doomscroll

What it means

To keep scrolling through a feed of negative, distressing, or anxiety-inducing news for way longer than is good for you, unable to look away. It's the compulsive habit of feeding yourself bad news at 2am even though it just makes you feel worse.

Examples

• I doomscrolled until 3am and now I feel awful, classic.
• Stop doomscrolling the news and go touch some grass.
• Every time there's a crisis I just doomscroll Twitter for hours.
• I deleted the app because the doomscrolling was wrecking my sleep.

Where it comes from

The term gained traction on Twitter around 2018-2019 and went mainstream in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, when endless grim headlines made the habit nearly universal.

Related slang