It’s 11 PM. You’re exhausted and need to sleep, but you’re scrolling through one disaster after another—political chaos, environmental catastrophe, human suffering, economic collapse. Each story makes you feel worse, yet you can’t stop. You tell yourself you’re “staying informed,” but really you’re doomscrolling: compulsively consuming negative news that leaves you anxious, helpless, and unable to sleep. The habit often creeps in during moments meant for rest—time that could just as easily be spent unwinding, reading, or even doing something light and absorbing like choosing to play tongits instead of absorbing one more crisis headline. Breaking this cycle isn’t about ignorance—it’s about consuming news in a way that informs without destroying your mental health.
Why Doomscrolling Is So Addictive
Threats are what humans evolved to focus on. Our brains treat negative information as more important than positive because evolutionarily, missing a threat mattered more than missing an opportunity. News organizations and algorithms play off of this, accentuating the negative in threats, conflict and disaster. Each negative story releases a little dose of anxiety that ironically compels us to seek out additional reports — we not only want to, but feel like we need to know all the details about the threat in order to be safe. But more news does not make for safety; it makes for more panic, which drives yet more consumption in a downward spiral.
The Illusion of Control
Doomscrolling gives the illusion that by reading about it we’re doing something useful. You’re not — you’re just stewing in problems that you are powerless to solve. Fifty articles about a crisis isn’t going to help the crisis or keep you safe. It leaves you unhappy even as it gives the appearance of worthwhile concern.
The Mental Health Cost
Continuous negative news directly contributes to higher levels of anxiety and depression, leading to feelings of helplessness. Your sense of the real world is recipient to as much reality distortion; you think the world is a way scarier and shittiest place than it statistically is because your information diet consists entirely of negativity. It distracts attention from things you can do (your relationships, your local community, your work). It interferes with sleep, which amplifies all the other mental health effects.
Breaking the Doomscrolling Cycle
Remove news apps from your phone: News at your fingertips enables doomscrolling. Generate friction by forcing desktop access for say news.
Schedule news intake times: Reserve 20–30 minutes of a certain time during the day for news. Outside of that window, you’re not on duty to be educated about every global crisis.
Opt for depth rather than breadth: Read one long-form article on something significant instead of fifty headlines on a bit of everything. Depth will give you comprehension; breadth will give you anxiety.
Balanced information diet: Actively look for neutral or positive coverage (medical progress, local success stories, scientific breakthroughs). Reality is a mix of good and bad; doomscrolling displays only half.
Tell between news and outrage bait: Is this explaining to me something I need to know or am going to care deeply about, versus making me feel angry or depressed? If it’s the latter, skip it.
Unfollow news accounts on social media: Social media isn’t news, it’s files for engagement (anger, fear, outrage) as the engines try to make more money showing you more ads. Hear news with a news time, not on your social feed.
Implement can I do something? filter: If you can do something meaningful (donate, volunteer, voting advocacy), read enough news that is useful for doing and then do. If you can’t do anything, taking in more news can lead to a sense of helpless anxiety.
Substitute the habit: Doomscrolling is a way to burn time and receive stimulation. Replace it with something else — reading books, podcasts, conversation, creative projects. Do not leave a gap; fill it with purpose.
The Stay-informed vs. Be Consumed Division
To be informed is to: understand the major issues that impact your country and your world, know what matters when you go to vote or speak out on an issue and have context for decisions that affect you. Being consumed looks like: knowing everything about every crisis, the relentless scrolling to make sure you don’t miss anything new, feeling anxious if you’re not up-to-date with all that’s amiss and valuing reporting above sleep or relationships.
Curating Better News Sources
Transition from social media news (engineered for outrage) to dedicated news time with quality sources. Opt for publications offering context and analysis, rather than simply breaking news. Subscribe to weekly news digests rather than read breaking news. Support the type of journalism that the world needs, at a time when it needs it most.
Wrapping Up
Doomscrolling is a contemporary addiction, one that feeds on primitive human impulses and the latest internet-optimized outrage algorithms. Shattering it is about consuming the news with intention, as opposed to compulsion, in a way that informs rather than eviscerates mental health. Begin this week by deleting news apps from your phone and scheduling in one dedicated 30-minute time frame to consume news. You can be informed without being consumed, aware without being anxious, and your job is to protect your mental health for things you actually have control over.