By Dustin Staggs

Picture this: you’re sitting in your favorite study area, bed, couch, or cozy corner doing school work. What do you do now that you’ve completed your final task for the day?

If you’re anything like me, you go for your trusty phone and begin swiping away. Perhaps it’s nighttime, and you know you should get some beauty sleep, but instead you’re scrolling away the hours, filling up that bottomless pit of stimulated satisfaction, and losing track of time until, whoops, it’s 2 a.m.!

So, what is the name of this devilishly enticing digital dance? According to the Cambridge Dictionary, “doomscrolling” is the activity of spending a lot of time looking at your phone or computer and reading negative news stories. Whether we realize we are doing it or not, doomscrolling is an easy situation to find ourselves in with our constant connection to content and the endless feed of social media at our fingertips.

Anyone can spend too much time getting lost in the rabbit hole of negative online news and social media. Men are slightly more likely than women to doomscroll, according to WebMD. The study also states that younger adults are more likely than older adults to do it, and people who closely follow or participate in politics are more likely to doomscroll.

Additionally, doomscrolling causes harm to mental health in a variety of ways. According to UNC Health, doomscrolling contributes to anxiety and depression by reinforcing unpleasant ideas and sentiments. It has the potential to exacerbate pre-existing mental illnesses, like anxiety or depression, as well as increase fear and concern. Furthermore, it can make us agitated, inattentive, and mentally exhausted, resulting in the productivity of a sloth on a sunny day. According to UNC Health, the more time we spend doomscrolling, the more likely we are to have sleep problems, stress-related health issues, and low self-esteem.

Given the possible emotional and psychological consequences of doomscrolling, it is critical to be aware of how much time we spend doing it in order to make efforts to reduce its influence on our mental health.

But wait, there’s still hope! You have the ability to break out of this vicious cycle. The following is how I tamed the scrolling beast: I replaced the scrolling to flipping the pages of a nice old-fashioned book. Since the beginning of the summer, any moment I had the slightest amount of free time and felt like getting on my phone, I instead picked up whatever book I was reading at the time and immersed myself in that. It’s the equivalent of swapping fast food for a five-star supper. While reading may take a little more focus and effort than watching funny cat videos on TikTok, it is way more rewarding.

Therefore, reading is an excellent way to address many of the issues that social media brings, making it a perfect substitute for anyone willing to try it. There are millions of books available for individuals to enjoy, and with the assistance of your local public library, you may choose any book to read for free.

Not only does reading improve your critical thinking and creativity, it also helps increase your vocabulary, knowledge and imagination, according to Nuvance Health.

Nuvance Health also states that being entertained offers physiological advantages, such as generating endorphins in the brain; it is more beneficial when the content we are absorbing isn’t short 30-second videos but instead working out the muscles in our brain by reading. 

Now, some of you may have fallen out of love with books after being pushed to have reading goals in grade school, but books are pure entertainment at their finest. Books have the ability to make you laugh, weep, and keep you on the edge of your seat. It’s like a mental exercise, producing feel-good hormones that can help you relax, manage discomfort and let go of stress.

Immersing oneself in the enticing world of books can perform wonders for stress alleviation. It’s like a spa day for your brain, slowing your heart rate and relaxing those tense muscles. Reading allows you to focus on a tale rather than the turmoil of life, allowing you to compartmentalize, giving way to mental clarity and helping to prevent emotional burnout—which is a skill we all need in this fast-paced world. So, the next time you’re tempted to doomscroll, instead go for a book. It’s a worthwhile quest that might save your mental health.