In the age of the smartphone, we all have our screen time bad habits. We indulge them readily with glowing screens illuminating our tired faces at night, with crooked, downturned necks on the morning commute, with time at our desks blocking a big screen with a smaller one. Some of these indulgences are aspirational, some entertaining, others simply mind-numbing. Many toe the line of addiction, and I've certainly felt highs and lows scrolling the front page of a certain news app as if it were a social network. I swipe until I see the games section at the bottom of the front page, triggering a rush of euphoric satisfaction at having seen it all. This experience feels eerily similar to the rush I get from the little “all done” pop-up on Instagram that follows all the new posts of the accounts I follow. I obsessively open this news app to satiate this craving (and spend on average about 40 minutes there each day, my screen time reveals), just to be greeted by the same headlines (sometimes slightly reworded) over and over again. Why can't they just post something new, I ask myself, like a FOMO-crazed teenager desperate to keep up with the goings-on.

My habit developed around the time I was sent home from college in March 2020. I “doom-scrolled” through the headlines announcing an ever-growing COVID death toll in the City. Soon, though, I grew fatigued of my news app much as I had with the equally addicting social network apps, many of which I deleted from my phone. “Goodbye,” I whispered to myself as I clicked the little ex at the top of a quivering app icon. Poof. It felt somehow ceremonial, healing, and triumphant; like a funeral I heard rumors about in high school that was held for a classmate’s JUUL, cast defiantly into the Hudson by a huddle of darkly-dressed teenagers laughing hysterically. A summer of quarantine-meets-news-detox awaited. 

Enter Joe Biden, whose campaign against Donald Trump drew me dutifully back to the distinctive serif font, the colorful geographic visualizations, the dramatic photos between headlines, the finish line of the games section at the bottom of the page. January 6th followed, and then that cargo ship got lodged in the Suez Canal. That was big enough news that my friend's grandmother felt deputized to draw comparison between the dredging efforts and her dentist’s “hours-long battle” with her fillings. The Surfside condo collapse, Afghanistan, the Texas abortion laws, the deadly tornadoes, Omicron, Valieva, Russia, Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine, Roe, Midterms, DeSanctimonius, Etc.. 

Sometimes, my doom-scrolling addiction makes me feel small. There are a lot of serious and upsetting news stories, many of them unfolding hundreds or thousands of miles away. Their twists and turns are marked by signs I require well-trained journalists and political commentators to translate for me, their antagonists far more powerful than I. The endless deluge of bad news often drowns the trickle of good. I feel powerless in the face of a news media industry fueled by the metrics of digital engagement, which are boosted by divisiveness, shock value, and anxiety, and not necessarily by commitment to accuracy or solution-oriented reporting. I like to think I read accurate journalism, and do so with a critical eye. I can't always be sure.

Sometimes, though, reading the news makes me feel big. It's nice to be up on the times, I tell myself. If it really is “all the news fit to print,” and I read almost all of it, good for me! I get compliments at dinner parties from my parent’s septuagenarian friends for recalling an obituary from months prior. Its nice to be able to explain the passive aggression between FTC and FAA officials over the rollout of 5G service. Quippy remarks I stored away about societal ills or partisan hypocrisy are exchanged for social capital and reputational sheen. I get to feel like an expert, even if I am really just paraphrasing the 600 words of commentary from a real expert on the geopolitics of Eastern Europe or the Middle East. 

Its ironic that the news I am most equipped to examine with an expert eye as an environmental studies concentrator is the news that often frustrates me most, and reveals the fatal consequences of my addiction. As good as it feels to deeply understand what I am reading about, it can also make me feel helpless to make change where I think it matters most (more on that in a minute). If it were up to me, this news - about our warming planet - would be on the front page every day. Forget today’s sprint to the finish line, let's headline the global marathon, in which we are running for our survival on this planet. The lack of deference given to the scale of this crisis sometimes sickens me, the inadequacies in coverage prompt constant annoyance, and the missed educational opportunities in adjacent issue areas frustrate me. If only the mainstream news about climate change were better, I lament. Maybe more people would care, I hypothesize. Maybe we would actually start making the kinds of changes this problem necessitates, I reassure myself. Maybe our collective news addiction might actually drive us to action.

