You know that moment when you tell yourself you’ll just check the news for a minute, and somehow you’ve lost an entire hour to terrifying headlines, angry comment sections, and whatever social media meltdown is happening today? That’s doomscrolling. And if you’ve ever wondered how to stop doomscrolling, you’re definitely not alone.
I’ve noticed that it rarely starts with me consciously deciding to spend the next half hour reading bad news. Usually I pick up my phone to check one thing, then another headline catches my attention, then I want to see what people are saying about it, and before long I’m reading reactions to a story I already understood ten minutes ago.
And I think that’s where there’s an important difference worth noticing. Sometimes we’re genuinely looking for information. We want to know what happened, whether anything has changed, or whether there’s something we actually need to know. But there comes a point where we’ve got the information and we keep scrolling anyway, almost as though the next article, comment or refresh might finally make everything feel a little more certain.
The problem is, it rarely does…
So breaking the habit isn’t really about refusing to read the news, deleting every social media app or pretending the world isn’t a worrying place. It’s about getting better at noticing when staying informed has turned into searching for something the scroll can’t actually give you.
In this guide, we’ll look at how to spot that point, make doomscrolling a little harder to fall into automatically, put some boundaries around the news without cutting yourself off from it, and find a few realistic things to do when what you actually need isn’t another swipe.
Contents
- Why Doomscrolling Feels So Bad
- Notice What You’re Actually Looking For
- Make the Scroll a Little Harder to Start
- Give Your Evenings Back to Yourself
- Choose What You Feed Your Mind
- Ask What You Can Actually Do With What You’ve Read
- Come Back to Your Body
- Be Kind When You Slip
- FAQs
- Final Thoughts
Why Doomscrolling Feels So Bad
There’s a strange contradiction at the heart of doomscrolling: we keep reading because we want to feel more informed, but somehow we nearly always come away feeling worse.
Part of the problem is that there’s rarely a natural finishing point. One headline leads to an update, the update leads to somebody’s reaction, then you’re checking the comments, looking for another source, or refreshing to see whether anything has changed. Instead of reaching a point where you think, right, I know what I needed to know, every new piece of information gives you something else to worry about.
Research backs up the idea that this can take a toll. A 2026 review of doomscrolling research found consistent links with anxiety, stress, depression and lower psychological resilience, although the researchers were careful to point out that much of the evidence so far can’t tell us that doomscrolling directly causes those problems. What comes up again and again, though, is uncertainty, rumination and the difficulty of knowing when to stop.
Part of what keeps the loop going is that nagging feeling that something still hasn’t been settled. When a story is still unfolding, another update can feel like it might finally make things clearer. More often than not, though, it just gives you something else to think about.
You probably know the feeling afterwards. Your phone goes down but your head doesn’t quite follow. Maybe you’re replaying something you’ve read, wondering what might happen next, struggling to concentrate on something else, or lying in bed thinking about a story you had absolutely no intention of reading an hour earlier.
That doesn’t mean reading difficult news is bad for you, or that the answer is to ignore what’s happening in the world. The problem is when staying informed turns into an open-ended search for certainty, because the endless scroll is very good at giving you more information and pretty terrible at telling you when you’ve had enough.
Notice What You’re Actually Looking For
Most doomscrolling doesn’t start with a conscious decision to spend the next half hour staring at bad news. You’re bored for a minute, waiting for the kettle to boil, avoiding something you don’t particularly want to do, or wondering whether there’s been an update to a story you were following. The phone comes out almost automatically, and suddenly you’re in.
So rather than immediately trying to stop yourself scrolling, it can help to get a little curious about why you picked up the phone in the first place. What were you actually trying to find out?
If there’s a specific answer, great. Check it. But then ask yourself what would count as enough. If you wanted to know whether something had happened and now you know, technically you’re done. Everything after that might still be interesting, obviously, but it’s worth noticing when checking for information turns into scrolling because you’re anxious, bored, restless, or hoping another update will somehow make you feel better.
I find three questions useful here: What am I actually trying to find out? What answer would mean I’m done? And if there isn’t one, what am I hoping is going to change?
You don’t need to interrogate yourself every time you open Instagram or turn checking the news into some elaborate mindfulness exercise. It’s just a way of catching that little moment where “I want to know what happened” becomes “I’m still scrolling and I’m not entirely sure why”.
After a while, you’ll probably start spotting patterns as well. Maybe it happens first thing in the morning, late at night when you’re tired, during quiet gaps in the day, or whenever a particular news story has you worried. That simple act of noticing what’s happening before automatically following the urge is really mindfulness in its most everyday form.
You’re not trying to become someone who never checks their phone. For now, you’re just learning to recognise the point where getting informed stops being useful and the loop begins.
