Since the beginning of the pandemic, I keep on scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. I find myself in bed at night scrolling news sites and knowing this is not healthy for me… so why am I doing this?” Easy to explain: I am looking for (somehow) good news.
It’s a question many doom scrollers have been asking themselves. There are multiple reasons why the urge to read may be so strong: the feeling of safety in knowledge, especially during difficult times; the design of social-media platforms that constantly refresh and boost the loudest voices; and, of course, the human fascination aspect.
Beyond knowing intuitively that doom scrolling makes us feel awful, studies conducted during the pandemic have corroborated this, linking both anxiety and depression to the consumption of Covid-19 related media and increased time spent on smartphones. So, why do we keep endlessly scrolling – and why can the practice feel oddly soothing? And could there actually be surprising upsides to keeping our eyes locked on our feeds?
“The precursor to going online was that people would watch the 11 o’clock news, [which] was terrifying,” says Dean McKay, a Fordham University psychology professor who specialises in compulsive behaviour and anxiety disorders. That terror, when witnessed from the comfort of the viewer’s home, however, had a potentially calming effect. McKay describes the attitude as people acknowledging “things are pretty horrible, [but] I’m comfortable, so I'm going to be able to sleep well tonight knowing that [I can feel good about] my station in life”.
McKay suggests doom scrolling could be a “modern equivalent”. But, unlike the 2300 news, it doesn’t stop at a fixed hour. During the uniquely uncertain and scary times of 2020, it’s no surprise that people like Bernstein scrolled well into the night. They needed information – at first because little was available about the virus, and then because they got sucked into the never-ending news cycle about it.
As Pamela Rutledge, director of the California-based Media Psychology Research Center, puts it, doom scrolling “really just describes the compulsive need to try and get answers when we’re afraid”. After all, we do have to assess whether new information constitutes a threat. “We are biologically driven to attend to that,” says Rutledge.
Doom scrolling really just describes the compulsive need to try and get answers when we’re afraid.
“Unfortunately, journalism to some degree plays to that tendency,” she adds. Provocative headlines and stories draw in readers because they elicit fear and urgency. “There’s a sense of, if I know all the latest news, I can better protect myself and my family.” Pamela Rutledge, I strongly agree with you!
Anyway, I am still looking for "somehow" good news to write about. Maybe, I'll be getting a chance in the near future.
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