From Doomscrolling to Depression – Business – Kommersant

The term “doomscrolling” — an unhealthy attraction to reading bad news — gained currency in 2020, with the onset of the pandemic. This year, its relevance has only grown. At the same time, scientists come to the conclusion that such an unhealthy way of consuming news leads to mental and physical problems.

How news makes you feel bad

In late August, a team of scientists from Texas Tech University (TTU) published in the scientific journal Health Communication, “Caught in a Dangerous World: Unhealthy News Consumption and Its Link to Mental and Physical Illness.” The authors of the report study the phenomenon of the so-called doomscrolling (doomscrolling – from doom, that is, “death, rock”, and scroll, that is, “scrolling on the screen”).

Doom scrolling is usually understood as a long, obsessive scrolling through social networks and news feeds with an emphasis on negative news, even when they depress and upset the reader.

This term — and the phenomenon itself — gained particular popularity with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Then The New York Times came up with another title for this phenomenon – doomsurfing – but it has not received such distribution. Doomscrolling is also talked about a lot this year due to the situation in Ukraine, general geopolitical tensions, the economic crisis, etc.

Scientists from TTU interviewed 1.1 thousand people and came to the conclusion that 16.5% of them have an extremely problematic and unhealthy way of consuming news. Another 27.3% described their news consumption as moderately problematic. 28.7% said that they have no problems with this, another 27.5% called the problems minimal.

They were evaluated according to five parameters: immersion in news content; preoccupation with thoughts about the news; an attempt to reduce anxiety through the consumption of other news; the conclusion that it is difficult to distract from the news; understanding that news consumption interferes with the rest of life.

The researchers found that people in the first group — those with extremely unhealthy news consumption — were significantly more likely to experience various psychological or physical problems.

74% reported some kind of mental problem (against 8% in other groups), 61% reported physical problems (6.1% in other groups).

According to research leader Brian McLaughlin, TTU lecturer in political communications and media, this constant viewing of negative news puts some people on a “constant high alert” mode, so that they begin to perceive the world around them as a “dark and dangerous place.” According to him, the authors of the study were surprised to see that more than 16% of participants experienced such a strong effect of doomscrolling.

“Such people can find themselves in a vicious circle where, instead of shutting down, they get even more involved, become obsessed with the news and check for updates around the clock to alleviate their emotional suffering. But this does not help, and the more often they check the news, the more it begins to interfere with other parts of their lives, ”Mr. McLaughlin notes.

This is not the first study of its kind. Back in 2020, researchers at Berlin’s Charité University Hospital (actually a medical university) studied the connection between active reading of news about the pandemic and an increase in anxiety, the appearance of symptoms of depression, etc. The authors of the study called two and a half hours of reading such news a day as the limit beyond which the likelihood of such symptoms increases.

Biological property to be fought

At the same time, with the onset of the pandemic, some experts said that such behavior in difficult situations is natural. How noted Pamela Rutledge, director of the California Center for Media Psychology Research, said early last year that doomscrolling often “really just describes an obsessive need to try to find answers to questions. We biologically tend to follow (new dangers.— “b”)”.

According to psychologist Jade Wu, doomscrolling is similar to some of the symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder (GTD). “GTD is like a Twitter feed of the worries in your head,” she says. Such activities can also cause other symptoms, Ms Wu says: “If you run every day, it affects your muscles. If you do doomscrolling every day, it affects the psychological state and the brain.”

As Ms. Wu notes, people not only want to know about the danger, but also hope to find good news, in this sense, doom scrolling is similar to the behavior of slot machine players who hope to win after all.

Some experts or ordinary users are trying to deal with obsessive “sticking” in the news. Last year, journalist Karen Ho created a Twitter bot called the Doomscrolling Reminder Bot. Its purpose is to distract people from doomscrolling, to remind them to take their eyes off the screen sometimes, drink more water, go to bed early, etc.

At the same time, experts do not offer any obvious and unambiguous ways to deal with doomscrolling. UC Berkeley Professor of Psychology Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton advised American users to remind themselves that they have no influence on events such as the situation in Ukraine. “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t get involved or worried. But the reality is that we do not make decisions,” he notes.

In his opinion, it helps to focus on what you can do, even if it’s a little, for example, to participate in humanitarian projects. It’s also worth trying to build a healthier relationship with the news – look for reliable sources instead of reading everything, turn off the TV in common areas in the office, etc.

As Dr. Rutledge notes, in order to combat doomscrolling, it is important to first fix the very fact of the problem, and then try to track your media consumption, changing it in some cases. In particular, you can set timers that measure how much time you spent on your gadget, reminders of the need to be distracted, night mode on your smartphone, etc.

Yana Rozhdestvenskaya