Doomscrolling and Social Media Overload
By Dr. Lawrence Salone
Why We Can’t Stop Doomscrolling? More Importantly, How to Break the Habit?
You tell yourself you’re just checking one thing.
A headline.
A notification.
A quick scroll.
And before you realize it, 30… 45… maybe 60 minutes are gone. Your mind feels heavier, your chest a little tighter, and somehow you’re more anxious than when you picked up your phone.
That’s doomscrolling — and it’s quietly exhausting a lot of good people.
Doomscrolling is the habit of endlessly consuming negative or emotionally charged content online. The problem isn’t just the content itself — it’s how it hijacks your brain’s threat system. Your mind stays on high alert, constantly scanning for danger, comparison, or bad news. Over time, that state becomes your baseline.
And when that happens, peace becomes hard to access — even when life is actually okay.
Why Doomscrolling Hits Busy Adults So Hard
For mid-career professionals, parents, and leaders, doomscrolling often masquerades as “mental downtime.”
But instead of restoring you, it drains you.
It fragments attention you already don’t have much of
It increases anxiety and sleep disruption
It fuels comparison, inadequacy, and quiet resentment
It keeps your nervous system stuck in fight-or-flight
The irony? We scroll looking for relief — and end up more restless than before.
How Doomscrolling Drives Burnout
Doomscrolling isn’t just a bad habit — it’s a stress loop that keeps your nervous system in high alert long after you put the phone down. When you continuously consume negative content without breaks, your brain interprets it as ongoing threat exposure. This triggers stress hormones like cortisol to stay elevated, which over time leads to mental exhaustion and emotional fatigue — classic features of burnout. Harvard Medical School experts warn that ongoing exposure to distressing content trains your brain’s alarm system to stay on, making you feel saturated, worn-out, and unable to recover between stressors.
A body of research that developed measurement tools for doomscrolling also shows it correlates with psychological distress and lower well-being — important markers of burnout — including anxiety and diminished life satisfaction.
In modern work and life, burnout isn’t just “being tired.” It’s chronic disengagement, decreased productivity, emotional depletion, and feeling like you have little control. Doomscrolling doesn’t just reflect this state — it amplifies it.
Impact on Relationships
Even beyond individual stress levels, excessive social media use — a close behavioral cousin of doomscrolling — can hurt relationships. When people are constantly engaged with screens, especially absorbing negative content, it impacts interpersonal connection and communication. One relationship dynamic researchers track is phubbing — when someone prioritizes their phone over the person they’re physically with. Phubbing is strongly linked to feelings of neglect, reduced intimacy, and lower relationship satisfaction. In couples, this perceived distraction can erode trust and emotional connection over time.
For busy professionals juggling family, work, and digital noise, this means that doomscrolling doesn’t just steal your attention — it also reduces your presence with the people you care about. The emotional availability required for meaningful relationships gets crowded out by the constant pull of alerts and “just one more scroll.”
Physical Health Connections: Anxiety, Weight, and Sexual Function
Anxiety & Mental Health
There’s a well-documented link between excessive social media use and anxiety, stress, and other psychological symptoms. Multiple studies find higher social media consumption is associated with elevated anxiety, depressive symptoms, and stress responses. That doesn’t mean scrolling alone causes a clinical disorder, but the pattern of continuous negative information exposure contributes to a heightened stress response, which makes anxiety symptoms worse.
Weight and Health Behaviors
While research specifically on doomscrolling and weight gain is still growing, experts warn that constant screen time displaces healthy activity. More hours in front of screens usually means less time for movement, intentional meals, sleep, and restorative habits — all of which are critical for metabolic health. In addition, prolonged stress and elevated cortisol from chronic digital stress are linked in broader research to increased appetite, changes in fat storage, and greater risk of weight gain.
Sexual Function & Loneliness
Emerging research is also exploring how problematic social media use relates to sexual function, particularly when social media compulsion overlaps with emotional loneliness. One study found that among university students, loneliness mediated the association between addictive social media use and sexual functioning challenges — a sign that when digital engagement replaces real-world connection, it can have ripple effects across emotional intimacy and sexual health.
Why This Matters
These impacts — mental fatigue, burnout, relationship strain, anxiety, and physical health changes — aren’t isolated. They compound each other. When stress hormones are chronically elevated, sleep quality drops, mood stability suffers, and your capacity for meaningful connection shrinks. That’s why doomscrolling isn’t just a momentary distraction — it’s a modern stressor that affects your whole life.
Three Tools That Actually Help Break the Habit
This isn’t about willpower. It’s about interrupting the habit loop and replacing it with something healthier and more grounding.
1. Create Gentle but Firm Boundaries
You don’t need to delete every app. You do need limits.
Try this:
No social media in the first 30 minutes of your morning
No scrolling after getting into bed
App time limits or Focus Mode on your phone
Even one protected window per day can significantly reduce mental overload.
2. Replace the Scroll — Don’t Just Remove It
Your brain is looking for regulation, not entertainment.
When the urge to scroll hits, replace it with something that calms your nervous system:
A short walk
A brief prayer or Scripture reading
Deep breathing for 2–3 minutes
Reading a few pages of a book instead of a feed
You’re not depriving yourself — you’re redirecting your attention toward something that restores you.
3. Add Friction to Mindless Scrolling
Make scrolling slightly inconvenient — and intentionality easier.
Helpful tools:
Freedom – blocks distracting sites during chosen hours
Forest – encourages phone-free focus through gamification
Built-in Screen Time controls – simple, effective, already on your device
These tools work because they support decision-making before fatigue sets in.
A Faith-Centered Reset for the Mind
Scripture reminds us:
“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” — Romans 12:2
Doomscrolling subtly trains our minds toward fear, scarcity, and comparison. Renewal requires intention — and truth.
This is something I explore deeply in my book Am I Enough? Breaking Free From Self-Doubt and Walking Boldly Into Your Purpose, where I talk about how constant noise — digital and internal — disconnects us from our God-given identity.
When we’re always consuming, we stop reflecting.
When we stop reflecting, we lose clarity.
And when clarity is gone, anxiety takes its place.
👉 You can find Am I Enough? on Amazon here:
https://www.amazon.com/ (search: Dr. Lawrence Salone – Am I Enough?)
Continue the Conversation
If this topic resonates with you, I also unpack these ideas in real, practical ways on the Empowered with Dr. Lawrence podcast.
On the podcast, we talk about:
Mental overload and burnout
Identity, pressure, and performance
Faith-centered strategies for real life
Breaking unhealthy mental and behavioral patterns
It’s not therapy — it’s honest conversation, perspective, and tools you can actually use.
🎧 Search “Empowered with Dr. Lawrence” on your favorite podcast platform and start with an episode that speaks to where you are right now.
Start Small — Start Today
You don’t need a digital detox retreat.
You need one intentional interruption.
One boundary.
One replacement habit.
One moment where you choose presence over scrolling.
Little by little, you’ll reclaim your attention — and with it, your peace.