Doomscrolling is the word of the year at this point. The majority of us do it; I mean, before I started writing this article, I was doomscrolling on TikTok. Then it hit me: I am doomscrolling while I’m about to write an article about doomscrolling, and then I had to reflect on myself for a little while to see just how far along in my own problem and topic I was before I could freely give opinionated advice to someone else.
Doomscrolling and the overconsumption of social media have significantly worsened the mental health of many people. We trap our brains in a cycle of fatigue and voluntary swiping through media and blue light consumption. Scrolling through an endless feed of social media content transforms curiosity and comedy-based dopamine hits into an unhealthy and addictive loop.
Digital overconsumption damages psychological, cognitive, and physical well-being in several distinct ways. One way we are damaged from doomscrolling and overconsumption is called cognitive exhaustion.
When we constantly overconsume bite-sized, fast-paced digital media, we are engaging in “brain rot”. This quick media alters how the brain processes information. It constantly destroys attention spans and the ability to hold concentration in the real world. Constantly jumping from quick, small-sized media to the next just ruins a human skill of connection and attention skills.
Social media doesn’t just display tragic news and short-form entertainment. It is a gateway to heavily curated and unrealistic lifestyles and forces people into a constant loop of comparing themselves to other people. Constantly measuring your own raw, behind-the-scenes reality against someone else’s polished highlights lowers self-esteem.
It also causes sleep procrastination and holds us from getting the allotted hours to sleep and refresh and rest our bodies. But there are ways to combat this online epidemic. We can remove phones from sleeping or resting spaces, limit app and phone time in order to restrict patterns, and have the self-control and discipline to go do more analog activities in our lives to remove the crutch of social media.
