Doomscrolling. We all do it. It’s become almost an addiction. How often do we walk along the street, watching people almost walk into a lamp post because they are so engrossed in…what, exactly?
Junk, that’s what. Facebook, Tik Tok, memes. We scroll, sometimes for hours, sometimes in short bursts but then find ourselves picking up our phones every few minutes. It’s as if we have lost the ability to just be.
I see many clients who tell me they are anxious, and when we look at their lifestyle and their hobbies, they tell me, “Oh, well, I don’t go out much, most evenings I just scroll on my phone”.
Here is what I tell them.
Scrolling for even one hour is the equivalent of eating junk food non-stop for one whole hour. Doomscrolling for two hours is the same as eating junk food non-stop for two hours. You get the picture.
Your body would be sending you some pretty strong signals if you did this. You would feel sick, bloated, you might even physically vomit. Your body would be sending these signals because you have poisoned it with chemicals and substances that it does not need and which actually impair its ability to function.
Scrolling is junk food for the mind. It has the same effect. We have lost our sense of self, and everything that defines us is no longer within us but is outside of us. Thus we feel we have no control over our lives. We blindly follow the latest crazes, buy the latest phone, the latest gadgets, without even questioning if this is what we want from our lives.
And when we get the phone, we scroll through mindless rubbish, for hours on end. We watch our friends on Facebook tell us how perfect things are for them (this is mostly not an accurate representation of their lives). We see adverts for yet another thing we then convince ourselves we cannot live without. This causes anxiety. Why is our life not as good as our friends? Why can’t we afford that “must have” thing we just saw advertised? So we scroll on and on, filling our minds with rubbish, with all the things that impair our ability to function and be well mentally.
We cannot be offline for more than a few minutes in case we have missed something. But think about it: if we are all spending our time scrolling and checking up on everyone else, then we are ALL missing something. We are missing out on living our LIVES.
What a waste.
If you wouldn’t put excessive amounts of junk into your body, why put it into your mind?
Therapy in many ways is a gym membership for your mind and mental health, keeping you on track to make sure you are functioning as well as possible mentally.
Doomscrolling certainly won’t help mental health and in fact will cause anxiety, nervousness, and feelings of resentment and jealousy that are misplaced and unnecessary.
If you do one thing today to help your mental health, limit the amount of time you spend scrolling. Your mind will thank you.
