How to Stop Doomscrolling: What Actually Works, According to Research

To stop doomscrolling, replace the scroll with a specific activity instead of just banning it, add friction between you and the feed, time-box news to fixed windows, and charge your phone outside the bedroom. Removing the habit without replacing it usually fails. This guide covers why, with the evidence behind each method.

The problem is getting worse. The Reuters Institute's 2025 Digital News Report found that 40 percent of people across markets now sometimes or often avoid the news, the joint highest figure ever recorded in the study, up from 29 percent in 2017. People avoid the news because it makes them feel bad, then scroll through it for hours anyway. That contradiction has a name.

What doomscrolling is and why your brain keeps doing it

Doomscrolling is the compulsive consumption of negative news online, long past the point where you learn anything new, paired with the feeling that you cannot stop. It is not a character flaw. It is your brain doing what it evolved to do, in an environment built to exploit it.

In a 2025 UC San Diego interview, psychiatry professor Susan Tapert explains the mechanics. Our brains carry a negativity bias, an evolutionary survival trait that prioritizes threatening information. Alarming news makes the amygdala send stress signals and push you to keep scanning for threats, while the reward circuit releases dopamine each time you find something new. Threat-scanning plus reward loop equals a scroll that never ends on its own.

A 2022 paper by Anand and colleagues in Perspectives in Psychiatric Care, available on PMC, adds the cognitive layer: people start scrolling to find reassurance, then give more weight to whatever confirms their fears. The search for relief becomes the source of the distress. This is why willpower alone rarely works, and why the methods below change your environment instead.

What doomscrolling costs you

Sticking to what published research has actually found:

• A 2022 three-study validation by Satici and colleagues in Applied Research in Quality of Life, available on PMC, linked doomscrolling to lower mental wellbeing and life satisfaction, with psychological distress carrying that relationship. It also correlated with neuroticism, fear of missing out, and social media addiction.
• The 2022 Anand paper reports that doomscrolling leads to intense anxiety, fear, and distress, which in turn cause difficulty falling asleep, poor sleep quality, reduced appetite, and low motivation the next day.
• Cleveland Clinic psychologist Susan Albers warns that doomscrolling can worsen anxiety and depression and flood the brain with cortisol, the stress hormone. She notes the loop is self-reinforcing: "When we're depressed, we often look for information that can confirm how we feel."

Two honest caveats. Most of this research is correlational and self-reported: strong associations, not proven causation. And no study supports claims that doomscrolling permanently damages your brain, or that quitting "resets your dopamine." The documented harms are bad enough without exaggeration.

Before the methods. If news anxiety already costs you sleep most nights or interferes with work or relationships, self-help may not be the right starting point. Scroll down to the "When to get real help" block first.

The swap technique: replace the scroll, don't just remove it

The most useful reframe comes from The Guardian's May 2026 piece on screentime swaps by Hannah Coates: not all screen time is created equal, so swap the harmful kind for a better kind instead of going cold turkey. Netta Weinstein, a University of Reading psychology professor quoted in the piece, separates harmonious use, where you feel in control, from compulsive use, where you feel unable to stop. The goal is to move time from the second column to the first.

The same article cites research led by Oxford psychologist Andrew Przybylski: a survey of nearly 40,000 game players found gaming itself was not associated with poorer mental health. What mattered was motivation. Choosing to play predicted better wellbeing than feeling compelled by reward loops.

Practical swaps that fill the same moments doomscrolling does:

• A word or puzzle game instead of a news feed when you pick up your phone.
• A language app or an article you saved on purpose.
• Messaging one actual friend instead of reading strangers argue.
• Anything offline you enjoy, queued up so it is easier to start than the feed.

Pick the swap before you block the feed. An empty moment with no plan defaults back to the scroll. This is one piece of a broader reset; our digital detox guide maps the full system.

Add friction between you and the feed

Doomscrolling thrives on zero resistance: the app is on your home screen, you are logged in, the feed loads instantly. Each step you add forces a conscious decision where there used to be a reflex.

• Log out of news and social apps after each session, or delete the apps and keep the accounts.
• Move what you cannot delete off the home screen into a folder.
• Turn your screen grayscale in your phone's accessibility settings. Feeds are designed in color; a gray feed is noticeably less grabby.
• Use a browser bookmark instead of an app where possible. Slower is the point.

