Our smartphones have become an object that we barely part with throughout the day. We don't just use the phone to make calls, exchange messages or send emails. They have also become our source of information to check the weather forecast, be informed about current news and entertain ourselves on social networks.
So much so that we spend several hours a day 'plugged in' to our phone screen. In many cases, this continued use of the mobile phone brings with it negative consequences that we should not overlook. The end of the day arrives, you sit quietly on the couch and prepare to aimlessly browse all the news and publications that social networks offer you. By the time you realize it, you have lost track of time. Does this situation sound familiar to you? Well, be careful, because you may be falling into the clutches of doomscrolling without being aware of it.
In English, the term doom means condemnation, perdition, death, fatality. While scrolling is the act of scrolling down social networks, whether it is the Instagram feed or stories, TikTok videos, Facebook posts or X (Twitter). Of course, it can also apply to online media or Google search results. Combined, they give rise to doomscrolling, which refers to spending hours and hours consulting negative information on the internet.
This concept gained special notoriety due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It came to the fore again with the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and is now lurking again following what happened in Palestine and Israel. Users, eager for information to stay up to date with what is happening, tend to fall into a loop of consulting shocking news and this has consequences for our well-being.
Users have a certain desire to be immediately aware of current events “because we believe that through knowledge we can control our fears and uncertainty,” Rafael Tabarés, professor of Psychiatry at the University of Valencia, explained to La Vanguardia. But when this habit of checking the news becomes obsessive and excessive, it has a negative influence on our mood. Fear, uncertainty and anxiety are some of these consequences.
“Witnessing these events unfold in the news can put some people in a constant state of high alert, increasing their motives for vigilance and making the world seem like a dark and dangerous place,” noted Bryan McLaughlin, associate professor of advertising at the School of Media and Communication at Texas Tech University (United States) following a study published in the journal Health Communication on news addiction and its relationship with greater stress and worse physical health.
