Doomscrolling is what people call it when they want it to sound harmless, like it’s just a modern quirk, like everyone does it so it can’t be that serious. Most of the time it is not harmless. It is a coping mechanism that slipped into your life quietly, got rewarded by your brain, and then started running the show. You tell yourself you are staying informed, but the feeling you are chasing is not knowledge, it is relief. Relief from stress, from uncertainty, from loneliness, from the quiet moments where you have to face your own thoughts.
The hard part is that doomscrolling looks normal now. If you drink every night, people might notice. If you gamble online at 2am, someone might catch it in your bank statements. If you scroll for hours, you can do it right next to your partner on the couch and still be completely absent. The phone doesn’t smell like alcohol. It doesn’t slur its words. It doesn’t leave a needle. It leaves something more subtle, it drains your attention, it flattens your mood, and it trains you to avoid discomfort at the exact moment you need to learn how to handle it.
This isn’t an article to shame people for being online. The world is online. Work is online. News is online. Family WhatsApp groups are online. The issue is not screens. The issue is dependency, when scrolling becomes your automatic response to emotion, and when you keep doing it even though it makes you feel worse.
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The lie that keeps doomscrolling alive
The biggest lie doomscrolling tells is that it is information-seeking. Real information has a purpose and an endpoint. You read, you learn, you decide what matters, you act, or you park it. Doomscrolling has no endpoint because it is not trying to inform you. It is trying to regulate you. It is a loop, tension builds, you feel restless or uneasy, you open the phone, you get a hit of stimulation, you feel a quick drop in discomfort, then it fades, and you reach again.
That is why the content doesn’t even matter that much. People will doomscroll tragedies, conspiracy threads, crime stories, celebrity drama, politics, war footage, and then tell themselves they are just “catching up.” If you were truly catching up, you would stop. If you were truly learning, you would remember more. Doomscrolling often leaves you feeling both overloaded and empty, like you ate a whole bag of junk food and still feel hungry.
The other lie is that you are choosing it. You might be choosing the first scroll. After that, your brain is often on autopilot. That is not because you are weak. It is because these platforms are designed to keep you there, and because your nervous system is learning that the phone can change your state faster than real life can.
Dopamine isn’t the villain
People love blaming dopamine because it makes the problem feel mechanical, like you are a victim of chemicals. Dopamine is not “pleasure juice.” It’s a motivation and anticipation signal. It tells your brain, keep going, there might be something important next. The feed is built around that. It is endless. The rewards are unpredictable. One post is boring, the next is shocking, the next makes you angry, the next makes you laugh, then a headline hits your fear button again. That unpredictability is powerful. It creates a “maybe the next one” loop that keeps you scrolling.
But dopamine isn’t the main issue. The main issue is what you are avoiding. Doomscrolling is often a way to not feel what is sitting underneath the surface. Anxiety, grief, anger, shame, loneliness, fear of the future, fear of failure, relationship tension, financial stress, the feeling that you’re stuck. When you scroll, you don’t have to deal with any of it directly. You get to be busy. You get to be occupied. You get to be distracted in a socially acceptable way.
That is why telling someone to “just have discipline” is useless. Discipline works better when your nervous system is steady and your life is structured. If someone is using their phone like a pacifier for chronic stress, then simply removing the phone without building new coping skills is like taking away someone’s crutch and then acting surprised when they fall.
The real damage is what happens to your mind
People focus on the hours lost, and yes, time matters. But the deeper cost is what doomscrolling does to your emotional range and attention. When every spare moment gets filled, you stop practicing basic human skills, like tolerating boredom, sitting in silence, handling uncertainty, and staying present during discomfort. You become trained to escape the second you feel uneasy.
Over time, that avoidance has consequences. You become more reactive. You get irritated faster. Your mood depends on stimulation. Your concentration weakens. Reading a full page feels like effort. Conversations feel slow. Your brain starts craving quick hits. Then you feel guilty because you can’t focus the way you used to, so you scroll more because guilt is uncomfortable.
It also messes with sleep. Doomscrolling often happens at night because nighttime is when your defences drop. The day is over, responsibilities are done, and your brain finally has space to feel everything you pushed down. The phone steps in right there, offering instant distraction. Then you stay up too late, you sleep badly, you wake up tired, and tiredness makes self-control harder. The next day you reach for the phone again because you are running on fumes.
That is a classic addiction pattern. Not because doomscrolling is identical to substances, but because the loop is similar, discomfort, quick relief, repeated behaviour, guilt, more discomfort, more relief seeking.
Why “delete the app” rarely works on its own
A lot of advice online sounds tough but isn’t actually practical. Delete the apps. Do a digital detox. Become a minimalist. Those ideas can help, but they fail when they treat the phone as the only problem. If doomscrolling is how you numb anxiety, then removing the feed without building better regulation will leave you raw. That rawness is what drives relapse back into the scroll.
You also live in South Africa, where stress levels are not theoretical. Load shedding, safety concerns, financial pressure, family responsibilities, high unemployment, political noise, crime stories that hit close to home, and constant bad news are part of the daily environment. People don’t scroll because life is easy. They scroll because their brain wants a break. The tragedy is that the break is fake. It doesn’t restore you. It only distracts you while draining you further.
The goal is not to become someone who never uses a phone. The goal is to stop using it as your main emotional regulator.
What actually helps
You get control back by doing three things that sound simple, but require consistency, adding friction, creating replacement, and being honest about what you are using the phone for.
Friction means making the behaviour slightly harder to do automatically. Turn off notifications that don’t matter. Remove social apps from your home screen. Log out so you have to log in again. Keep the phone out of the bedroom. Charge it in another room. If you wake up and your hand goes straight to your phone, you need a physical barrier. Not a motivational quote, a barrier.
Replacement means giving your brain another way to regulate. If scrolling is your stress relief, you need an alternative that is realistic, not perfect. A short walk. A shower. A ten-minute stretch. Cooking something simple. A phone call to someone who doesn’t drain you. A structured wind-down routine at night. Reading something that has an end point, not an endless feed. If you remove the coping mechanism without replacing the function, you will default back to it.
Honesty is the uncomfortable part. Ask yourself what you are trying not to feel. Are you anxious about money. Are you lonely. Are you avoiding conflict at home. Are you burnt out. Are you scared of the future. Are you angry at someone and avoiding the conversation. Doomscrolling thrives when it stays vague. When you name what’s underneath, the behaviour starts to lose its mystery.
What getting your attention back really looks like
Getting your attention back isn’t glamorous. It is not a clean “I deleted Instagram and now I meditate” story. It is small choices repeated daily. It is tolerating boredom without panic. It is learning to sit with discomfort without needing a hit. It is rebuilding your ability to focus, to read, to rest, to be present with people, to sleep properly, to feel emotions without escaping immediately.
If you recognise yourself in this, don’t wait for it to magically resolve. These loops tend to tighten over time, not loosen, because your brain learns the shortcut deeper each month you repeat it. Start with friction, build replacement, and be honest about what you’re avoiding. If you can’t break the loop on your own, get help sooner rather than later. The point is not to win a self-control contest. The point is to stop living like your phone owns your nervous system.
If you want to talk to someone who understands compulsive behaviour properly, not in a preachy way, but in a grounded, clinical, real-world way, reach out to a treatment team that deals with addiction every day. This is fixable, but it starts with calling it what it is, not “just scrolling.”
