long UK adults now spend online on average, according to Ofcom, and most of that time is on a smartphone.^[5] That figure covers everything we do online, not just scrolling, but it explains a lot about mornings. If the phone is your alarm clock, the first thing your hand touches each day is a device built to hold attention, and your mind, not yet quite awake, is at its least guarded.

The morning scroll also sets a tone. Starting the day with a stream of other people’s crises is a strange way to prepare for your own ordinary one.

Who is most likely to doomscroll?

3 groups stood out in the scale study: men, younger adults and the politically engaged were more likely to doomscroll.^[1] The same researchers found it was less common than they had expected, and varied a lot between people. That is worth holding onto. Doomscrolling is a habit many of us slip into at certain moments, not a condition most of us have.

What helps, then?

The pattern suggests the fix. If doomscrolling is a way of keeping watch, the aim is to give the watch a boundary: a set time for the news, once or twice a day, and the phone out of the bedroom overnight so tiredness and waking up do not come with a feed attached. If it is a way of avoiding a feeling, it helps to have something small and physical to do instead, which is why we made The Four-Minute Cards. Our practical guide to how to stop doomscrolling goes through the rest, and if you want the design side of the story, see why are phones so addictive?

If stress or anxiety is with you most of the day, not only when you pick up the phone, that deserves more than a new habit. Your GP is a sensible first stop.