Focus & Digital Habits

What Is Doomscrolling? The Origin, Psychology, and Why It’s So Addictive

By the Paritose Team · Published July 17, 2026 · Updated July 17, 2026

You sat down to check the news for five minutes. An hour later you’re still scrolling — through crises, arguments, and worst-case headlines you can’t do anything about — feeling worse with every swipe, and somehow unable to put the phone down. That behavior has a name. Doomscrolling is the compulsive habit of consuming an endless stream of negative news and content, long past the point of being informed. This guide explains exactly what doomscrolling is, where the word came from, the psychology that drives it, and why it’s so unusually hard to stop.

What is doomscrolling?

Doomscrolling (noun) is the act of compulsively scrolling through negative or distressing online content — bad news, crises, doom-laden headlines — long past the point of being informed, and usually while feeling worse for it. The “doom” is the dark, threatening subject matter; the “scrolling” is the endless swipe through a feed that never ends. It’s sometimes called doomsurfing, but the meaning is the same: seeking out the bad, on a loop, with no natural stopping point.

What separates doomscrolling from simply reading the news is the compulsion and the emotional cost. You’re not choosing to stay informed; you’re stuck in a loop that leaves you feeling worse, not wiser.

Where the word “doomscrolling” came from

The origin of the word is more specific than most articles admit — and many get it wrong by claiming it was “coined in 2020.”

The earliest known use dates to October 2018, when a Twitter user with the handle @Callamitys — later identified as writer and organizer Ashik Siddique — used “doomscrolling” in a post. The word then sat mostly dormant for over a year.

The word itself is a blend, and its etymology explains the meaning: doom — from the Old English dōm, meaning judgment or fate — captures the dark, threatening content, while scrolling describes the endless swipe through a modern feed. Put together, “doomscrolling” names the experience precisely: sliding deeper and deeper into bad news with no bottom to reach. That’s also why it’s called doomscrolling rather than just “reading the news” — the word bakes in both the darkness of the content and the compulsive, bottomless motion.

Its real breakout came in spring 2020. As the COVID-19 pandemic began, Quartz finance reporter Karen Ho started tweeting nightly reminders for people to stop scrolling and go to bed. She kept it up for hundreds of reminders and became known across social media as the “Doomscrolling Reminder Lady.” Ho is quick to point out she didn’t coin the term — but by repeating it every night to a growing audience during a global crisis, she did more than anyone to popularize it.

From there, the dictionaries followed:

• August 2020 — Dictionary.com flagged it as a top trending term.
• 2020 — Macquarie Dictionary named it a Word of the Year (Committee’s Choice).
• September 2023 — after three years on its “watch” list, Merriam-Webster added doomscrolling as an official entry.

In other words, the behavior is ancient — humans have always braced for bad news — but the word, and the frictionless technology that makes it possible, are strikingly recent.

Doomscrolling vs. normal scrolling vs. binge-watching

Not all screen time is doomscrolling. The difference is in what you consume, why, and how you feel afterward. Here’s how to tell them apart:

If your scrolling is aimed at bad news, has no natural end, and reliably leaves you feeling worse, that’s doomscrolling — not just being online.

The psychology of doomscrolling: why your brain does it

Doomscrolling isn’t a character flaw or a lack of discipline. It’s the predictable result of an ancient brain meeting a modern feed. Four forces combine:

1. Negativity bias. Humans evolved to treat threats as more urgent than good news — the ancestor who ignored a rustling bush didn’t last long. As communication researcher Jeffrey Hall of the University of Kansas has noted, potential threats grab our attention precisely because they might matter to survival. Bad headlines exploit that wiring.

2. Uncertainty and the need for control. In a crisis, scrolling feels productive — like you’re gathering information to stay safe and regain a sense of mastery. The problem: modern feeds deliver infinite bad news, so the search for “enough information to feel safe” never resolves.

3. Variable rewards. Feeds are built like slot machines. Most swipes deliver nothing, but every so often one surfaces something shocking or important. Unpredictable rewards on a “variable-ratio schedule” are the most powerful form of behavioral reinforcement known — the same mechanism that makes gambling so sticky.

4. Infinite-scroll design. Ordinary reading has stopping cues — the end of a page, the bottom of an article. Infinite feeds deliberately remove them. There is no bottom, so there is no natural moment to stop.

Why doomscrolling is so addictive

Individually, each of those forces is manageable. Stacked together, they create a self-reinforcing loop that’s genuinely hard to break.

It works like this: a trigger (anxiety, boredom, a hard task) sends you to the feed. Negativity bias makes the worst content the most magnetic. Variable rewards keep you swiping for the next hit. The infinite design removes any stopping point. And each swipe delivers a tiny sense of relief — “at least I know what’s happening” — which your brain logs as a reward, strengthening the habit for next time. The relief is temporary; the anxiety compounds; and the loop starts over.

There’s a neurological twist that makes it worse. Normally the brain filters information with a bias toward good news — a mechanism linked to the inferior frontal gyrus, demonstrated in a 2012 study using transcranial magnetic stimulation. But under perceived threat, that “good-news filter” appears to switch off, and the brain absorbs the bad more readily. Doomscrolling creates exactly that sense of threat — so the more you doomscroll, the more receptive your brain becomes to the next dose of doom.

Is doomscrolling actually an addiction?

Loosely, people call it an addiction. Clinically, it’s more accurate to call it a compulsive habit — but one that runs on the same reinforcement machinery as recognized addictions.

Researchers have started measuring it directly. A 2022 study published in the APA journal Technology, Mind, and Behavior — “The dark at the end of the tunnel” by Sharma, Lee, and Johnson — developed and validated a “doomscrolling scale,” treating it as a distinct, measurable media habit rather than a vague complaint. Other work links higher doomscrolling to greater psychological distress and lower well-being.

The practical takeaway is the same either way: because doomscrolling is driven by habit loops and reinforcement rather than conscious choice, willpower alone rarely fixes it. What works is changing the triggers, the friction, and the reward — the same tools that work on any habit.

The short version of how to stop

Frequently asked questions

This article is for general information and isn’t a substitute for professional medical or mental-health advice.