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It’s become almost a reflex at this point — pick up your phone during a spare moment and without conscious thought end up scrolling through a feed of troubling headlines. War updates. Recession forecasts. Climate change projections. The latest political outrage or viral video of a racist rant. In the quest to stay informed, we subject ourselves to a ceaseless stream of humanity’s ugliness, corruption and despair. And if we’re truly honest, something in us craves it.
This growing tendency to compulsively consume negative, disturbing news and social media even when it erodes our mental health and perception of reality has been dubbed “doomscrolling.” And our seeming addiction to tuning into the worst of what’s happening in the world springs from some complex psychological undercurrents that are important to understand.
The most surface driver is our basic wiring around threat perception. Since early evolution, brains developed hardwired circuitry that pays extra attention to risks and irregularities in our environment.
Being aware of potential dangers, violence and sources of pain provided an evolutionary advantage to survive. But now this…