Make the Scroll a Little Harder to Start
Once you’ve started noticing when and why you reach for your phone, the next thing I’d look at is how ridiculously easy you’ve made it to start scrolling.
For most of us, there’s almost no gap between the urge and the feed. The phone is already beside us, the app is sitting on the home screen, we’re permanently logged in, and one tap drops us straight into an endless stream of updates. If you’re trying to break the habit, it makes sense to put a little bit of effort back into that process.
That doesn’t mean deleting every social media app and moving into a cabin in the woods. It could be as simple as taking the apps off your home screen, turning off the notifications that keep pulling you back in, logging out when you’re finished, or deciding that you’ll check the news in your browser rather than through an app that immediately serves you another ten stories.
None of those things makes doomscrolling impossible, obviously. You can still go looking for it if you really want to. But that tiny bit of inconvenience gives you something you don’t normally get: a second to notice what you’re about to do before you’re already doing it.
You can still use time limits if they help, but I wouldn’t rely on them alone. I’ve definitely had those screen time warnings pop up and found myself reaching for “ignore limit” almost before I’ve even thought about it. At that point, the reminder has basically become part of the scrolling routine, and if that sounds familiar, changing the setup around the habit may work better than adding another warning to ignore.
It can also help to decide that certain little bits of the day are simply phone-free. Maybe the first half hour after you wake up, meals, the school run, or whatever makes sense in your own life. The point isn’t to create a complicated set of rules, you’re just putting a few small pauses back into a habit that normally happens almost instantly.
Give Your Evenings Back to Yourself
Evenings are probably one of the easiest times to fall into doomscrolling. You’re tired, there’s not much else demanding your attention, and the phone is right there. You tell yourself you’ll have a quick look before bed, and somehow you’re still scrolling half an hour later through stories you never even meant to read.
The problem isn’t just the time you lose. It’s that you can end up taking everything you’ve just read to bed with you. You finally put the phone down, but your brain is still chewing over the headline, the comments, what might happen next, or whatever fresh disaster the algorithm decided you needed to know about at 11:30pm.
I’ve definitely had nights where I’ve picked up my phone for one last check and immediately regretted it. Nothing useful has changed, I’m not actually better informed, and now I’ve given myself something completely new to think about when I was supposed to be winding down.
So if evenings are one of your weak spots, I think one of the simplest changes you can make is to stop scrolling in bed. Charge your phone across the room if you need it for an alarm, leave it downstairs if you don’t, or give yourself a rough point in the evening when the news and social feeds are finished for the day.
And it helps to replace the scroll with something rather than just leaving an empty half hour and hoping you won’t reach for the phone again. Read a few pages of something, make a drink, listen to music, write down whatever’s still rattling around in your head, or try something deliberately calming. If sleep is already something you struggle with, we’ve got a separate guide to meditation for better sleep with a few ways to make that transition into bed a little easier.
If bedtime scrolling is one of your weak spots, try swapping it for something that actually helps you wind down. We’ve included one of our sleep meditations below, so you can simply get comfortable, press play, and let that be the last thing you listen to tonight.
Even a bit of mindfulness journaling can work nicely here if your head is still full of whatever you’ve been reading. You don’t need to analyse your entire life before bed, but sometimes writing down what’s on your mind is enough to stop carrying it around quite so tightly.
The goal isn’t some perfect screen-free evening – it’s just to stop giving the worst bits of the internet the final word before you go to sleep.
Choose What You Feed Your Mind
Not all scrolling is doomscrolling, and I don’t think the answer is to fill your phone with nothing but sunsets, puppies and motivational quotes either. Sometimes the news is grim because the thing happening is genuinely grim, and staying informed matters.
What does make a difference is how much control you hand over once you start scrolling.
There’s a very different feeling between opening a trusted news site because you want to find out what happened, reading a couple of reports, and then leaving, versus opening a social feed and letting it decide what you should see next. One story becomes another, then a reaction, then an argument about the reaction, and before long you’re consuming information you never actually went looking for.
I’ve noticed I’m much less likely to get stuck if I go straight to the news site or source I actually meant to check. The trouble usually starts when I come across the same story through social media, because then it arrives with the comments, reactions, arguments and another ten things I never actually went looking for.
So have a look at what regularly pulls you in. If there are accounts that leave you angry every time you see them, mute them. If a particular app always turns a quick news check into twenty minutes of doomscrolling, get your news somewhere else. If notifications keep dragging you back into stories you weren’t thinking about five seconds earlier, switch the non-essential ones off.
You can also be a bit more deliberate about where you get important information. Pick a couple of sources you trust and go to them on purpose rather than treating whatever appears in the feed as a running commentary on the state of the world. You’ll still know what’s happening, you’re just removing a lot of the noise around it.
