What 6 Hours of Doomscrolling Does to Your Brain 🧠

To feel alive again, spend a day with your phone dead. 💀📲

Reading time: ~ 3 minutes

You know the drill. You pick up your phone 📱 just to check the weather or read a text, and bam! Before you know it, you're scrolling—another tragic news headline, another viral tweet that makes your blood boil. Two hours pass. Six hours in, you look up and realize half the day is gone.

Sound familiar?

According to a study, the average person spends a whopping 3 hours and 15 minutes per day doomscrolling (1). Dr. John Ratey, a Harvard professor, warns, "The compulsive nature of doomscrolling can lead not only to wasted time but also to increased stress and anxiety."

In this read, we’re diving deep into the history of doomscrolling and the damaging effects it has on your brain, and some of the ways that you can combat its effects.

Hook, Line, and Sinker—How It Begins 🎣

Dr. Hilda Burke, a psychotherapist, says, "Your brain craves information the way it craves food or sex.". We’re wired to seek new stimuli, a throwback to our hunter-gatherer days when vigilance meant survival.

Today, instead of looking out for predators, we’re hooked on the dopamine (2) rush from scrolling.

• The Hook: Attention-grabbing headlines or posts that spark your curiosity. 🎣

• The Line: The infinite scroll that keeps feeding you more of what you react to. 🤩

• The Sinker: The emotional investment that makes it difficult to detach. 😥

When something new pops up on your screen—bingo! Dopamine floods your brain, creating a natural high. You think you’re just staying updated, but chemically, you’re on a rollercoaster 🎢, one that delivers highs of dopamine and lows of stress hormones like cortisol.

The Doom Spiral 🌀

As Dr. Andrew Huberman (3), a Stanford neuroscientist, aptly puts it, "When you experience too much stress, your brain essentially shifts into a state of survival."

Now that we’ve ventured through the dopamine highs and cortisol lows, let’s get into what I call 'The Doom Spiral'—the cascading effects of anxiety you accumulate from doomscrolling.

Imagine it like this: each scroll is like spinning a roulette wheel in your brain 🎰. Sometimes you hit the dopamine jackpot and feel great; other times, you’re barraged by news that triggers stress and anxiety.

The illusion is that you’re gathering valuable knowledge.

How to Break the Cycle 🔄

Cal Newport once said, "Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not."

Instead of blindly scrolling, set an intention before you unlock your phone. Think of it like grocery shopping with a list so you don’t end up with a cart full of junk food.

• Set Boundaries: Give yourself time limits or designate specific times for news consumption.

• Curate Your Feed: Unfollow accounts or hide posts that are constant sources of stress and anxiety. Replace them with ones that enrich and uplift you.

The 20–20 Rule

If you can’t resist the lure, at least play it smart. For every 20 minutes of doomscrolling, look up and focus on a positive thought or action for 20 seconds. It’s a game-changer.

Bottom line: Your brain 🧠 is your most valuable asset. Don’t let it be hijacked by the endless cycle of doom and gloom.

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Conclusion 🙂

In this article, we’ve examined the historical basis of doomscrolling and how doomscrolling can affect our lives in non-helpful ways. We’ve also learned about methods to mitigate the damaging effects of doomscrolling including the 20-20 rule, better curation of sources, and boundaries.

I hope that you can get a takeaway from this and learn how to surf 🏄the Internet in a more healthy manner :)

Please don’t forget to like, and subscribe to learn more about productivity and other interesting things. 😎

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Sources

Doomscrolling Scale: its Association with Personality Traits, Psychological Distress, Social Media Use, and Wellbeing - Satici et al. 2023 (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) (1)

Dopamine Nation - Anna Lembke (amazon.com) (2)

ADHD, Drive and Motivation (hubermanlab.com) (3)