Detect and prevent it.
Doomscrolling is spending an excessive amount of time, scrolling and absorbing negative news. Sounds familiar?
Most of us, in the last few years, have consumed vast amounts of content about protests, COVID-19, war and more emerging viruses. If you have found yourself going to bed sleepy, then watching your phone and then not being able to fall asleep, do not wonder why.
Apparently, this habit is not new and goes beyond our addiction to screens, which is a relatively new phenomenon. It is directly linked to negativity bias, or negativity effect, which basically means that we are more affected by negative events than by equally happy events. This has an evolutionary basis to the need for survival. You need to screen and search for danger and prepare, you do not need to worry about happiness harming you.
During the pandemic, it was a way of finding information, which proved to be more challenging than ever. Fake news, trolls and just plain misinformation was in many cases easier to access and went viral, whereas the actual news based on facts and scientific information were in many cases hard to find. I specifically remember calling friends to make a poll about the credibility of different sites and reminding others that, in many cases, the source of information was either unreliable or entirely missing.
Some researchers believe that boosting positivity can help people handle better bad news, since it has become impossible to avoid them altogether.
Engaging in social activities can be an important positivity booster, as is physical activity. Basically any practice that can increase your endorphins is suggested that can have a reverse impact than doomscrolling has.
Also, actively thinking positive can have multiple benefits for your mental, as well as your physical health. According to Lisa R. Yanek, M.P.H. and her colleagues, it can have a great impact on patients with a history of heart disease. Additional studies have found that a positive attitude improves outcomes and life satisfaction across a spectrum of conditions—including traumatic brain injury, stroke and brain tumors. Not bad eh?
So, are you secretly a drama queen that longs for negative, destructive or at the very least unpleasant situations to break your daily routines, or can you choose to boost your positivity and maybe change doomscrolling into Joyscrolling?
