Psychology, science, and data are constantly debunking and degrading doomscrolling as a habit, repeatedly asserting its negative impacts on the mind and body alike. Recommendations to reduce our screen time have become common sense, alongside drinking enough water and getting eight hours of sleep. Yet, it can be challenging to understand, let alone follow, this advice.
Sure, gazing into blue light for extended periods of time ruins your vision, constantly looking down at your phone leads to poor posture, and TikTok is known to fry everyone’s attention spans. This is all practical and common knowledge, and many people, me included, often think they can get away with a quick morning scroll and move on; these practical consequences only come with a serious phone addiction, right?
Although analog living is trending online, and while I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment, I don’t think it’s completely necessary to salvage one’s mental health. In short, a simple yet practical understanding of the emotional damage doomscrolling can cause can help encourage a more mindful and collective disconnection from technology, without resorting to the seemingly impossible task of completely logging off.
doomscrolling and you
Again, it’s obvious that it’s no good to shove blue light and every piece of information in the world in your face first thing in the morning. But phones have been around for a while, and there’s a good chance that you might feel desensitized to the negative impacts of scrolling after years of high screen time, and that a morning scroll won’t leave you with any negative consequences if it’s quick enough.
But the truth is, no matter what, by scrolling early on in the day, you’re completely immersing yourself in the prettiest parts of other people’s lives, the most sensational stories of the week, the best of the best, before you’ve even gone to class or finished an assignment. Even funny memes that seem harmless are likely more entertaining than anything you’ll encounter in your day because everything you see online is designed to keep you there chasing after dopamine. Real life doesn’t work like that and can’t possibly amount to the experience machine inside your phone.
Sure, you can always put your phone down after breakfast and head to class without a problem. This is what I tend to do, if I’m being honest. But if I reconnect with how I’m feeling, maybe if I have a big gap between breakfast and my next commitment, I don’t ever truly feel good. It’s a big word, but I’d honestly call the post-doomscrolling feeling despair; I have a whole day ahead of me, anything could happen, but deep down, I know none of it will amount to the artificial joy contained in my phone that I can only tap into when I’m scrolling. And I either pick it back up again, unable to handle withdrawal, or I apathetically go through the motions for the rest of the day.
To me, it feels like eating a box of candy right before dinner; you’re bound to lose your appetite for any other kind of food because no matter how well-cooked your meal is, it won’t taste nearly as good as that pack of sweets, even if you know it’s nutritionally better for you. It doesn’t just ruin your appetite; it poisons it, eroding your resilience over time as it gets harder to be grateful for and focus on the good parts of the real world or remain motivated to pursue your goals.
In a less abstract and more personal example, my algorithm has figured out that I’m anxious about my career and will often show me reels or posts featuring influencer success stories in every field, from business to rocket science, all the way to areas closer to home like media and entertainment.
You could argue that these posts should make me feel better, but they don’t; I haven’t even decided what I’ll have for breakfast, and these people have found, at the minimum, rewarding careers as content creators. I begin to overthink, maybe I’ve just seen a modeling influencer’s path to getting signed with the agency or magazine of her dreams, and suddenly, I don’t even want to eat breakfast.
This specific issue might be unique to me, but the spiraling thought pattern generated by doomscrolling is a universal experience. It’s been proven that social media algorithms make a profit off of the emotions of their users; the angrier and more upset someone feels while they scroll, the longer they’ll stay online, and the longer they stay online, the more ads they will see, and so on. As a result, no one is completely at fault for their phone addiction when the devices are literally engineered to keep people online as long as possible.
Getting offline and being more present can feel incredibly challenging; the algorithms work against you, and going completely analog isn’t feasible for most people in 2026. However, personally, I find it helpful to engage in scrolling-adjacent activities to make it easier for me to only log in once a day without being dependent on it. Unfortunately, I don’t quite have to attention span to read a book over breakfast or on the Yellow Line. However, I can sit through a podcast or a YouTube video and enjoy it a little extra because my day won’t be ruined right away by the apps of doom and despair.
At the end of the day, I still log on; I enjoy catching up with my friends and sending them TikToks and Reels. Everybody does, and your time online can be valuable, you just have to remember how it impacts you and use the internet mindfully and accordingly, bearing in mind the reason you logged in to begin with so you can get the most out of your screentime.