No single friction tactic is magic. Together they turn an automatic habit into a series of small decisions, and a decision can be declined.

Time-box the news

In the UC San Diego interview, Tapert recommends checking news in set windows, around 20 minutes in the morning and 20 in the evening, rather than grazing all day. You stay informed without staying immersed.

Your phone can enforce the window. Per Apple's Screen Time documentation, App Limits set a daily time cap for individual apps or whole categories, and Downtime blocks apps and notifications during periods you schedule. Android's Digital Wellbeing offers app timers. Set the limit once, while you are calm, and let the software argue with your 11pm self.

One more swap inside the window: read the daily briefing of one or two outlets you trust instead of an engagement-ranked feed. Calmer inputs make the window easier to close.

Redesign your nights: the phone sleeps elsewhere

Night is when doomscrolling does its worst work. The 2022 Anand paper links the distress from doomscrolling to trouble initiating sleep and poor sleep quality, and Cleveland Clinic flags scrolling from bed as a driver of insomnia.

The fix is environmental: charge your phone outside the bedroom and buy a cheap alarm clock. If the phone is out of reach, the 1am scroll cannot happen, no discipline required. If the phone dominates your evenings in general, our phone detox guide covers screen time as a whole.

Kill the re-entry points: notifications

Every alert is an invitation back into the feed. Tapert's first practical recommendation is to turn off news notifications entirely; breaking-news alerts are engineered to trigger the threat response described above. Keep alerts from humans, cut alerts from algorithms. Our guide to stopping email notifications is the full walkthrough.

Your inbox is a doomscroll too

The same loop runs in email: news alerts, newsletter pile-ups, and "what you missed" digests engineered to pull you back in. Scrolling an overflowing inbox at 11pm is doomscrolling with a different skin. An email detox applies everything above to your mailbox.

Two Leave Me Alone features map onto these methods. One-click unsubscribe clears the news blasts and newsletters you never chose: less inbound, less to scroll. Rollups bundle the newsletters you keep into one digest, time-boxing applied to email. You read on your schedule, not the sender's.

When to get real help. Self-help methods have limits. If you have tried to cut down several times and failed, if doomscrolling costs you sleep most nights, or if news anxiety interferes with work or relationships, talk to a mental health professional. If you are in the US and in distress, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is free, confidential, and available 24/7 by call or text at 988, or by chat via 988lifeline.org.

What this guide doesn't cover

This is a practical guide, not medical advice or a treatment plan for anxiety or depression. The research cited here mostly shows associations, not proven causation, and results vary by person. If your situation matches the help block above, start there.

Frequently asked questions

What is doomscrolling?

Doomscrolling is compulsively scrolling through negative news online, past the point of learning anything useful, while feeling unable to stop. The term spread during the COVID-19 pandemic; researchers have since built validated measures for it, including the 2022 Doomscrolling Scale by Satici and colleagues.

Why can't I stop doomscrolling?

Two brain systems team up against you. Negativity bias makes threats feel urgent, so the amygdala keeps you scanning, while dopamine rewards every new piece of information, as UC San Diego psychiatry professor Susan Tapert explains. Apps are engineered around both. That is why changing your environment beats relying on willpower.

Is doomscrolling bad for your mental health?

Research links it to real harms. The 2022 Satici studies tied doomscrolling to lower wellbeing and life satisfaction through psychological distress. The 2022 Anand paper ties it to anxiety, poor sleep, and low motivation. Cleveland Clinic warns it can worsen anxiety and depression. These are correlational findings, not proof of causation, but the direction is consistent across studies.

How do I stop doomscrolling at night?

Charge your phone outside the bedroom and use a separate alarm clock. Schedule Downtime or an app limit so feeds lock before bed. For wind-down input, swap the feed for a book or podcast, anything that does not update. The Anand paper links doomscrolling distress directly to trouble falling asleep, so the bedroom is the highest-value place to start.

Start with one method tonight, the phone outside the bedroom, and add the others over a week. If your inbox is the feed you doomscroll, Leave Me Alone clears the noise with one-click unsubscribe and Rollups, so the email side of the fix takes an afternoon.