The impact of Doomscrolling – unhelpful and harmful – can be curbed by setting limits to news consumption and refusing to have news pushed at you. Break the consumption habit by moving news to the last page of your home screen and by telling people around you that you are trying to lessen news consumption.

“Doomscrolling” describes what happens when someone continues to consume negative news and information online, including on social media. There is increasing evidence that this kind of overconsumption of bad news may have negative impacts.

Studies has found that high levels of negative news consumption can lead to poorer mental and physical health outcomes with many people reporting that doomscrolling during crises is unhelpful and even harmful.

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, consuming a lot of news made people feel overwhelmed. One study found people who consumed more news about the pandemic were also more anxious about it.

A recent study out of the UK and Canada showed hundreds of people real-world content on either Twitter or YouTube for two to four minutes. The Twitter feeds and YouTube videos featured either general news about COVID, or news about kindness during COVID.

Researchers University of Essex and Simon Fraser University then measured these participants’ moods using a questionnaire, and compared their moods with participants who did not engage with any content at all.

People who were shown general COVID-related news experienced lower moods than people who were shown nothing at all. Meanwhile, people who were shown COVID news stories involving acts of kindness didn’t experience the same decline in mood, but also didn’t gain the boost in mood the study predicted.

These findings suggest that spending as little as two to four minutes consuming negative news about COVID-19 can have a detrimental impact on our mood.

Here are some other ways to make your experience on social media more positive.

• Be mindful of what you consume on social media. If you log on to connect with other people, focus on the personal news and photos shared instead of the latest headlines.
• Seek out content that makes you happy to balance out your newsfeed. This may be images of cute kittens, beautiful landscapes, drool-worthy food videos or something else. You could even follow a social media account dedicated to sharing only happy and positive news.
• Use social media to promote positivity and kindness. Sharing good things that are happening in your life can improve your mood, and your positive mood can spread to others. You may also like to compliment others on social media. While this might sound awkward, people will appreciate it more than you think.

Although the study didn’t see an improvement in mood among participants who were shown positive news stories involving acts of kindness, this may be because the stories were still related to COVID. In other research, positive news stories have been associated with improvements in mood.

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