Doomscrolling is not an absence of self-control. Research associates it with anxiety, passive social media use and, more specifically, an intolerance of uncertainty. Which reframes it entirely: the scrolling is not a failure to stop. It is an attempt to finish something — to reach the end of not knowing.
It has actually been measured
Sharma and colleagues built a Doomscrolling Scale in 2022 — fifteen items, including statements like “I feel an urge to seek bad news on social media, more and more often.” It has since been validated in other languages and used across a number of studies.
The associations are consistent: doomscrolling relates to psychological distress, anxiety, poorer self-control and passive rather than active social media use. Later work has connected trait anxiety to doomscrolling through intolerance of uncertainty and lower psychological resilience.
That middle term is the interesting one. It is not that anxious people scroll more. It is that people who find not knowing unbearable scroll more — and bad news, unlike good news, always promises one more update.
What the behaviour is attempting
Every refresh carries an implied offer: the next one might complete the picture. It never does, because the feed is designed not to have an end. So the attempt to resolve uncertainty becomes the thing that sustains it.
This is why “just put the phone down” lands so badly. You are not asking someone to stop a pleasurable activity. You are asking them to stop halfway through trying to feel safe.
Nobody scrolls for two hours because it feels good. They scroll because stopping means sitting in the not-knowing that made them start.
The identity layer
Underneath most heavy scrolling is a belief that being informed is a form of control — that if you know enough, soon enough, you can prevent something.
The evidence step is what makes this so durable. Doomscrolling always finds what it went looking for. It cannot fail to confirm the belief, because the supply of bad news is unlimited.
What actually helps
Treat it as an uncertainty problem, not a screen problem. App timers manage the symptom. The question worth answering is what specifically you are trying to find out, and whether the feed could ever tell you.
Notice what preceded the first unlock. Almost always something unresolved — a conversation, a decision, a piece of ambiguity you could not park.
Give the uncertainty an end. A specific check, at a specific time, from a specific source. The scroll expands to fill an open question; a closed one leaves it nothing to do.
Do not moralise it. Framing it as a discipline failure adds shame, and shame consumes exactly the capacity you would need to stop. It also misdescribes what is happening.
When it is not this
If scrolling is displacing sleep most nights, or you cannot stop despite genuinely wanting to, or it sits alongside persistent low mood or anxiety that is affecting daily functioning, that is worth taking to a doctor or psychologist. The research associates doomscrolling with depression, anxiety and smartphone addiction, and those need proper assessment rather than a better habit.
Questions people ask
Isn't this just phone addiction?
They overlap but the research treats doomscrolling as its own pattern, with its own measurement scale. The distinguishing feature is that it seeks bad news specifically, which points to uncertainty rather than reward.
Why does it feel worse afterwards but I do it anyway?
Because the payoff is not enjoyment. It is the brief relief of feeling on top of something. That relief arrives during the behaviour and the cost arrives after, which is a very hard sequence to learn from.
Do app blockers help?
They can, as scaffolding. But they treat access rather than motive, so people typically defeat them within a fortnight. If the underlying question is 'am I safe', removing the app does not answer it.
This is one pattern. The wider idea behind it — that behaviour sits downstream of identity — is set out in what identity coaching is, and the case for working at that level is in why identity coaching.
If this sounded familiar
Find out where the pattern is actually anchored
The Identity Drift assessment takes about fifteen minutes and gives you a specific reading rather than a label. Free, and yours whether or not we ever speak.
Take the Identity Drift assessment →The research referred to here
- Sharma et al., “Doomscrolling Scale: its association with personality traits, psychological distress, social media use, and wellbeing”, Applied Research in Quality of Life (2022) Source
- “Beyond the scroll: exploring how intolerance of uncertainty and psychological resilience explain the association between trait anxiety and doomscrolling”, Personality and Individual Differences Source
- The influence of doomscrolling on mental health: a scoping review Source
Please read. Coaching is not therapy, counselling, psychotherapy, psychiatry or medical treatment, and reading this or working with me does not create a clinical relationship. Nothing here is intended to diagnose or treat any condition. If you are experiencing significant psychological distress, please speak to a qualified mental health professional or your doctor.