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Medicine Social Networks

Your 'Doomscrolling' Breeds Anxiety. Health Experts Offer Ways To Stop the Cycle (npr.org) 74

Posted by BeauHD from the snap-out-of-it dept.
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.
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Your 'Doomscrolling' Breeds Anxiety. Health Experts Offer Ways To Stop the Cycle More

Your 'Doomscrolling' Breeds Anxiety. Health Experts Offer Ways To Stop the Cycle

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  • Quit (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PeeAitchPee ( 712652 ) on Monday July 20, 2020 @06:12PM (#60312691)
    Fuck all social media. The only winning move is not to play.

    • 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

      • 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.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by rtb61 ( 674572 )

        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

    • Doesn't this forum count?

  • Nothing wrong with it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Monday July 20, 2020 @06:13PM (#60312697) Journal
    The real question to ask is "what is wrong with your life that you want to check Twitter yet again? Why don't you have anything more interesting in your life?"
    • Fleabag quote:

      Stop checking your phone, nobody loves you!

    • From the article:

      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.

      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

      • There's nothing wrong with that if people want to do it, and they're probably more engaged with the world than watching TV. many of these people are not happy, and the solution is to find something better in life.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      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.

  • My advice: look at porn instead (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 20, 2020 @06:15PM (#60312703)

    Stop looking at doom and gloom and start looking at bouncing boobs and/or buns. Let yourself relax a little and rub one out.

  • Walk away from it. (Score:5, Informative)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Monday July 20, 2020 @06:20PM (#60312731) Journal

    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.

    • May as well tell meth or opioid addicts to lay off for what it's worth. The people who are like this weren't always that way and it isn't as though they can just stop. It's as compulsive as picking up the bottle, pulling the lever, or doing wherever it is that placates the monkey on your back.

      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
      • Good point, we should see about shifting the addiction elsewhere. Gambling maybe? If we can make betting more like twitter there's a great business opportunity just waiting to be exploited. Most of the work will probably be on you partner, but getting filthy rich will make up for it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Evtim ( 1022085 )

      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

  • Sounds more like insomnia. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Fly Swatter ( 30498 ) on Monday July 20, 2020 @06:31PM (#60312765) Homepage
    Get more active or physical hobbies that simply don't allow multitasking, generally if you go to bed tired you will actually fall asleep.

    I have a ton of experience of being a lazy do-nothing and had horrible problems falling asleep until I changed that.

    • 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.

  • doesn't make it go away. Yeah, you can take it too far, but it's good to know what's going on from a day to day perspective.

    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.

    • 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.

  • 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)

    by DogDude ( 805747 ) on Monday July 20, 2020 @06:48PM (#60312833)
    I run a publicly-facing business. Much of this horrible stuff (pandemic, lack of functioning federal government) actually DOES impact my day-to-day life. I actually DO have to keep with the latest crazy stunt from Donnie Dipshit. I wish I didn't have to, but all of this crazy stuff really does have a direct influence on my life.

    • 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.

  • The problem is that the threats are real. At the same time there's an immense flood of material raising up artificial threats. People scrolling through information aren't getting the threat from that, they're using that because they're already anxious and trying to grasp at the threat.

    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)

    by Rick Schumann ( 4662797 ) on Monday July 20, 2020 @06:57PM (#60312849) Journal
    Leave your phone outside of your bedroom and read a book for a few minutes before going to sleep.
    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.

    • Leave your phone outside of your bedroom

      That works really well.

    • Yep. Me and wife have an agreed upon restriction. No phone/tablet/laptop in the bedroom. Ever.
      My kindle paperwhite and the TV for maybe a movie or her house DIY thing. No news channel, ever.

      Works great.

  • Oh please, just NO (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Monday July 20, 2020 @07:11PM (#60312887)

    "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.

  • 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.

    • 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 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.

    • 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.)

  • cut places like this out of your life.

  • 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

  • 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.

    • Sounds like you want to make it worse. This is the USA. "We the People" are the state. "Direct action" is invariably a euphemism for violence. What is it you're calling for?

      • 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.

        • Well, it's a Representative Constitutional Republic rather than a direct democracy, but I doubt that's what you mean. I think what you mean is that you don't understand how things work, how great our system is, or that what you're calling for is, in a word, evil. You are calling for the violent destruction of something good. That is unacceptable.

          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

          • 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

            • Clearly you don't know how things work here or anywhere else in the world. Our system is not perfect, but it is better than every other system we have ever come up with. It has produced more liberty, happiness, prosperity, knowledge, art, equality and fairness than any other system in history. It is more correctable and flexible than any other system. It allows needs to be met better than any other system. It is less susceptible/prone to tyranny than any other system.

              While you do approach a point whe

              • Stop talking about how it's supposed to work. The world isn't civics class. America is nothing like what you've just described.

  • 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.

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • 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?

  • Or just watch Pr0n and rub one off, to mellow the tension...
  • Only 20% of Americans use twitter at all. It would be reasonable to assume that the percentage of them who engage in "doomscrolling" is less than 100, hence "over 80%". Given the already known correlation between heavy social media use and depression, what are we really seeing here and is it actually an issue?

  • 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

    • 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.)

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