doomscrolling

Doomscrolling means compulsively scrolling through bad news or upsetting content, even though it makes you feel worse. It describes that late-night habit of refreshing the feed one more time.

What does doomscrolling mean?

Doomscrolling combines “doom” and “scrolling.” It’s the urge to keep reading about disasters, crises or bad news on social media and news sites, often for far longer than you meant to. The verb is “to doomscroll,” and a closely related word is doomsurfing.

People usually use it about themselves, with some embarrassment: “I was up until 2 a.m. doomscrolling again.”

How to use doomscrolling

• “I need to stop doomscrolling before bed.”
• “Spent my whole lunch break doomscrolling the election coverage.”
• “Deleted the app because the doomscrolling was getting bad.”
• “Put the phone down, you’re doomscrolling.”

Doomscrolling vs. brain rot

Doomscrolling is about bad news and anxiety. Brain rot is about mindless, low-quality entertainment. One leaves you worried, the other leaves you foggy.

Where doomscrolling comes from

Merriam-Webster’s earliest known use is a tweet from October 2018. The word took off in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic kept people glued to the news: Oxford mentioned it in its 2020 “Words of an Unprecedented Year” report, Dictionary.com named it a top trending word that August, and Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary chose it as its 2020 Committee’s Choice Word of the Year. Merriam-Webster added “doomscroll” in 2023.

Related terms

• Brain rot: the effect of too much low-quality content.
• Doom posting: posting gloomy, everything-is-terrible content.
• Chronically online: too immersed in internet culture.
• Touch grass: go outside, log off.

See more terms like this in our internet slang dictionary.