Your 'Doomscrolling' Breeds Anxiety. Health Experts Offer Ways To Stop the Cycle (npr.org) 74
An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: So many of us do it: You get into bed, turn off the lights, and look at your phone to check Twitter one more time. You see that coronavirus infections are up. Maybe your kids can't go back to school. The economy is cratering. Still, you incessantly scroll though bottomless doom-and-gloom news for hours as you sink into a pool of despair. This self-destructive behavior has become so common that a new word for it has entered our lexicon: "doomscrolling." The recent onslaught of dystopian stories related to the coronavirus pandemic, combined with stay-at-home orders, have enabled our penchant for binging on bad news. But the habit is eroding our mental health, experts say. [C]linical psychologist Dr. Amelia Aldao warns that doomscrolling traps us in a "vicious cycle of negativity" that fuels our anxiety. "Our minds are wired to look out for threats," she says. "The more time we spend scrolling, the more we find those dangers, the more we get sucked into them, the more anxious we get." Aldao, the director of Together CBT, a clinic that specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy, has worked with her patients to cut back on doomscrolling. Here's some of her advice on how to temper the doom:
Set a timer. I work mostly with clients who experience anxiety and part of what I've been doing with them now for weeks, for months, is actually setting limits to how much they're scrolling. And I literally tell them, "Set up a timer." You do want to know what's happening in the world, so the solution isn't to never go online again, but it's finding boundaries.
Stay cognizant. Going into it, opening up your phone, reminding yourself why you're there, what are you looking for, what information are you trying to find. And then periodically checking in with yourself -- have I found what I needed?
Swap 'vicious cycles' for 'virtuous cycles.' Whether it's ice cream, connecting with friends, sending something funny to a friend -- those are the things we should spend more time doing just to build positive emotions in our lives.
Set a timer. I work mostly with clients who experience anxiety and part of what I've been doing with them now for weeks, for months, is actually setting limits to how much they're scrolling. And I literally tell them, "Set up a timer." You do want to know what's happening in the world, so the solution isn't to never go online again, but it's finding boundaries.
Stay cognizant. Going into it, opening up your phone, reminding yourself why you're there, what are you looking for, what information are you trying to find. And then periodically checking in with yourself -- have I found what I needed?
Swap 'vicious cycles' for 'virtuous cycles.' Whether it's ice cream, connecting with friends, sending something funny to a friend -- those are the things we should spend more time doing just to build positive emotions in our lives.
Quit (Score:5, Insightful)
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No, you just need to learn to handle it properly.
Unfortunately, far too many businesses cheap out and just use social media to run their business. They can't afford to design and maintain a website, and teach the kids that they hire how to update it. Instead since everyone has the facebook app, they just give the kids running the place the login and then they use that.
It sucks, and is fucking irritating as hell to me, but until I run the world, that the way it's going to go.
If I want to find out specials at
Re: Quit (Score:2)
Have you heard of a phone? It's a primitive device that lets you talk directly to the "kids" working there so you can have them read you the specials without going there.
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Initially it induces stress, however as a result of continuing exposure without the actual disaster most people start to ignore the fear mongering more and more, just background noise to be ignored and being pushed because some arseholes somewhere makes money from it. For some of course, the nuts, well it makes them even more nuts and some of those nuts end up doing terrible things. Shame so many of those sick fuckers are politicians, corporate executives and junk yard dog law enforcers ;D.
Perhaps we should
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Nothing wrong with it (Score:5, Insightful)
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Stop checking your phone, nobody loves you!
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I don't do social media...my first question was "Do that many people really do this, and on a regular basis?
Sheesh...
I do the opposite, since the news got so bad with virus
Re: Nothing wrong with it (Score:3)
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You are implying that it's some kind of personal failure that they have nothing better to do, but that's often not the case. Maybe they don't have space at home for hobbies. Maybe they are under a COVID-19 lockdown and not allowed to go out and do anything interesting. Maybe they have no money for other entertainment.
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My advice: look at porn instead (Score:4, Funny)
Stop looking at doom and gloom and start looking at bouncing boobs and/or buns. Let yourself relax a little and rub one out.
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Walk away from it. (Score:5, Informative)
No seriously, just walk away from the firehose of AAAAAAGH being delivered to you by entities making money off your anxiety.
STOP CHECKING YOUR FUCKING PHONE ALL THE TIME.
I read the news, once, in the morning. YMMV I prefer to read the bbc because it's global, and far less invested in selling a particular flavor of US politics. Plus, in the same sense I can't watch US coverage of the olympics (focus on a handful of US athletes, ignore most of the rest, fill all the other events with 22 hours/day of stories about whatever personal tragedy drove them to obsess with X), I can't watch/read/listen to US news as it's a ceaseless tocsin of "Trump is the devil" and COVID ("=Trump's fault because he's the devil") and a parade of reasons we need another $1trn of government money to bail out the buggy whip industry.