And if you’ve noticed that constantly jumping between headlines, notifications and reactions is starting to make it harder to stay with anything for very long, our guide to meditation for focus looks at a few simple ways to practice bringing your attention back.
The goal isn’t to create some perfectly peaceful little online bubble. It’s just to be a little more selective about what gets access to your attention, rather than letting an algorithm make that decision every time you unlock your phone.
Ask What You Can Actually Do With What You’ve Read
Sometimes the thing you’re reading genuinely matters to you, which is exactly why it can be so difficult to put the phone down. Stepping away can almost feel like you’re ignoring it, or somehow caring less because you’re not following every update.
But knowing more and doing more aren’t always the same thing.
Once you’ve got the basic facts, it can help to ask yourself a really simple question: is there actually anything useful I can do with this information?
Sometimes there is. You might donate to something you care about, sign a petition, contact someone, check in on a friend, make a practical decision, or simply have a proper conversation about what’s happened. It doesn’t have to be some grand gesture either – one small action can feel a lot more useful than reading another fifty reactions to the same story.
And sometimes the answer is honestly no. There’s nothing you need to do, nothing has changed since the last time you checked, and another twenty minutes of updates won’t give you any more control over what happens next.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve caught myself continuing to read because putting the phone down somehow feels too passive, even though I’m not actually doing anything by scrolling either. That’s usually a pretty good sign that I’ve crossed the line from staying informed into carrying the story around with me.
If that leaves you anxious or wound up, that’s the point where it can be more useful to step away and deal with that feeling instead. A short walk, talking to someone, making a drink, or even a few minutes of meditation for anxiety can do more for you than going back through the same headlines again.
You don’t have to solve everything you read about, and you don’t have to keep consuming it to prove that you care. Sometimes you’ve learned what you needed to learn, and you’re allowed to leave it there.
Come Back to Your Body
One of the weird things about doomscrolling is how completely you can disappear into the screen. You’re reading headline after headline, barely noticing that you’ve been hunched over the same way for twenty minutes, your jaw’s clenched, your shoulders have crept upwards, or you desperately need to get up and move.
I notice this one a lot. I can be completely absorbed in whatever I’m reading, then finally put the phone down and suddenly realise how physically tense I’ve become without really noticing it happening.
That’s a useful moment to interrupt the scroll because you don’t necessarily need to replace it with anything complicated. Put the phone down. Stand up. Roll your shoulders around. Stretch your legs. Look out of the window for a minute. Make a drink. Just do something that brings your attention away from the little rectangle in your hand and back into the room you’re actually sitting in.
You can make this a bit more deliberate if you want to. A quick body scan meditation is basically an exercise in noticing what’s happening physically, from tension and pressure to warmth, movement and contact with whatever you’re sitting on. You don’t have to relax everything or “fix” what you find. Sometimes simply noticing it is enough to break the spell of the feed.
And if five or ten minutes feels completely unrealistic when you’re already stuck in the scroll, go smaller. One of our 60-second micro-meditations can be enough to create a little gap between I’m scrolling and do I actually want to keep scrolling?
That’s really all we’re trying to do here. Not turn every phone check into a wellness ritual, but give your attention somewhere else to land for long enough that continuing to scroll becomes a choice again.
Be Kind When You Slip
You’re going to slip back into doomscrolling sometimes…
You’ll have a good few days, then pick up your phone to check one thing and realise forty minutes later that you’ve somehow ended up reading an argument between two strangers about a story you weren’t even interested in to begin with.
That doesn’t mean none of the changes you’ve made are working. Habits are messy, and I think it’s much more useful to get curious about what happened than to decide you’ve failed and start again on Monday.
The question I’d ask is simply: what was going on just before I picked up my phone?
Maybe you were bored. Maybe you’d had a stressful day and wanted something to disappear into for a while. Perhaps you were putting off something you didn’t particularly want to do, lying in bed unable to switch off, or a worrying headline had sent you looking for more information.
I’ve found that the reason I keep scrolling often makes much more sense once I think about what was happening before I started. The phone isn’t always the problem in isolation. Sometimes it’s just the easiest thing to reach for when I’m tired, restless or don’t particularly want to sit with whatever else is going on.
And once you spot that pattern, you’ve actually got something useful to work with. If stress is the thing that keeps sending you back to the feed, for example, finding another quick way of dealing with that feeling might help more than simply promising yourself you won’t scroll next time. Even something as simple as stepping away for a few minutes or trying a short meditation for stress relief gives you another option when the urge appears.
You don’t need to analyse every lapse or keep a spreadsheet of your scrolling habits. Just notice what happened, make a small adjustment if something obvious stands out, and carry on.
