Doomscrolling: How Mindless Scrolling Impacts Adolescent Mental Health

By: Rachel Wang

In today’s age, social media scrolling has become increasingly common among the young adult population. Among my college friend group, words like “brainrot” and “doomscrolling” are a regular occurrence, and while often played off as a joke, they also speak to the unhealthy tendency to spend copious amounts of time online. With teenagers spending an average of 8 hours and 39 minutes on screens daily, it’s no wonder that the impact of cell phone use and social media has become a huge concern for teens and parents. 

 On the topic of doomscrolling, TikTok is a major subject of discussion. Compared to other platforms, TikTok’s interface facilitates instantaneous content consumption and creation, and was one of the first platforms to generate a customized feed of audiovisual content tailored for users based on their perceived preferences via the app’s algorithm. In other words, it provides users with endless short videos specifically curated to what the user finds most interesting, making it the perfect addictive app for people with short attention spans. However, TikTok’s compelling interface comes at a cost for its users. It has been shown that a greater number of hours spent scrolling on TikTok—aka passive use—predicted lower life satisfaction, while the number of videos posted—aka active use—predicted higher life satisfaction (Wu et al., 2021). Notably, only about 25% of all TikTok users create 98% of all publicly accessible videos, while nearly half of users (48%) have never posted a video, indicating that the majority of users consume content passively, known as “lurking” (Smith 2024). This means that, for the majority of TikTok users who use the app passively, a greater number of hours spent scrolling predicts lower life satisfaction, making higher screen times a very real cause for concern that is worth addressing.

At the end of the day, social media addiction and doomscrolling are still relatively new concepts, which means research in these areas is still wanting. With the average teenager spending over one-third of their lives on a screen—potentially spending more time on their phones than sleeping—the need for more research in this subfield is self-explanatory. Perhaps, instead of normalizing terms like “doomscrolling” and “brainrot”, we should be funding social media research and encouraging one another to self-reflect and nurture our minds with healthier, real-life habits.

If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health, please contact our psychotherapy offices in New York or New Jersey to talk to one of our licensed professional psychologists, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurse practitioners, or psychotherapists at Arista Counseling and Psychotherapy. Contact our Paramus, NJ, or Manhattan, NY offices respectively, at (201) – 368-3700 or (212)-722-1920 to set up an appointment. For more information, please visit https://www.counselingpsychotherapynjny.com/

sources: Two Years Into the Pandemic, Media Use Has Increased 17% Among Tweens and Teens | Common Sense Media, https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000292, TikTok mostly passive consumption platform dominated by active posters, study shows