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Doomscrolling On and On

  • Writer: Melina Kyriazi
    Melina Kyriazi
  • Mar 13
  • 6 min read


The clock chimes at 2 am on Easter Day, and the whole family is laying around the house, tummies filled with stew, cheese, and ice-cream cake. I’m spread out on the couch, dizzy from one too many glasses of wine and abundant food. I raise my eyes from my phone, and stare at my cousin, who is no older than six years old. He’s on the far end of the sofa, TV remote in one hand, and a crumbling biscuit in the other. With glassy eyes, he’s pointedly looking at the 65-inch TV in front of him, mindlessly scrolling through short videos, whose content I cannot pinpoint (as they appear to mainly consist of pure brainrot), by repeatedly pushing a button on the remote. I silently judge, thinking that he should be asleep by now, and blind to my own hypocrisy, go back to doomscrolling through my phone.
The rise of mind-numbing activities like these has become a big issue in our society, particularly following the Covid-19 outbreak in 2020 and the lengthy quarantines. I was 16 when the virus broke out. I remember the late nights in my room, the brisk spring air rustling through my sage green curtains and the occasional, perfectly timed hooting of an owl disrupting the silence of my suburban neighborhood. I had so much free time on my hands, so much that I did not know what to do with it. So, I lay on my floral bed sheets, the warm light of my calla lily-shaped lamp illuminating my cluttered room. With my overheated, constantly plugged in phone in hand, I scrolled for hours on end; a new TV show I must watch (Bridgerton, Outerbanks, Emily in Paris!), the viral sneakers that everyone MUST buy, the vaccine controversy – “they’re implanting microchips in our bodies!”, is the “corona virus” even real? From one topic to the next, I felt a headache forming and my eyes growing red and dry.
Now, activities like these have an official definition. “Doomscrolling” is the activity of spending excessive time on your phone or computer and reading bad or negative news stories. However, it now extends beyond this, describing the excessive consumption of […], short-form videos for a long period of time, without knowing the amount of time passed (“Doomscrolling”).
Even as I am writing this essay, I find myself compulsively reaching for my phone, hoping for a new notification or some sort of update. Before I realize it, my brain is numb with useless information and my eyes strained from the blue light of the screen. Studies reveal that social media platforms were designed to be addictive, constantly pulling users back in, with smart algorithms carefully curating personalized content for each user, flooding their feeds with content they’re bound to engage with. For instance, my friend H. was scrolling through her feed, when she stood up from her chair, looking at her phone in disbelief. “This is so creepy!” she said. “We were just talking about booking flights to Barcelona, and look! Ads are popping up and I didn’t even search for them!” She shook her head and looked at me with shock in her eyes. “It must be the algorithm,” I said. “It probably picked up on your engagement with posts about Barcelona!”
Personalized feeds can be useful when you are looking for something specific, such as tickets for a specific destination or a pair of sneakers you’ve been meaning to get. However, the addictive nature of social media can take over our everyday lives. But what exactly makes social media so addicting? It all comes down to neurobiology. The act of simply viewing a notification triggers the release of dopamine, a neurotransmitter connected with our body’s reward system which consists of “brain structures that are responsible for mediating the physiological and cognitive processing of reward” (Lewis et al.). This instant gratification makes the users chase the feeling and ultimately, without their knowledge, become social media junkies. (“How Social Media Uses Addictive Algorithms to Keep Kids Online”). According to a study conducted by the University of Michigan, around 210 million people have a social media addiction (Hoffman). Isn’t that alarming?
You suddenly find yourself unable to focus on everyday tasks. It’s late at night and you’re cross-legged on your desk chair, struggling to meet your upcoming deadline that is going to heavily influence your grade, but your brain is not receiving signals indicating urgency. Instead, you’re wasting the little time you have left, subconsciously craving that instant rush of dopamine that is slowly but surely compromising your ability to focus on one task for an extended period of time. Dopamine is directly linked with the regulation of attention, and any disturbances in its functionality can lead to compromised attention spans. So, if one single notification can have such significant toll on your brain, imagine how much of an impact extended periods of time of scrolling through short videos can have.
The main issue with social media algorithms lies in their prioritization of user engagement over the accuracy and diversity of information. Designed to personalize the user’s experience based on past interactions contributes to the creation of echo chambers. Within them, users are shown opinions similar to their own (Cambridge Dictionary), shielding them from any opposing viewpoints. In doing so, the rapid rate at which misinformation spreads gets perpetuated, reinforcing biases. I have gone down rabbit holes of the most random and insignificant things you can imagine, such as the conspiracy that pop-star Avril Lavigne died in the early 2000s and was replaced by a clone, or that the movie “Frozen” was created to cover the fact that Walt Disney was cryogenically frozen. I snap out of it hours later, my face literally hot from all that dizzying information, wondering why I just wasted so much of my time. Such misleading narratives and widespread conspiracies can become overwhelming, causing “high levels of information overload due to extensive usage of social media” or namely, Social Media Fatigue (SMF) (Sunil et al.).
Research has shown that spending extensive periods of time online can have serious consequences for your mental health. When we feel anxious, we seek escapism in the familiarity of our phone and end up getting caught up in the vicious cycle of doomscrolling which ultimately produces feelings of anxiety and depression. “It’s that damn phone!” my mom would always chime in whenever I told her that I am feeling down. I thought she was overreacting, just a worried mom who is not familiar with technology, but she wasn’t all that wrong. As I have gotten older, I have realized how much technology can have detrimental consequences to our mental health. In the era of social media, our lives might often seem pale – almost like the colors are not quite saturated and the sun not bright enough – in comparison to the carefully curated lives presented online. Someone always has a nicer body, a nicer wardrobe or the house that you’ve always dreamed of. So, you anxiously doomscroll for hours, quietly wishing you could have that life. What we don’t see, is how everyone yearns for what they don’t have, and so we strive to live up to those unrealistic standards, forgetting to cherish what we have.
You can see that social media addiction is a real issue anywhere you go, no matter the setting. I went to the beach this week. It was undeniably beautiful. The summer sun was bright and warm, reflecting on the crystal light blue waters that were gently crashing on the shore. A light breeze was rustling through the myrtle trees that surrounded the beach, and kids’ laughter could be heard from all around. Yet, if you took a look around, you would see the parents that are too preoccupied with their phones, and not even talking to each other, to see the sandcastles that their son made. If you looked a bit further, you would see the group of teenagers, where you’d notice that one girl buried behind her overheating phone, occasionally glancing up trying to make out some of the group’s conversation, but not caring enough to join them when they declared that they are going for a swim. After all, scrolling through TikTok must be more interesting. But sometimes, I do find myself being that one person, and at that moment, I have to think twice and put my phone aside and forget about it for a while.


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