It starts innocent, doesn’t it? Just you, your phone, and that sacred pre-sleep scrolling session. The light hits your face like divine intervention, except the only thing you’re discovering is that one half of some random couple is Nadir, and not Nadia. One scroll becomes two, two becomes twelve, and by the time you look up, it’s 3:47 AM, your thumb’s hurting, and your soul’s buffering.
The room’s silent but your brain is screaming. Every flick of the thumb feels like a small gasp for air, but instead of breathing, you’re just inhaling content. The algorithm knows you’re tired. It feeds you heartbreaks in 15-second reels and relatable trauma disguised as humour. You laugh, you cry, you double-tap like a hostage sending Morse code.
You swear you’ll stop after one more video. But one more becomes infinity. You’ve unlocked a new dimension of attention span decay. Your eyes glaze over, your brain hums like a dying computer fan, and your body lies there, physically present but spiritually somewhere between a meme and a minor existential crisis.
It’s not even boredom anymore. It’s muscle memory. You scroll because the silence is scarier. You scroll because your brain craves that next microdose of dopamine. It’s not joy, it’s survival. It’s not curiosity, it’s compulsion. It’s not “just five more minutes.” It’s help, I’ve fallen into the For You Page and can’t get out.
My doctor said that dopamine is frying our brains.
My therapist says I should go on walks. My doctor says dopamine’s doing jumping jacks in my skull. I say okay, but can I at least finish this video of two pookie turtles?
The science is stupidly simple and painfully cruel. Dopamine isn’t the reward chemical we were taught about in those NCERT biology textbooks. It’s not joy. It’s the anticipation of joy. The “ooh, what’s next” chemical. The entire reason your brain keeps whispering “scroll again, maybe this one will hit different.” Spoiler alert: it never does.
Social media platforms took that mechanism and turned it into a slot machine for our attention. Every refresh is a gamble. Will you see a cute dog or the apocalypse? Who knows. And that unpredictability keeps your neurons chained to the scroll like hostages in a sparkly dopamine dungeon.
Aza Raskin, the guy who invented infinite scroll, once admitted it was designed to keep you there forever. It’s literally engineered to steal your time. We’re lab rats in an experiment that never ends. Ding ding, dopamine goes brrr.
So yes, dopamine’s frying our brains. But also capitalism’s holding the pan. Every app is a chef trying to cook your attention medium rare. And we? We’re the sizzle.
The doomscrolling spiral.
You open your phone because you’re anxious, and then you scroll until you’re more anxious, and then you close it because you hate yourself for scrolling, and then you reopen it because the silence is louder than your guilt. The cycle is infinite. The vibes are rancid.
Doomscrolling isn’t just “too much internet.” It’s your brain mistaking endless information for control. Like, maybe if I read enough bad news, I’ll be prepared. Maybe if I keep watching sad reels, I’ll be desensitised. Except no. You’re just marinating in despair soup.
Scientists call it “information fatigue.” I call it “chronically online core.” You get so used to constant stimulation that peace starts to feel wrong. Quiet feels itchy. The absence of sound makes you wonder if something’s missing. Spoiler: it’s your attention span.
It’s like living in a casino where the slot machines cry. Everything’s flashing, everyone’s panicking, and somewhere in the background, someone’s saying, “In this essay I will…”
But there’s also comfort in it. Weird, collective comfort. Doomscrolling feels like sitting in a dark theatre watching the world end together. You don’t want to leave because at least you’re not alone in the apocalypse. It’s a digital group hug made of anxiety and memes.
And yeah, it’s toxic. But also kinda tender. Because every now and then, amidst the chaos, you find something beautiful. A poem that hits too hard. A stranger’s comment that makes you feel seen. A cat in a frog hat. You sigh, you smile, and then you keep scrolling.
Sometimes, I really miss a piece of content when I scroll. And to find more such pieces, I scroll again, and again, and again.
Everyone’s drowning but no one’s swimming.
It’s funny, in a sick way. We’re the most connected generation in history but half of us don’t even know how to rest. We call it “keeping up,” but it’s really just sinking slower. We wear burnout like it’s a personality trait. We joke about “rotting in bed” because calling it “existential collapse” doesn’t fit in a caption.
There’s an aesthetic to our exhaustion now. Soft depression lighting. Neutral tones of despair. “Sad girl fall” playlists. Even our breakdowns have filters.
And yet, we still scroll. Maybe because we don’t want to miss out on joy either. There’s always that hope that the next video, the next post, the next thing will fix the ache. And sometimes it does. Temporarily. Like emotional paracetamol.
But we’ve built a culture where attention is currency and our sanity is collateral. The algorithm doesn’t care if you’re tired. It just wants you to engage. It feeds off you like a vampire sipping iced lattes.
We laugh about it, sure. “Haha, my screen time is insane.” “Haha, I can’t focus anymore.” But beneath the haha is a quiet little help. And I think that’s what makes it tragic. Everyone’s drowning but pretending to swim because admitting you’re sinking feels like failure.
Resurfacing.
I wish I could tell you I’ve stopped. That I wake up, meditate, journal, touch grass, and don’t touch my phone till noon. But I’m writing this at 1:12 AM, thumb twitching like a caffeinated squirrel, trying to sound profound while fighting the urge to check Instagram.
So no, I haven’t fixed it. But I’ve learned to notice it. To catch the moment my brain starts fishing for another hit of digital dopamine. To pause. To breathe. To remember that my attention is worth more than a like.
Resurfacing doesn’t mean deleting everything and becoming a monk. It means swimming back to yourself. It’s turning off autoplay. It’s putting your phone in another room when you sleep. It’s letting boredom be boring again.
Because the truth is, scrolling feels like sinking when you forget there’s air above. When you forget that there’s a world beyond the glass. Your heart wasn’t made to refresh this much.
So maybe the trick isn’t to stop sinking. Maybe it’s to remember you can still swim. And if all else fails, close the app, go outside, and let the real dopamine do its job.
The algorithm can wait. Your life can’t.
If you made it this far without checking your notifications, congratulations, you just performed a minor miracle. Now log off. Stretch your spine. Blink like a human again.
And when you’re ready to spiral romantically about it later, we’ll waiting — Her Campus at MUJ, your favourite corner of the internet that loves you back, even when you forget to love yourself first. This is Niamat Dhillon at HCMUJ, typing too loud, feeling too much, and calling it journalism.