doomscrolling

• doom-scrolling, doom scrolling

doom +‎ scrolling, from the practice of scrolling through timelines and news feeds on a computer or mobile device.

doomscrolling (uncountable)

1. (informal, neologism) The practice of continually reading Internet news about catastrophic events.

   Synonym: doomsurfing

   • 2020 July 15, Brian X. Chen, “You’re Doomscrolling Again. Here’s How to Snap Out of It.”, in New York Times‎:

     Step 1 is to acknowledge the burden that doomscrolling creates for our health, Dr. Gazzaley said. “You have to realize you don’t want to live your life in a hamster wheel of complete news consumption,” he said.

   • 2020, Tanya Goodin, My Brain Has Too Many Tabs Open: How to Untangle Our Relationship with Tech, page 167:

     I assured them that while doomscrolling was a difficult online pitfall, it wasn't one they needed to fall in to^[sic].

   • 2021 January 24, Tallie Proud, “Twitter accounts to follow to break up the doomscrolling”, in Tallie Proud‎:

     It would be easy enough to say just stop doing it, but with everything happening in the world right now, it’s impossible to completely avoid doomscrolling.

   • 2021 July 30, “Editorial: Welcome to the 2021 Pandemic Games: Thrills, spills and COVID”, in Boston Herald‎:

     But this is 2021 and after a year and a half of COVID-19, of racial and socioeconomic unrest, viewers may be tuning in for a respite from doomscrolling daily news.

   • 2022 March 6, James Tapper, “Obsessed? Frightened? Wakeful? War in Ukraine sparks return of doomscrolling”, in The Guardian‎:

     Now doomscrolling is back in ways not seen since the beginning of the Covid pandemic.

doomscrolling

1. present participle and gerund of doomscroll