Wait! You’re doomscrolling again? – did this get you wondering what this term means? Various terms on social media are sometimes new to us. While we might know some, the meaning of others can go over our heads. Doomscrolling is the act of scrolling endlessly through social media and seeing negative posts or news feed. These negative posts can be – disasters, conflicts, or other distressing events.
This act can lead to anxiety, depression and the feeling of helplessness. Many people take a break from social media solely because of doomscrolling. This can really affect mental health and cause uneasy feelings among people. Hence, understanding the meaning of this term is necessary.
For example, “I was doomscrolling the whole day yesterday and did not get any work done.” Here the person is indicating that they were scrolling through negative feeds all day and were not able to complete any tasks for that day.
“Doomsrolling has got me wondering why people post such negativity on social media.” Here the person is questioning why people post negative stuff on social media because they are scrolling through it. Doomscrolling can be a lot of stress to some people and some might not be able to skip posts that are negative or mentally affecting.
If you are someone who keeps seeing negative, disastrous and conflicting posts on social media and can’t help but keep going through it, then you are doomscrolling. “I was doomscrolling yesterday and saw some disturbing horror movie reels. I wasn’t able to get any sleep last night.” In this case, the horror movie clips were disturbing and the person was scrolling through them. This is why it can be said that the person was doomscrolling.
The social media algorithm works in a way that it recommends the kind of posts that you see even more. That is why when people see disturbing content, the algorithm suggests more such content. To avoid this skip the kind of content that can be disturbing to you and you can stop doomscrolling endlessly.
Other social media terms you may be interested in,
