The neologism “doomscrolling” has become an increasingly popular term in the evaluation of information reception behavior in the digital age. Below we will tell you about this phenomenon and its consequences on our mental health.
What is the doomscrolling?
The term is made up of the union of two English words, doom (which is understood as tragic destiny or fatality) and scrolling (which refers to the scrolling on the cell phone screen). This is a practice that has been described as excessive consumption of negative information or news on our screens (mobile phones, computers, etc.).
This phenomenon, which is also known as doomsurfingIt has been increased during the pandemic (period in which the term arose) due to the state of permanent alert and uncertainty in the face of the global crisis. The immense coverage of the pandemic in all mass media, platforms, social networks, etc., exponentially raised the alarm at the news level and, therefore, the digital news consumption patterns associated.
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As some specialists have explained, being informed is a human need that serves as a basic defense mechanism. However, this mechanism is not always accompanied by the necessary tools to act in the face of the crisis.
It is widely known that the current media has modified the dynamics of the way we consume information in relation to the way it was done just a couple of decades ago, but also has reconfigured the information itselfto. We know that there are no longer two or three media outlets, more or less reliable, that inform us of some events, but rather dozens, hundreds, thousands of them, that bombard us, over and over again, with the same or similar news, in a kind of way. of distressing repetition that, as experts have explained, has serious repercussions on our emotional well-beingl.
Doomscrolling and the “negative bias”
Added to this emphatic repetition are the Audiovisual resources through which the news. Photographs, videos and other graphic material tend to make certain events more crudely explicit. This explanation, as has been analyzed in some studies in American universities, has managed to exacerbate a striking cognitive tendency of the human being that has been called psychology as “negative bias” either “negativity bias”.
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Negative bias is a generalized human propensity for pay greater attention and interest to the negative aspects of life experience, than to the positive ones.
However, as already mentioned, the big problem does not lie exactly in the negative bias, but rather in the fact that when receiving negative information excessively frequently, you do not have the tools to understand and assimilate it in an effective, useful and critical way. Therefore, instead of a logical action strategy, the doomscrolling leads to experiencing feelings of anguish, hopelessness, generalized fear, isolation, etc..
What to do before droomscrulling?
The information, the media and the devices through which we access them are always there and will not cease to be, but we must be responsible users and critical so that what we consume is not detrimental to our emotional life. Some healthy practices in this respect may be the following:
- Be aware of bias: understand that the so-called “negativity bias” operates in all of us, makes us aware that we are prone to this propensity towards the negative and allows us be more criticalthat is to say, evaluators of what we give excessive attention to.
- Express our points of view and open the debate: Social networks provide spaces in which you can interact, question what is reported, and explain points of view. Making use of these spaces can be a practical healthier than just passively receiving the contents that are not presented. The same can be practiced with our social circles, friends, family, partner, etc.
- Diversify and improve the quality of content: The old saying “more is better” is as ineffective as the minimalist “less is better” in these cases. However, if we want to have a better reception of informationwe must take on the task of classifying and verifying the sources we consult in relation to their quality. Forming a criterion takes time, but it is essential.
- Regulate time: But it is not enough to purify those pages that we follow or sources that inform us, it is also necessary to self-regulate our consumption. The addiction to platforms or cell phones It may be another influencing factor and must be addressed.
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