A Weekly Mental Health Check-In You’ll Actually Do
A simple 10-minute weekly check-in covering sleep, mood, energy, connection and stress, plus what to do with what you notice.
Doomscrolling and Your Mood: How to Take Back Your Attention
Why we keep scrolling bad news and social feeds, how it can affect anxiety and mood, and practical limits that stick.
By Mara Ellison··3 min read
Photo: Becca Tapert on Unsplash
The short version
- Doomscrolling is compulsively consuming negative news or content.
- It can feed anxiety, comparison and poor sleep.
- Friction, time boundaries and replacement activities help more than willpower.
You open your phone for one minute and look up 45 minutes later, tense and drained. Doomscrolling is common, and it isn’t a character flaw. Feeds are designed to keep you watching.
Why we do it
- Uncertainty makes us seek information to feel in control
- Variable rewards (sometimes something interesting) keep us scrolling
- It numbs boredom, loneliness or overwhelm
How it can affect you
- Higher anxiety and hopelessness
- Comparison and lower self-esteem
- Later bedtimes and worse sleep
- Less time for things that restore you
Strategies that work
- Add friction: move apps off your home screen, log out, use grayscale.
- Set times: news once or twice a day from trusted sources.
- No phone in the first and last 30 minutes of the day.
- Notice the trigger: boredom? anxiety? Do something that meets that need.
- Curate your feed: unfollow accounts that leave you worse off.
- Replace, don’t just remove: a book, a walk, a call.
Questions people ask
Is social media bad for mental health?
Research is mixed and depends on how and how much it is used. Passive scrolling and comparison tend to be more harmful than active connection.
Written by Mara EllisonWriter behind Therapist Words and author of two self-help books. Not a licensed therapist; content is checked against professional sources. About · Editorial policy
This article is for education, not therapy or medical advice. Read our disclaimer. In crisis? Call or text 988.