FAQs
How do I know if I’m doomscrolling or just staying informed?
I think the easiest test is whether you’re still learning anything useful. If you opened your phone to find out what happened, got the answer, and twenty minutes later you’re still reading reactions, predictions and slightly different versions of the same story, you’ve probably crossed the line somewhere.
Staying informed usually has some kind of finishing point, whereas doomscrolling tends to keep going long after you’ve got the information you originally came for.
Why is doomscrolling so hard to stop when I know it makes me feel worse?
Because knowing something isn’t good for you doesn’t magically remove the urge to do it. Doomscrolling can start with a perfectly reasonable desire to understand what’s happening, particularly when something feels uncertain or worrying, and endless feeds make it incredibly easy to keep checking without ever reaching a natural end.
That’s why I think changing the setup around the habit often works better than simply telling yourself to have more self-control. Give yourself a stopping point, make the feed slightly harder to reach, and have something else ready for the moment you put the phone down.
Do I need to delete social media to stop doomscrolling?
Not necessarily. If deleting an app genuinely helps you, there’s nothing wrong with doing it, but the goal of this guide isn’t to make your phone unusable.
You might get just as much mileage from switching off notifications, moving certain apps off the home screen, checking the news directly instead of through a social feed, or keeping particular times of day phone-free. The useful change is whichever one stops a two-minute check automatically becoming half an hour.
What if anxiety is what keeps making me check the news?
This is where it helps to come back to the question we started with: am I looking for information, or am I hoping the next update will make me feel less anxious?
If something genuinely new has happened, checking can answer the first question. But if you’ve already read the story several times and you’re still refreshing because you feel unsettled, more information may not be what you need at that point.
Stepping away and dealing with the anxiety itself can be more useful, whether that means talking to somebody, going for a walk, writing down what’s bothering you, or using a short mindfulness practice. If this is a pattern you recognise, our guide to meditation for difficult emotions looks more closely at staying with uncomfortable feelings without immediately getting pulled into reacting to them.
How to stop doomscrolling if I use my phone for work?
You can still set boundaries even if your job keeps you online. Create small pockets of time that belong only to you. Turn off non-essential notifications, batch your emails, and step away between tasks, even if it’s just for two minutes. The goal isn’t to escape technology, it’s to stop being owned by it.
Can meditation or mindfulness help with doomscrolling?
Yes, and they do it in a subtle way. Meditation trains the same skill you need to break the habit – noticing when your attention has wandered and gently coming back. The more you practice that, the easier it becomes to catch yourself mid-scroll before the spiral begins. It’s not about willpower; it’s about awareness.
If you’re curious about trying meditation but not sure where to begin, our guide on How to Meditate Properly (and Find the Style That Fits You) walks you through the basics and different types you can explore.
Once you’ve found a style that feels right for you, the next step is consistency. You can learn how to build a simple, sustainable practice in our post on How to Start a Daily Meditation Habit.
How long does it take to break a doomscrolling habit?
There isn’t a set number of days where the urge suddenly disappears. You’re also probably not going to stop every bit of mindless scrolling forever, and I don’t think that needs to be the goal.
A better sign of progress is that you start catching the habit earlier. Maybe you notice after five minutes instead of forty, put the phone down when you’ve got the information you wanted, or occasionally feel the urge to check and decide not to follow it. Those little interruptions are the habit changing too.
What’s a realistic goal if I can’t stop completely?
Start by aiming to notice, not to quit. Awareness alone can reduce the time you spend scrolling without you even trying. Over time, those small gaps of space between checking and reacting start to grow, and that’s where freedom begins. You don’t need to delete every app or throw your phone in a drawer. You just need to stop letting it decide where your attention goes.
Final Thoughts
Stopping doomscrolling doesn’t mean becoming someone who never checks the news, never opens social media, or somehow stops caring about what’s happening in the world.
For me, the more useful distinction is simply noticing when I’m still learning something and when I’m just still scrolling. There’s usually a point where I’ve got the information I came for, but I keep going anyway, hoping another headline, comment or update will somehow make the situation feel a little more settled.
That’s the bit worth getting better at catching.
Sometimes you’ll notice after two minutes. Other times you’ll look up and realise forty minutes have disappeared. Neither one means you’ve failed. Every time you catch the loop a little earlier, put the phone down when you’ve had enough, or choose not to follow the urge in the first place, you’re changing the habit.
And perhaps most importantly, you don’t have to keep watching something unfold in real time to prove that you care about it. You’re allowed to know what’s happening, decide you’ve had enough for now, and go back to your own life.
If you’re looking for something to help make that easier, regular meditation can be a useful way to practice noticing where your attention has gone and bringing it back again. We’ve looked at the real, everyday benefits of regular meditation in more detail here.
