Ugh doom scrolling. The thing you and I know all too well. You sit down for 5 minutes, open up TikTok and one hour has passed. Why does this happen? My eyes can literally get glued to my screen and I’m just swiping through content and more content until I realize what I’m doing is insane and it’s time to go to bed. I almost get a guilty feeling. Part of it probably comes from the amount of time I just wasted but the rest of it comes from me just comparing myself to everyone I see on social media. And the comparison I’m doing is literally my productivity levels. Like wow I just scrolled here for an hour. This person just cleaned their whole room – way to go me. 

The mindless scrolling that almost feels automatic just takes over. Trust me, I get the doom scroll struggle. It’s like a mental trap that’s hard to escape from. Once you start scrolling, your brain just kind of shuts off and you go into autopilot mode. And then, of course, the algorithm does its magic—more stuff you didn’t even know you needed to see. Before you know it, you’ve seen every trend, every influencer’s “day in the life,” everything going on in the world of pop culture, and you’re mentally exhausted, but still, you keep going, scroll after scroll. It’s almost like your mind is tricked into thinking you’re being productive because you’re absorbing all this information. But in reality, it’s just draining your mental battery.  Even though you may not realize it. 

I’ve come up with a great saying to get myself off my phone, “If I have 15 minutes to scroll, I have 15 minutes to stroll”. Not going to lie, this has been a game changer with my screen time. Even when I’m at the gym and my workout is all done I think to myself, am I just gonna sit in the parking lot in my car on my phone before I drive home? Definitely? Get back up on the treadmill. 

So how do you avoid it, well to be honest, I haven’t really figured that out yet. And I’m not preaching to the choir about my healthy media habits – I’m far from it. So how do you handle your doom scrolling? No regrets video after a video, or do you feel some of the guilt that I feel.