But just as I grow desensitized to the ballooning case counts of a multi-wave pandemic, to the seemingly endless partisan bickering, to the supply chain disruptions, to wars and refugee crises on the other side of the world, so too do I occasionally grow dispassionate to the glacial pace of sea level rise. Another species declared extinct? Just add it to the list. New IPCC Report? It says basically the same thing as the last one. Devastating wildfires and hurricanes? It is that time of year again… 

There is a profound dissonance in being desensitized to the daily minutia of a problem I hope to dedicate my life to addressing. Somehow, a gripping front page headline can prompt less response than a dry environmental studies textbook, even when presenting the same information. It might be because the news I'm addicted to consuming is designed to take advantage of my desensitized doom-scrolling, suck up my energy (and monetarily valuable engagement time) with analysis of the ever-approaching next crisis, leaving none of my time for response. 

So how can we move forward in a doom-scrolling era, and break the toxic relationship we have with our media that prompts endless outrage and despair but diminishing compassion and action?

A good place to start is taking time to do some intentional sleuthing - that's how I ended up writing this piece. A professor of mine at school, Kate Schapira – currently writing a book that seeks to help confront climate anxiety through introspection and group practices – created the following exercise:

Watch, read, or listen to the news, or scroll your social media feed — whatever routine you have for doing that thing. But starting now, each time you do this, notice and record when you feel weak and when you feel strong. What were you seeing at the times you felt weak? What messages were you receiving at the times when you felt strong? Notice who's doing what at those moments, who is speaking, how they're describing or characterizing themselves and anyone else they're talking about, if they are describing or recommending a course of action. Check in with someone else who's doing this practice too, and do the same process while they describe what they reacted to. Do this for at least a week, and see if the way you react or the things you react to change.

Through this process, I discovered it is often the good news stories that make me take action: What did I do after I perused through restaurant profiles, and read about one donating its proceeds to Ukrainian refugees? I ordered two dozen pierogi from them to share with my housemates at school. After I saw the announcement of a shiny new train terminal that will finally replace the armpit of New York, Penn Station, how did I respond? I booked a train ticket rather than drive home for my Mother’s birthday party, breaking my post-pandemic habit of relying on my car over public transportation systems, and lowering my emissions for the trip significantly. 

I also discovered that I sometimes still feel a responsibility to read the bad news, and as I've already said, it can make me feel weak and strong interchangeably. Doom-scrolling keeps me informed of all the things I care about, and I don't think that we should have to sugarcoat the signs of a democracy straining under the stresses of polarization, the symptoms of global destabilization, the reality of an impending ecological crisis. But noticing when and how this coverage makes me feel weak or strong has helped me to modulate my reactions, and to prioritize my energy in responding.

This practice encouraged me to look more critically at the content and tone of my doom-scrolls themselves. I found myself asking - is this article meant to make me feel weak? Is it meant to empower me? Is this story I am reading informing me of threats, or persuading me to be afraid so I keep reading? Our fear should not serve the ultimate purpose of the holy ad revenue our eyeball-time grants to digital content purveyors; it should instead be managed to motivate necessary action, not prompt paralysis.

Until I embarked on Professor Schapira’s exercise, I was also unable to understand the conflicting feelings that climate change coverage elicited. This intentional sleuthing helped me to connect my experience with two facts I  already knew; first, we have a remarkable ability to blind ourselves to information that challenges our understanding of how the world works, that calls for actions not aligned with our values, or which triggers fear and anxiety (its for this exact reason that so many people do not believe or engage with climate change as a concept at all). Second, we also have a remarkable ability to ignore the shortcomings of arguments that affirm our worldview and advocate for values we believe in. 

With these two facts in mind, I came to understand the simultaneous frustration and affirmation doomsday coverage of climate change engenders in me. First, it makes me (and others) feel powerless to solve the problem, and triggers fear and anxiety, causing us to stop emotionally investing in the issue to avoid constant psychological and socio-cultural trauma. Second, for people like me who care about climate change, doomsday coverage also amplifies the severity and urgency we think is appropriate, causing us to ignore its shortcomings and paralyzing tone,  nodding along with furrowed brows. 

So next time you read about something in the news – whether it makes you happy or sad, angry or scared – take a moment to zoom out, and ask yourself the questions from professors Schapira’s exercise. You might just escape the doom-scroll.