Breaking the Scroll Cycle: How Our Habits Shape Our Online Experience
Today we are easily consumed in an online world. Did you know Australians aged 16 to 64 spend approximately 6 hours online daily, including nearly 2 hours on social media? We use our devices for work, education, shopping, keeping up to date with the world around us, and communicating with family and friends. Our scrolling behaviour is not always helpful, yet it can be difficult to identify the exact moment our online activity starts affecting our offline lives.
How can we tell that we’ve shifted from positively using technology, to something less helpful? When do our social media habits become “doom scrolling” and what can we do about it?
Imagine this:
It's the end of a long day, and you finally have a moment to relax. You pick up your phone (it’s never far away). What starts as a quick check of social media gradually stretches into the night. You've started with politics and ended in an endless stream of cute animal videos. Or was it in reverse, diving deeper into the world's problems as time passes? You’ve scrolled through numerous posts, skim read multiple articles, and watched several videos—each drawing you in further, and making it harder to switch off.
Finally, you decide to put your phone down. Three hours have passed. How are you feeling now? Uplifted, motivated, energised? Or deflated, overwhelmed, tired - but wired?
This is a common scenario. Still, many people are unaware of the impact scrolling can have on our physical and mental health, and relationships with others. We sometimes hear the term doom scrolling used to describe “spending a lot of time looking at your phone or computer and reading bad or negative news stories”. Online habits such as doom scrolling can become a thief of our time, productivity, patience and potentially our mental health. But is all scrolling bad? What causes us to behave this way? Can scrolling have a lasting effect on our wellbeing?
Let’s look at the effects of different types of scrolling and explore practical steps to develop healthy digital habits.
Understanding Scrolling Behaviours
When we scroll on social media, we trigger psychological and biological processes, that draw us in and entice us to stay connected. When we engage on our social media feed, our brain releases dopamine, a neurotransmitter associated with reward. This creates a feedback loop, keeping us hooked in anticipation of the next best thing. We are biologically wired to avoid loss and this can lead to a fear of missing out, and this can keep us scrolling for a lot longer than we intended at the start. We can become swept up in current affairs, trending topics, or other matters that may not have a particular purpose or significance in our lives at that moment. Infinite scrolling can lead us into a hypnotic state, an altered state of consciousness.
Yet not all scrolling can be considered doom scrolling. We may scroll mindfully and with intention, or in excessive, compulsive, or unhelpful ways. Which of these best describes how you use social media most often right now? Can you see an opportunity to find some balance?
Doom Scrolling: continuously scrolling through negative news or distressing content, even though it causes negative emotions or anxiety.
Mindless Scrolling: using social media to pass time or from habit, without a specific purpose.
Binge Scrolling: scrolling continuously for extensive periods at once.
Feeding Frenzy: intensive periods of engaging and interacting on social media, common during events or viral trends.
Rubbernecking: being hyper-focussed on sensational content (like how people slow down to look at accidents while driving).
Echo Chamber Scrolling: engaging with content that reinforces existing beliefs and opinions.
Purposeful Scrolling: having a specific goal or intention while scrolling and engaging with content, such as finding information, and keeping up-to-date on news.
Slow Scrolling: intentionally taking time to scroll through content, engaging deeply with each piece of information or post.
JOMO (Joy Of Missing Out) Scrolling: scrolling through social media with a sense of contentment and enjoyment rather than anxiety about missing out on something.
Infinite Scrolling: a technical feature of devices that allows content to continuously load on your screen as you scroll down, rather than having to click through pages. This means that you have access to an endless feed of information.
The Positive Side of Scrolling
When we scroll mindfully, we can stay up-to-date with current events, trends, and loved ones without overtaking other areas of our lives. We can investigate ideas, research information and engage in content that has a purpose outside of the scrolling session. We can also engage and interact in supportive online communities. Brief social media scrolling sessions can provide a moment of relaxation without becoming a negative experience. If we have healthy boundaries around our social media use, it can be a positive experience. It’s not all doom and gloom.
