doomscrolling

What does doomscrolling mean?

It is 1:40 a.m. The news is bad, the next post is worse, and your thumb keeps moving anyway. That is doomscrolling: reading, watching or refreshing a stream of upsetting content long past the point where it tells you anything new, and long past the point where it feels good.

Dictionary.com defines it as obsessively checking online news for updates, especially on social media, and adds the part that makes it a trap: expecting bad news creates dread, and the dread makes you check again. You are not scrolling for fun. You are scrolling because stopping feels like missing something important.

The word is built from doom, meaning disaster or a grim fate, and scrolling. The verb is doomscroll ("I doomscrolled the storm coverage until 3"), and a person who does it is a doomscroller.

Over time the meaning has widened. Many people now say doomscrolling for any long, joyless scroll, even through short videos that are not news at all. Strictly, though, the doom part matters: the classic case involves crises, disasters, wars, elections and outbreaks.

The doom- prefix has also spun off joke words. Know Your Meme collected posts about "doomcleaning" and "doomgardening," where people do chores while worrying about the news.

Examples

• Election night: "Stop refreshing the results map. You've been doomscrolling since dinner."
• Hurricane season: "I spent the whole evening doomscrolling storm-tracker videos for a city I don't even live in."
• Group chat: "can someone send a cute dog video, I need to stop doomscrolling"
• At work: "Sorry, I'm slow this morning. I doomscrolled until 2 a.m."
• Therapist's office: "You said you check the news forty times a day. Let's talk about the doomscrolling."
• Teen to parent: "You literally doomscroll Facebook every night and tell me to get off my phone."
• Bedtime text: "phone's in the kitchen. no doomscrolling tonight"

Doomscrolling usually appears as a noun after "stop" or "spent hours," or as the verb "doomscroll." It is used more by adults than most internet slang, and newsrooms use it without quotation marks.

Where did doomscrolling come from?

• 1970s: Researchers described "mean world syndrome," the idea that heavy exposure to violent media makes the world seem more dangerous than it is. The idea is older than the word but close to it.
• October 7, 2018: The earliest known use, found by Know Your Meme, is a tweet by a user called @Callamitys.
• March 2020: COVID-19 reached the United States and the word took off. Kevin Roose of the New York Times wrote about "doomsurfing," the same habit under a different name.
• 2020: Dictionary.com made doomscrolling a top trend in August, and Australia's Macquarie Dictionary named it the 2020 Committee's Choice Word of the Year.
• January 6, 2021: Posts about doomscrolling the attack on the US Capitol were among the most-shared uses of the word, according to Know Your Meme.
• September 2023: Merriam-Webster added doomscroll to the dictionary.
• October 2024: Stanford researchers reported that news outlets on X posted almost twice as much negative content as positive, giving the habit plenty to feed on.

How to stop doomscrolling

None of these need willpower heroics:

• Turn off breaking-news alerts and keep only one source you trust.
• Check at a set time, such as once at lunch, instead of whenever you feel anxious.
• Charge the phone outside the bedroom. Late-night scrolling is where most doomscrolling happens.
• Ask what you can do. If the answer is nothing tonight, the next update can wait until morning.
• Swap the scroll, for a book, a call with a friend or a walk. Going outside is the old cure that touch grass jokes about.

If the news leaves you or a teen feeling hopeless rather than just tired, talk to someone. In the US, you can call or text 988 any time.

Is doomscrolling rude?

No. It is a description of a habit, not an insult, and it carries no hidden meaning. Teachers, doctors and news anchors use it.

Pointed at someone, it can be a gentle nudge ("you're doomscrolling again") or a bit of a jab, depending on tone. Teens use it back at parents fairly often, which is fair enough.

How to reply to doomscrolling

• A friend says they doomscrolled all night: "Phones down, breakfast up. I'll buy the coffee."
• Your teen catches you doomscrolling: "Guilty. Let's both put them in the drawer until dinner."
• A coworker says the news has them doomscrolling: "Same. I've started reading one summary in the morning and that's it. It helps."

Is doomscrolling still used in 2026?

Yes. It has outlived the pandemic that made it famous and become standard English, used in headlines and health advice as often as on social media. Younger people often reach for brainrot for the silly-content version of the same tired feeling, and slop for the AI junk that now fills many feeds. Doomscrolling remains the word for the anxious kind.