If you’ve ever spent hours mindlessly scrolling through a series of negative and pessimistic posts online, congrats: you’ve doomscrolled. But what is doomscrolling? This habit is particularly harmful for kids because it can negatively impact their mental health and anxiety. It’s important for parents to help teens figure out how to stop doomscrolling. Here’s how you can help your child break the habit.
Doomscrolling refers to spending excessive amounts of time online viewing content that causes negative emotions, such as sadness and anger. It is, as the name implies, literally scrolling through the doom.
Some examples of doomscrolling include checking the news multiple times per day, compulsively looking at negative videos and posts about trending topics, and fixating on negative stories for hours — whether it’s about climate change, politics, or another controversial topic.
In order to help your teen stop doomscrolling, it’s useful to examine why they might be doing it in the first place. Here are some reasons why teens doomscroll:
With all the negative events happening in the world, teens turn to doomscrolling to help them feel more in control of their own lives. To ease their fear of the unknown, some teens feel a sense of safety in staying informed about current events.
It’s easy to look at negative events in the world and feel helpless to change them. Doomscrolling can provide a false sense of taking action by exposing the viewer to the darker side of headlines and connecting them to a range of creators in the space.
As odd as it might sound that spending hours consuming content about war, natural disasters, and political unrest could be soothing, there’s some logic to it. Doomscrolling is an avoidance technique. People often use it to help them escape difficult emotions.
Kids can feel left out of conversations with peers if they aren’t informed about the biggest news of the day. To deal with this fear of missing out (FOMO), teens might doomscroll to make sure they don’t miss anything.
Given the content involved in doomscrolling, you probably won’t be surprised to know that the behavior can negatively impact your teen in a number of ways.
Doomscrolling can seriously affect your teen’s mental health. It can cause stress or anxiety about the state of the world or fear that similar things might happen to them.
Too much screen time in general can lead to a loss of sleep. Add to that worries about the negative news they’re consuming, and your teen’s slumber could really suffer.
Exposure to excessive amounts of bad news can desensitize your teen toward violence and tragedies to the point where they become numb to bad news. This numbing can lead to a decrease in empathy for others.
Social media algorithms take a user’s behavior and serve up similar content. This can create an echo chamber on your teen’s feed. The more time they spend doomscrolling, the darker their feed is likely to become, skewing their perception of what’s happening in the world.
Here are some signs your teen may be doomscrolling:
If your teen needs help figuring out how to stop doomscrolling, here are some tips:
Doomscrolling can negatively impact teens in a number of ways, from their mental health to their sleep. If you’re wondering how to stop doomscrolling, parents should keep an eye on their kid’s media consumption, help them reduce their screen time and app usage, and encourage the consumption of uplifting content.
BrightCanary can help you keep an eye on what your child is viewing online to watch for doomscrolling. The app’s advanced technology scans your child’s activity, alerting you when they encounter something concerning. Download the app and get a free trial today.