The Negative Impact of Doom-Scrolling
On the other hand, too much time on social media and interacting in certain ways while we scroll can have a downside. When our scrolling is considered doom, binge, mindless, echo chamber, rubbernecking, and feeding frenzy we haven’t set healthy boundaries around our online activity. If there are no time limits, purpose, or intentions set for our online or social media use, then we are more likely to get sucked into a scrolling session that could negatively impact our well-being. These impacts may show up as:
Overstimulation and Cognitive Overload: endlessly scrolling can bombard our brains with information. We become overstimulated and have trouble filtering, processing, and retaining all the information we have consumed. This can impact our long-term memory.
Emotional Disturbance: we can be exposed to emotionally uplifting, or distressing content on social media. Sometimes it becomes like an emotional rollercoaster as we scroll from post to post, or article to article, which can be destabilising.
Social media can also be a trap for comparison - where we compare our ordinary, unfiltered lives with the curated feeds of the people we follow. Without adequate perspective, this can lead to feelings of anxiety, inadequacy, or FOMO.
Decreased Focus and Attention Span: The constant stream of online information may have the potential to shorten our attention span over time. Our brains adapt to scanning content, rather than consuming it in-depth. This may make it harder to focus on tasks requiring sustained attention. This phenomenon was coined by Linda Stone as "continuous partial attention" where we're never fully concentrating on one thing.
Reduced Mindfulness: Scrolling can become an automatic, therefore unconscious habit. People lose track of how much time they are spending and do not notice how the content is affecting them. They are detached from the present moment, engaging the brain in a passive, repetitive task that isn't mentally enriching.
Sleep Disruption: late night scrolling can interfere with the brain's production of melatonin, a hormone that regulates sleep. This leads to difficulty falling asleep, lower-quality sleep, and feeling unrested the next day. We may have things going on in our lives that are making life feel less rewarding and fulfilling. We can call these pain points or sources of friction, and these things may feel like they are compounding, one on top of each other. Without addressing them, they can contribute to feeling stuck.
Awareness and Intention: The Key to Balanced Scrolling
If you are wondering whether you may be developing some unhelpful habits when it comes to screen time, one of the first things you can do is to become mindful during your use of social media. Some steps you can take:
Recognise your patterns: observe your scrolling habits - what types of scrolling do you do most often? When and why do you engage in certain types of content? Notice how long you are spending scrolling, and how this impacts your time available for other things. How does it make you feel after an extended scrolling session?
Intentional scrolling techniques: To become more mindful in your scrolling, make conscious choices around your time online and try setting boundaries. Some ideas of how you can do this include:
Set time limits on your scrolling (set an actual timer if you need this)
Designate scrolling times (eg. not before 10am; 10 minute sessions, 3 times a day)
Leave your device in another room - so that you are not tempted to reach for it while you are busy with other activities
Curate a positive feed, with content that inspires you rather than drags you down. This way, you are less likely to get swept up in doom scrolling.
Set a purpose for your online behaviour and interactions, rather than simply using social media as an activity to pass the time.
Practical tools and strategies: You can monitor your screen time and reduce unnecessary scrolling using online tools and device settings such as:
Freedom: is an app that blocks social media on your devices so that you can focus on your work (NB: There is a fee).
Daylio: an app where you can log your moods, habits, and daily activities, and become more mindful of your day
Turn off your notifications to avoid unwanted distractions
Activate ‘do not disturb’ mode on your phone to avoid distractions
Use inbuilt device settings that allow you to monitor and limit screen time
Unfollow/unsubscribe from anything that is no longer serving you well
If your online and social media use has become a disproportionate part of your life, making small, positive changes can lead to significant improvements in your wellbeing. Which one or two things can you put in place to get some balance back today? By becoming more aware of our habits, we can enjoy technology and protect our mental health.
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