Meaning & use
doomscrolling
Last updated
Meaning
noununcountable
The habit of endlessly reading bad news online, even though it makes you feel worse.
Grammar: No plural and no article: doomscrolling keeps me awake, not a doomscrolling.
Patterns
- spend hours doomscrolling
- stop doomscrolling
Doomscrolling before bed left her anxious and awake.
He blames hours of doomscrolling for his bad mood.
Doomscrolling grew common during the long lockdowns.
Common combinations
- spend hours doomscrolling
- I spent hours doomscrolling last night instead of sleeping.
- stop doomscrolling
- She deleted the app to stop doomscrolling.
- late-night doomscrolling
- Late-night doomscrolling can wreck your sleep.
- break the doomscrolling habit
- He tried to break the doomscrolling habit by turning off alerts.
- fall into doomscrolling
- It is easy to fall into doomscrolling during a crisis.
Synonyms and how they differ
- doomsurfing
- Doomsurfing is an almost identical term, but it is much less common than doomscrolling.
- scrolling
- Scrolling just means moving through content on a screen, without the idea that the content is upsetting.
- binge-reading
- Binge-reading means reading a lot in one go, and the material need not be bad news.
Word family
- doomscroll verb
- to keep reading upsetting news online
- doomscroller noun
- a person who does this habitually
- scroll verb
- to move text or images up or down on a screen
- doom noun
- a terrible fate or destruction
Commonly confused: doomscrolling or doomsday?
doomscrolling vs doomsday
Doomsday is the end of the world or a day of final judgment, while doomscrolling is a social media habit.
Practice
Tom kept checking disturbing headlines for hours, even though they made him anxious. What is this behavior called?
Choose one answer.
Doomscrolling is compulsive reading of upsetting news. The other terms describe different activities that do not involve bad news.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “doomscrolling”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.