It’s one in the morning. We should be sleeping but the finger is still sliding across the screen, scrolling through videos on TikTokreels on Instagram or posts on X. A viral meme, a new fire in the area or a new political crisis has us hooked on the screen. And although we may be exhausted, it cannot be stopped. If this scene sounds familiar to you, then welcome to the club. doomscrolling.
A term that became massively popular during the pandemic and which can be defined as the habit of consuming prolonged form negative news or distressing, mainly through social networks. But behind this process, which may be very common in society right now, there are numerous chemical processes in the brain that science has not hesitated to investigate.
The trap mechanism. To understand why we do doomscrollingwe must first understand that our brain did not evolve to have X or TikTok, but rather it evolved to survive. And it is not so long ago that humans were hunting for food or fleeing from a threat in nature, and it is something that our brain is still very much aware of.
According to the most recent scientific literaturethe fact of sliding our screen down activates our reward brain circuits such as the dopaminergic system in each interaction. This drives us at all times to continue searching for information and evolutionarily knowing “where the danger is” was vital. The problem is that in this case the algorithm has no purpose, and we can spend 24 hours watching this type of news.
But the reward system, which gives us ‘pleasure’ when knowing where the danger is, is not alone. It is accompanied by the amygdala which is the fear center in our brain. When seeing all this information, such as a war nearby in our territory, the brain interprets it as a potential threat that results in a large release of cortisol. This hormone is precisely known as the ‘stress hormone’, because it keeps the body in a state of hypervigilance.
The result of these two circuits is quite clear as point out publications in Frontiers in Psychiatry and Brain Behavior: The brain seeks relief from information, but only finds more threats. This results in a toxic cycle being generated in which one seeks to calm down, becomes more scared, and searches again.
The rotten brain. On social networks there is already a lot of talk of the term brain rot which translates to ‘brain rot’ like a real meme. but science has a very different opinionsince recent research suggests that repeated exposure to these fragmented stimuli with high emotional impact, with 15-second videos and alarmist headlines, have a high physical cost.
The impact is located above all in executive functions (planning, organization, decision making…). And the constant alternation of these catastrophic contexts forces the brain to jump from one idea to another in milliseconds, and it is not something free. The cost we have to pay can be summarized in three points:
- Mental fatigue due to the high consumption of glucose that the brain has to make by having to constantly change focus.
- Deterioration of the prefrontal cortex, which is associated with a reduction in the efficiency of the area responsible for planning and impulse control.
- Processing blockage when the brain is on hyperalert. This makes it difficult to transfer information to long-term memory.
Do we no longer know how to concentrate? This is the question we can all ask ourselves due to this phenomenon. The short answer from science is: we know, but it is much harder for us to “get started.”
Studies on digital multitasking indicate that it is not that we have lost ability physiological of sustained attention, but we have trained our brain to expect interruptions. Deep attention (what you need to read a book for example) requires a “warm-up” time. He doomscrolling and the constant stream of notifications resets that counter constantly.
Research collected in BMC Public Health they point out that attention remains “anchored” waiting for the next update. Even when you are not looking at your phone, a part of your cognitive resources is focused on it, reducing your performance on the task in front of you. It is not an irreversible decline, it is an atrophy due to lack of use of deep concentration circuits.
There is hope. Despite the apocalyptic tone of the studies themselves on the subject, the scientific conclusion It’s not that we’re doomed. to be distracted automatons glued to a phone. The great advantage that humans have is neuroplasticity.
With this term we mean that just as the brain learns to scroll compulsively, it can “unlearn.” Experts agree that the damage is not permanent unless the behavior becomes chronic for years without intervention.
Evidence-supported strategies for breaking the cortisol-dopamine loop include:
- Set strict times to inform yourself and never before bed.
- Do exercises mindfulness as a tool to restore the default neural network.
- Allowing the brain to rest and ‘get bored’ without stimuli to help cleanse itself and regain the ability to focus.
Images | Yazid N
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