Why you need to stop ‘Doom Scrolling’ for your mental wellbeing

Doom Scrolling is a new word that just dropped on your language zeitgeist.

Photo by Startup Stock Photos from Pexels

And if we were the first you heard it from, kudos, but, the reality is that a YouTuber and author came up with it.

What is it?

Well there is no universal definition but you are familiar with it. When you can’t keep scrolling down your timeline or newsfeed to find out any and every bit of news on the current pandemic. I have seen it and it is everywhere. It is now harder to find news about anything else. This has become such a deep thing that some news platforms have created non-coronavirus news platforms where you can still find out that the war in Afghanistan has broken a truce, Thai fishermen swimming from Malaysia just got rescued, the US just returned USD300m stolen from Malaysia and other squiggly bits.

Now we look for the latest theory, videos on new numbers, a new study by so and so, using words like social distancing and self-isolation and quarantine like it was a broken karaoke machine.

Yet, the doom scrolling isn’t really doing anything for us.

There is so much we do not know and what we thought we were sure of a month ago is different from where the world is now. But our fear is what the media preys on. We dig deeper into the wormhole and when the shock of the worst case scenario we search for what is worse. It is the shock value that we desire. And when the shock isn’t enough and we are numb to it, we look for more.

So what to do.

Put down your phone for a day. Go analogue, Go dark. Just do things that aren’t on the Internet. Read book. No not George Orwell’s 1984. Just, human stuff.

All the weird stuff will still happen whether you read them or not. The world’s problems are not yours.