How to Stop Doomscrolling

What is doomscrolling, specifically?

Cambridge Dictionary defines it plainly: the activity of spending a lot of time looking at your phone or computer and reading bad or negative news stories. That's narrower than ordinary scrolling — the defining part isn't the time spent, it's the content. Reading recipes for an hour isn't doomscrolling. Reading disaster headlines for ten minutes past the point you meant to stop is.

Why is it worse at night?

One sourced mechanism: light suppresses melatonin, the hormone that governs your circadian rhythm, and blue light (the kind a phone screen emits) does this more strongly than other light at comparable brightness, according to Harvard Health Publishing's review of the research. That doesn't make the scrolling itself worse at night; it makes the light it's read by worse for the sleep that follows. The scrolling and the light exposure happen to arrive together, which is reason enough to treat night doomscrolling differently from the daytime kind. If late-night scrolling in bed is the specific pattern you're fighting, the related guides on late-night scrolling and scrolling in bed cover that situation in more depth.

Which six interruptions can you test, and how are they reversed?

What do you do in the moment, not the plan?

Try a concrete interruption without claiming it works for everyone. Put the phone on a surface, name what you were about to open, stand or walk to another place, then decide whether to pick it up again. Record what you actually did. That turns the moment into an observation you can compare with the next one.

What does a movement-gated option change?

MoveFirst is an app blocker for iPhone. Using your chosen apps drains power; movement powers it back up. Your power meter has a capacity of 30, 45 or 60 minutes. Using your chosen apps drains it; movement powers it back up. When it is empty, Screen Time blocks those apps. Everything else on your phone stays open. Reps are counted on your iPhone. Video is never recorded, stored or sent. A second of movement adds two minutes of power. Ten squats add 40 minutes. A 20-second plank adds 40 minutes. Walking always counts: 40 steps add 30 minutes, counted by your iPhone’s motion sensors with the phone in your pocket.