YOU are in bed, having fully intended to get to sleep early and have a decent night’s sleep, but instead of closing your eyes and drifting off to sleep, your screen is glowing and your thumb is scrolling, in a never-ending motion.

There’s nothing there for you apart from misery — breaking news alerts, reports on coronavirus death rates, features highlighting the devastating mental health impact of living through the pandemic — and this repetitive act is in no way relaxing or enjoyable. But you can’t seem to stop.

This is doomscrolling, also known as doomsurfing, and it’s wrecking your mental health. Doomscrolling describes the act of endlessly reading through gloomy news updates and bad-faith takes online.

While doomscrolling makes little sense as a pre-bed activity, many of us find ourselves in the same routine — and the act has become even more prevalent in coronavirus times, so much so that Merriam-Webster recently declared doomscrolling one of its words to watch.

Daria Kuss, associate course leader of cyberpsychology at Nottingham Trent University, said that doomscrolling has become even more irresistible in the pandemic because we’re in need of social connection.

“We reach for social media to connect socially, to feel a sense of community and belonging,” she said.

But of course, while social media might feel like a way to connect and feel less alone as a concept, the reality is very different. We can end up feeling even more isolated and miserable, drowning under a barrage of bleak news.

However, when engaging with social media, we receive rewards in the form of comments and likes, and over time our brains learn to associate social media use with a rewarding experience, which explains why the behavior is maintained.

The interspersion of bad news with funny jokes and reposted TikTok videos, the promise of engagement and recognition — that all reels you back in before you can properly consider whether social media scrolling is actually bringing you joy.

Then there’s the element of habit, whereby we’re so used to doing something that we’d need to consciously break the habit to stop it — even though the act makes little logical sense.

We know that excessive social media use is linked with increased anxiety and low mood, and that if the majority of news you read online is negative, that will likely have a greater impact.

Psychologist Helen Rodwell says it’s tough to just break a bad habit cold turkey — instead, you need to replace a bad habit with a good one, sneakily distracting yourself from the lack of something with a new way to fill your time.

When doomscrolling occurs, whether it’s part of a regular routine or in response to a certain trigger, such as boredom, isolation, or frustration, you need to quickly swap out the urge with a healthier habit.

That might mean that bedtime doomscrollers put their phone in another room overnight and create a new routine of reading a book.

Rather than having to ditch social media entirely, Kuss recommends reassessing how you use it to make it work in a more conscious way.

“Limit exposure to websites that invite doomscrolling,” she advised. “Engage in more focused social media use, e.g., to connect with family and friends, rather than scrolling through negative news stories.”

She also suggests making special time for social media use rather than using it to fill a spare moment, which can quickly turn into hours disappearing into a doomscrolling black hole.

“Outside of this time, focus on other things,” she said. “Unplug and enjoy the summer sun!”

(SD-Agencies)