It's hard to believe, but most of the world a) doesn't care much about the election until the winner is picked, b) still has news stuff happening.
And the rest of my day is just peachy, until I read the news the next day. NOTHING you read there will materially affect you in the next 24 hours - if it does, likely some local siren is going to go off anyway.
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It really isn't surprising that all of the worst kinds of social media for our overall well-being are the most popular sites and services, just as the most numerous and popular aisles in the grocery stores are those
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Well, I wish that the news and Twitter would concentrate a lot more on what is happening in the world rather than the usual 5 minutes of hate. Correction, the 1440 minutes of hate...
There are so many issues around us that require attention and action; yet the so called "news" developed tunnel vision and reject any fact that is even remotely against their narrative. Or even has the potential to make people think about ANYTHING else than OMB.
And so while the middle east is about to explode, Russia is still sc
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While I respect your point, I disagree.
- Fire, not catastrophic but bad enough that doors and windows should be closed to avoid harmful smoke getting inside.
>>> If I can smell the smoke, I might shut the windows. If I can't, I doubt it's meaningfully harmful. If it's a large fire with hazmat smoke, they indeed DO set off the sirens, they did that in our town with a derailment.
- Water leak.
>>>If it's not something I can directly observe by looking out the windows or noticing my feet are w
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Which are likewise invariably posted on other 'over the road' signs, etc if they're that bad. If you have a car with navigation (most new ones) it's already shown there. Or on google maps.
Traffic ran more or less the same as it does today, before twitter and facebook.
Honestly, it's fine. You can live life with your eyes not welded to your phone for constant updates.
It really will be ok.
Sounds more like insomnia. (Score:5, Insightful)
I have a ton of experience of being a lazy do-nothing and had horrible problems falling asleep until I changed that.
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I've heard Plague of Gripes talk about physical labor and mental labor being exhausting in different ways, as he is both a farmer and and an artist, but I've never really thought about it in the context of physical labor not even allowing multitasking.
Pretending the bad stuff isn't out there (Score:2)
For me the key is seeking news outlets that don't just go on and on about doom and gloom but offer some ideas to go with them. YouTube Channels like Beau of the Fifth Column come to mind.
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That's not what they're saying. At all.
They're saying that obsessing late into the night is a bad idea. You can definitely get a good survey of bad shit between 6pm and 8pm, but then wrap that shit up and don't take your phone to bed.
Militant optimists are in fighting retreat (Score:1)
I gather it is difficult to cut all the 'negative people' out of your life when the number of people who are feeling scared and depressed gets too high. I would be more pleased by this except I don't actually want the entire planet to be miserable.
I need to watch it (Score:4, Insightful)
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It's not fucking funny.
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I wonder if what Trump has done to you is as bad as the average middle class health insurance premium going up $2500 when they were told it would go down $2500, or losing their doctor after being told they could keep their doctor.
Re: I need to watch it (Score:3)
Which things? Is your family from one of half a dozen Islamic terrorist breeding grounds or in the habit of illegally crossing the border?
Re: I need to watch it (Score:2)
Lol, triggered AND following me around peeing on yourself. So cute! And wipe the Cheetos stains from your fingers or you'll get orange keyboard. I know how much orange sets you off.
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There's a lot more to "lack of functioning government" than just "Trump". He's a reflection of current society and its insecurities, so even if he goes, more politicians like him will follow, at all levels of government. You might think that's a good thing, but some of us understand that leaders should not be angry showmen blowhards who Tweetstorm all day, actively exploiting peoples' anxieties.
Otherwise, if he APPEARS to support white supremacists, ignore it, because he doesn't.
Trump is an opportunist. He probably doesn't support white supremacists, but if they support HIM, he'll roll wi
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Appearing to support white supremacists is saying, "I'm sure there were fine people on both sides" and then the mainstream media lying about it to mean that he said white supremacists were fine people.
Re: I need to watch it (Score:2)
The one and only time you need to pay attention to what the president says is when he makes an executive order or signs a law. Everything else is noise.
It's not the scrolling... (Score:2)
It's a significant problem when threats aren't real. People can be fed a stream of confirmation bias which selects exclusively to confirm their fears, sensitivities or paranoia. For real threats and problems it can present
Read a book instead (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been doing this for decades. I go to sleep with the book in my head not all the bullshit of the day, shitty news, or anything else, and I sleep much, much better.
Try it. You might like it.
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Leave your phone outside of your bedroom
That works really well.
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My kindle paperwhite and the TV for maybe a movie or her house DIY thing. No news channel, ever.
Works great.
