Doomscrolling

The progress of negativity may be destroying you

The urge to consume negative story after negative story has its own word: doomscrolling.

For months now, the world has felt like it’s on the verge of collapse. Worldwide corona virus infections with mounting death tolls, increasing unemployment rates, drastic economic downturns, persistent protesters in the streets, and a never-ending US election.

With so many negative happenings in 2020, it appears there is no other option besides negative news stories to consume. There’s nothing good happening in the world, so we might as well let the media educate us so we can be alert to other trends toward danger and crisis.

But we can’t blame all this doom and gloom on media coverage.

According to Dr. Rick Hanson, psychologist and senior fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, people are biologically predisposed toward negative thinking. In his book, Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence, he discusses promising research in which humans can rewire their brains toward positivity resulting in less anxiety and stress and more gratitude and peace.

When you consider that the brain may be hardwired for negativity, and then add in the events of 2020, it’s bound to do a number on our mental health. Consistent negative news consumption has a downside: skewed perspectives that spew out anxiety and stress.

Skewed Perspectives

When all we do is consume negative news, that’s what stays at the top of our minds. Those negative stories (and the negative feelings that come with them) are what our minds use to sort out reality.

Consider all the relevant variables necessary in order to think through a situation. The information, facts, data, and feelings stored deep inside your brain have been gathered from a lifetime of reading and discussion.

Unfortunately, as the brain goes about its business — conducting rational thought processes — it doesn’t pull from everything in our minds equally. It pulls first from the freshest information available.

And what’s on top? The negative information, facts, data, and judgments that we recently doomscrolled. When that’s the first thing our brains draw from every time to assess and organize our way toward sound conclusions and rational thinking . . . beware.

Eventually, our sense of danger is out of whack compared to reality. We avoid the beach because we read about a shark attack (in 2019, there were 64 cases worldwide) but think nothing of texting while driving (nearly 390,000 injuries annually).

Eventually, we end up with knee-jerk skepticism ruling our opinions and usurping rational thought. We see the murder of Black Americans by white police officers and suspect all authority is corrupt. Whereas society, even leadership, will always contain the worst and the best of human nature.

Eventually, we forget that there are billions of happy and life-fulfilling stories out there we’ve never heard about.

And eventually, we end up seeing the world as split in half: black and white.

Fatalism vs Progress

When we cannot consider that there might be a balance between both the positive and negative around us, thinking through tough situations can be harder than ever. And it becomes difficult to see when things change for the better. It’s hard not to become fatalistic as a result.

Societal improvement can be an especially challenging concept to wrap our minds around after scrolling through page after page of doomsday and death stories.

When we see so much negativity on the news, and when there are so many horrible things happening at once, we tend to miss the progress and overlook what’s useful in life.

As we scroll through negative story after negative story, our view of life becomes polarized: black and white, good and bad, right and wrong.

So when people see that there’s still poverty or still violence in the world, they think that nothing has changed. This tendency to think in black and white terms can be challenging because it keeps us from seeing that there have been advancements, there have been changes and some are for the good.

According to Stephen Pinker, experimental psychologist and author, right now is the greatest time in all of human history to be alive. He posits that over the last few hundred years, the world as a whole has gotten better. If you think about it, compared to 200 years ago, humans are more literate, more healthy, less hungry, and less violent than any other time in history.

That doesn’t mean there aren’t people who are still illiterate, unhealthy, hungry, and violent, but overall, there has been progress.

Pinker points out that institutions such as the United Nations have made it possible for slavery and human trafficking to be largely banned, if not wholly irradiated. He argues that this progress can be traced back 250 years to the enlightenment when there was a remarkable turn in human thinking.

The enlightenment ushered in science, logic, and reason as replacements for faith, dogma, and folklore as the main roads leading toward truth. Assumptions and gut feelings that placed the earth at the center of the universe were questioned and discarded. This era opened the door to allow scientific discoveries and human flourishing.

The Progress of Negativity

What if doomscrolling is progressing so much that it’s promoting negativity — in our minds and in society? What if it’s contributing to the stress and anxiety we’re already feeling because of what’s happening around us?

Beyond skewed perspectives and pushing us toward fatalism, doomscrolling, by its very nature, promotes the progress of negativity.

Pushing negativity to the forefront of existence — and our lives — isn’t the best idea. For some who consume day after day of negative news, it could be making them mentally sick.

There is certainly something to be said for responding positively to the consistent negative feed of news and happenings. We’re all aware that negativity begets negativity and that breaking the cycle is one way to move past the hostility and distress of what’s happening in the world.

But fighting back with positivity may not hold all the answers.

Since the act of doomscrolling won’t stop the negative news from coming, it’s crucial that we find the sweet spot between being informed and feeling overwhelmed. 2020 won’t come to an end any quicker if you scroll faster.

With all the destruction and pain that has surfaced in 2020, there is no good reason to scroll in excess through news feeds, Twitter, or Facebook — you’re only adding fuel to the fire.

Think of it this way. Your droomscrolling habit may be mentally marking the end of another horrific day for you as you rest in the security of being informed.

But know this: every story of demise you ingest is feeding dung to your levelheadedness, compromising your mental health, and destroying you bit by bit.

Is it really worth it?