How to Stop Doomscrolling: 8 Things That Actually Help

To stop doomscrolling, break the loop at its weakest points: cut the triggers that start it (notifications, and the phone on your nightstand), add real friction to the apps you scroll, and give the urge somewhere else to go. Doomscrolling isn't a willpower failure - it's a designed loop, and the way out is to redesign the loop, not to try harder.

It's common enough that, in one survey of 2,000 professionals, 23% said they wanted to swap doomscrolling for something more useful in 2026. If you're one of them, here's how.

What is doomscrolling?

Doomscrolling (sometimes doomsurfing) is the habit of compulsively scrolling through a stream of negative or distressing content - news headlines, social feeds, comment sections - long past the point where it's useful or enjoyable. The term spread widely around 2020 and has stuck because the behaviour did.

The defining feature isn't the amount of scrolling - it's the mismatch. You feel worse with every swipe, and you keep swiping anyway. It feels like staying informed. It mostly just feels bad.

Why doomscrolling is so hard to stop

It helps to know you're not fighting a personal weakness - you're fighting three forces working together.

• Negativity bias. Human attention is tuned to notice threats. Bad news grabs harder and holds longer than good news, so a feed full of it is genuinely difficult to look away from.
• Variable rewards. A feed is an unpredictable mix. The next swipe might show you something important, funny or reassuring - and "might" is the most compulsive reward schedule there is. It's the same mechanism that makes slot machines work.
• The anxiety loop. When the world feels frightening, scrolling for information feels like doing something about it. It rarely is. More often it feeds the anxiety, which creates the urge to scroll again. The loop sustains itself.

None of that is a character flaw. It's a designed loop meeting an evolved brain - which is good news, because loops can be redesigned.

How to stop doomscrolling

1. Name it in the moment

The single most useful skill is catching yourself: a quiet "I'm doomscrolling" as it's happening. That sentence creates a half-second gap between the autopilot and the next swipe - and that gap is where every other tactic below gets its chance.

2. Cut the triggers

Doomscrolling usually starts with a trigger, not a decision. Turn off news and social notifications so headlines stop summoning you. Charge your phone outside the bedroom so it can't be the first and last thing you touch each day. Remove the trigger and the loop often doesn't start at all.

3. Add friction to the apps you scroll

Make the scroll harder to reach. Log out after each use, move the apps off your home screen, or delete them and use the website instead. On iPhone, switching to greyscale strips out the colour these feeds rely on. Each small obstacle gives your "I'm doomscrolling" moment time to win.

4. Block the apps during your danger windows

Most people doomscroll at predictable times - in bed, over lunch, the slump after work. For those windows, a dismissible limit won't hold. A screen time app that blocks the apps at the system level - like MindBack - removes the option entirely during the hours you reliably spiral, so there's no loop to fall into.

5. Give the urge somewhere to go

The urge to scroll is real and won't simply vanish. Decide in advance what it redirects to: a book within reach, a short walk, a message to an actual friend, a game that ends. You're not suppressing the urge - you're rerouting it.

6. Curate ruthlessly

Your feed is editable, and most people never edit it. Spend ten minutes unfollowing or muting the accounts and topics that reliably spike your stress. You can stay informed without a feed engineered to keep you alarmed.

7. Set a deliberate news window

The goal isn't to be uninformed - it's to be informed on purpose. Pick one time a day to catch up on news, from a source that has an end: a newsletter, a print-style digest, a single article. Anything with a bottom of the page beats an infinite feed.

8. Be kind about lapses

You will doomscroll again. A bad-news week will pull you back in. That isn't failure - it's the loop doing what loops do. Notice it, reset, and carry on. Shame just adds the very anxiety that fuels more scrolling.

How to stop doomscrolling at night

Night is the hardest time, because the conditions are perfect: you're tired, you're alone, and there's nothing else competing for your attention. A few specific fixes:

• Charge your phone in another room. This is the big one. A phone that isn't within arm's reach can't be scrolled in bed.
• Block social and news apps on a schedule from the early evening. A recurring block from around 9pm means the decision is already made before you're too tired to make it well.
• Put something else by the bed - a real book, a low-stakes paper puzzle - so the wind-down has an alternative.
• Switch to greyscale in the evening, so that if you do pick up the phone, the feed is far less magnetic.

For the full evening routine, see our guide on how to reduce your screen time.

Common questions

Is doomscrolling bad for you?

Compulsively consuming distressing content is widely linked to higher anxiety and low mood, and when it happens at night it eats into sleep - which makes everything else harder. Staying informed is healthy; doomscrolling is the version that has tipped past useful into corrosive.

Why do I doomscroll at night?

Because night removes your competition for attention. You're tired, so self-control is low; you're alone, so there's no social friction; and there's nothing else to do. It's the perfect environment for the loop - which is exactly why changing the environment (phone out of the room, apps blocked) works better than trying to resist.

What's the difference between doomscrolling and normal scrolling?

Normal scrolling has a natural end - you check something, you're done, you feel fine. Doomscrolling has no end and makes you feel worse as it goes. If you regularly finish a scrolling session more anxious than you started, that's the line.

The bottom line

Doomscrolling isn't a flaw in you - it's a loop built from negativity bias, variable rewards and anxiety. You stop it the way you'd dismantle any loop: cut the triggers, add friction, block the apps during the hours you spiral, and give the urge a different place to go. Start with the two that matter most tonight - notifications off, phone out of the bedroom - and build from there.