Re: Read a book instead (Score:2)
People with sleep disorders should not have a TV or other screen based electronics in their bedroom.
People without sleep problems increase their risk of such by doing so.
Just a thought....
Oh please, just NO (Score:4, Insightful)
"Whether it's ice cream, connecting with friends, sending something funny to a friend -- those are the things we should spend more time doing just to build positive emotions in our lives."
I have spent literally YEARS breaking my friends and family out of the habit of sending me random crap they come across and find humorous (and I still haven't been completely successful, in my wife's case). I'd prefer they keep "doom-scrolling", if that's they only alternative.
Then why use it? (Score:2)
I tried to use Twitter. I got tired of the negativity and deleted my account.
You could just curate your feed and weed out all the people tweeting crap and not read the comments on the rest, I suppose. But in the end it wasn’t worth the investment of time.
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I looked at Twitter once. It was a mess of malicious JavaScript. They refused to pay for a security audit of their code, and I do not permit arbitrary code from untrustworthy parties to execute on my computer. So that was the end of that.
The other solution. Read Slashdot. (Score:2)
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The other solution is to read a web site that doesn't have an endless feed, like Slashdot. If you sit down to read here there are only a limited number of articles to look at, so you can get to the end and stop.
Are you really sure you want to stop?
That [Older >>] button at the bottom of the page is beckoning. There are twenty years worth of articles to scroll through before you really hit the end! (Well, except for a couple of days from last week that are still MIA.)
Re: The other solution. Read Slashdot. (Score:2)
Those days are not missing. We have always been at war with Eurasia. Please see the management reference to that non-event for full explanation.
In other words (Score:1)
This is Really Easy To Handle (Score:1)
First, you have to realized that the purveyors of this nonsense are lying like a rug, unless maybe they're clueless as hell. Either way, Ignore them.
Second, look for all the positive stuff. That is, find out about the progress with vaccines for the virus. It is going stunningly well. We may have a vaccine very soon.
Third, be prepared. If the mob comes your way, have a gun. That means a big gun, with a 30 rd. magazine and many already-loaded magazines. The McClosky's in St. Louis did, and they ar
This take is garbage. (Score:2)
You should be unhappy when you read the news. America is fucking itself to death, and most of the people who own rifles want to make it worse. Channel this bitter and hateful feeling into direct action against the state.
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I'm calling for violence, because this isn't actually a democracy. You're a complete moron if you think what the people want matters here.
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I don't know what you think is wrong, but if the signs of it are you not getting the outcomes you want, then the problem is either that what you want is bad a
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I know exactly how things work. Our system is not great. It isn't a representative constitutional republic, either. Our electoral system is hopelessly corrupt and has been for decades. We have one of the least representative "democracies" in the world. Most of the real power is vested in regulatory appointees, who are usually picked right off the board of the companies they regulate. Our police are classist, racist thugs who have turned every major city into a war zone. This nation is owned by billionaires
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While you do approach a point whe
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Stop talking about how it's supposed to work. The world isn't civics class. America is nothing like what you've just described.
Stop being manipulated by the doomsayers (Score:2)
I'm not saying there aren't serious issues going on. But social media and news providers are deliberately manipulating you to grab your attention and hold onto it as long as possible. It's like the weather channel, every time there is a storm predicted it is reported as THE WORST STORM EVER!!! WE"RE ALL GONNA DIE!!! Nobody will tune in for just an average event.
Recognize it for the click bait it is. Tune it out and get a good nights sleep. Tomorrow will be another day.
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Medals (Score:2)
Geez, looks like I need to get enough "Paragon of Phoneless, Social-Media-Free Virtue" medals made for all of these incredibly well-balanced people who don't use social media and don't look at their phones regularly.
I mean, they might be addicted to moralizing about phones and social media, but we've all got our vices, right?
That or... (Score:1)
Over 80% are unaffected. (Score:2)
Healthier solution: (Score:2)
Focus on *reality*!
That is all.
And by "reality", I mean everything you experience with your own senses! Or, trusted people's own experience.
NOT anything else. No news, or articles, no mass media.
Who cares what laws are enacted and what wo does where.
What matters is what the cop on your street corner does and how he is to you. (He might side with a revolution or protest, for example. They are humans too.)
What matters is what happens right around you. The actual effects of things on your life. (Assumig you ke
Re: Healthier solution: (Score:2)
Oh, and I realize that I'm on Slashdot while I'm saying this.
I guess I'm not fully free yet. But I'm still happy in-between. And look, I mostly come here to tell people what I have learned. The news always condense to the same tiny set of core problems than can be counted on two hands anyway. (Like overpopulation, which causes almost everything, from wars to veganism and SJWs from sociopathic leaders and corporations to lack good health, you name it.)