What is doomscrolling? Meaning, origin and why it hooks us

What does doomscrolling mean?

The word joins two ideas. Doom points to the content: bad news, disasters, conflict, outrage and gloomy forecasts. Scrolling points to the action: moving a thumb up a screen to load the next item. Put together, it describes reading one distressing item after another on a phone or computer, usually in a social media or news feed, and finding it hard to stop.

Australia’s Macquarie Dictionary defines doomscrolling as the practice of continuing to read news feeds online or on social media despite the news being predominantly negative and often upsetting (Macquarie Dictionary, 2020). Three features in that definition are worth drawing out:

• It continues. One worrying headline is not doomscrolling. The idea is persistence: one more post, one more refresh.
• The content is mostly negative. Endlessly watching cooking Reels may be a time sink, but it is not “doom”.
• It feels bad, yet you carry on. The mismatch between how it feels and what you keep doing is what makes the word resonate.

In everyday speech, especially in India, people also use “doomscrolling” loosely for any long, aimless session on Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts, whether or not the content is bleak. That broader use is understandable, but it blurs two different things: spending a lot of time on short videos, and compulsively consuming distressing news. Researchers usually mean the second.

Where did the word “doomscrolling” come from?

The honest answer is that nobody can point to a single verified inventor. Press and dictionary accounts trace early uses of the one-word term to social media posts around 2018, but different accounts credit different people, and we could not confirm an original post ourselves. So we don’t name a coiner.

What is well documented is when it went mainstream. In 2020, the combination of a pandemic, lockdowns and a constant stream of alarming updates gave millions of people the experience the word describes. By the end of that year, the Macquarie Dictionary had picked doomscrolling as its Committee’s Choice Word of the Year, calling it a salient marker of a year of troubling news, from bushfires to the US elections and the coronavirus (Macquarie Dictionary, 2020). Its public vote went to other words.

Was doomscrolling Oxford’s Word of the Year for 2020?

No. This is a common claim online, but it is not accurate. In 2020 Oxford Languages, the publisher of the Oxford English Dictionary, broke with tradition and did not choose a single Word of the Year. It published a report called Words of an Unprecedented Year instead, and NPR’s coverage of that report led with doomscrolling in its headline (Limbong, NPR, 2020). So doomscrolling was one of the words that defined 2020 in Oxford’s review, but it was not “the” Oxford word of the year. The dictionary that did crown it was Macquarie.

How is doomscrolling different from staying informed?

Following the news is useful and often necessary. The difference lies in purpose and endpoint. A team at the University of Florida set out to test whether “doomscrolling” was just a catchy new label for ordinary news consumption. They built and validated a survey scale and concluded that a doomscroller is more than someone who simply wants to stay informed (Sharma et al., 2022) (University of Florida, 2022).

These rows are a reflection tool, not a test. Everyone drifts between the two columns. The point is to notice when a session has moved from the left to the right.

Who doomscrolls, and is it linked to wellbeing?

According to the University of Florida’s summary of its study, men and younger adults were more likely to report doomscrolling than women and older adults, and there was no difference by political leaning (University of Florida, 2022). Turkish researchers who developed a separate Doomscrolling Scale ran three studies with a combined total of more than 1,200 participants. Doomscrolling was associated with social media addiction and fear of missing out, and its link with lower life satisfaction and wellbeing ran through psychological distress (Satici et al., 2023).

What is bloomscrolling, and how is it different?

“Bloomscrolling” is an informal word, popular on social media, for deliberately seeking out uplifting or calming content: good-news accounts, nature clips, kindness stories. It is usually offered as an antidote to doomscrolling. We are not aware of peer-reviewed research that tests bloomscrolling as such, so treat it as a framing rather than a proven technique.

A few related terms you may see:

• Doomsurfing: a near-synonym that circulated alongside doomscrolling in 2020, borrowing the older idea of “surfing” the web.
• Zombie scrolling: informal; scrolling on autopilot regardless of content. Closer to a time-use issue than to “doom”.
• Doomscroller: a person who doomscrolls, and, since November 2026 in India, a reported job title. We explain the difference in doomscrolling vs professional trend research.

What are the signs that scrolling has become doomscrolling?

Ask yourself, without judgement:

1. Did I open the app with a purpose, or did my thumb get there first?
2. Have I seen anything genuinely new in the last five minutes?
3. Is my body tense: shoulders up, jaw tight, breath shallow?
4. Am I scrolling later into the night than I meant to?
5. Would I feel better or worse if I stopped right now?

If several answers point the same way, that’s useful information, not a verdict. The science of endless scrolling explains why these patterns are so common, and healthy screen-time habits covers practical ways to interrupt them. Doomscrolling is not a diagnosis, but if low mood or anxiety is affecting your daily life, it is worth talking to a doctor or a counsellor.