"末日刷屏"：你每天都在做的事，正悄悄毁掉你的心理健康！ | 今日心理学

Social Media

What Exactly Is Doomscrolling and How Does It Affect Us?

以下是危机维基百科对于Doomscrolling的解释：

New research confirms a variety of adverse impacts on mental-emotional health.

Key points

• Doomscrolling specifically relates to spending time in contact with disturbing news through social media.

• New research involving both the U.S. and Iran confirms a variety of adverse mental-emotional impacts.

• Viewing disturbing news on social media can be a source of vicarious trauma and retraumatization.

• It's essential to practice being mindful of our online habits and make adjustments that protect mental health.

It could be early in the morning, perhaps even before you get out of bed, or any time of day thereafter. It starts with a notification. You just plan to reply to that one text—but then, since you’re already on your smart phone, you decide to check your email, prior to moving on to social media, which has its own gravitational pull where one news item, post, or comment leads to another, and to another, and another, etc. Before you realize it, half an hour has disappeared, and you’re left feeling stressed, anxious, overstimulated, fatigued, and emotionally riled up.

A new term that succinctly encapsulates the phenomenon of endless attention-consuming scrolling on social media has recently emerged: “Doomscrolling.” Doomscrolling specifically relates to spending time in contact with disturbing news through social media, including but not limited to conspiracies, intense/emotional political conflict, or violent events, often to the point where it becomes compulsive. While it may seem like just another essentially benign or neutral time-wasting habit, new research from Flinders University in Australia demonstrates that it can significantly impact mental-emotional health and well-being and even alter people’s perception of reality.[1]

Researchers surveyed 800 university students from two distinctly different cultures, the United States and Iran, to explore how excessive negative news consumption on social media can impact their thoughts and feelings relating to their lives. Participants were asked to respond to how often they doomscrolled through social media, how anxious they felt about their existence, whether they believed that the world is a fair place, and how they felt about humanity in general.

According to this study, habitually checking social media, particularly when negative, upsetting, or traumatic stories are involved, is linked with changes in how we view other people, our overall sense of safety, and of life. Doomscrolling makes people more likely to be suspicious and distrustful of others, and can even onset a sense of existential despair that life lacks any real meaning.

It turns out that far from being a harmless activity, doomscrolling can negatively affect how we view the people and world around us. In both American and Iranian study participants, doomscrolling was associated with existential anxiety—worries about existence, life, and death. No wonder so many people seem drawn to cat videos.

The new research also seems to confirm what lived experience has suggested for some time—that viewing disturbing news on social media can be a source of vicarious trauma, wherein someone has distressing psychological effects even though they did not experience trauma directly. Extensive exposure to information and images pertaining to traumatic events can result in symptoms similar to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that include anxiety, depression, anger, distrust, and despair. Extending this dynamic, it seems extremely likely that doomscrolling subjects people who have experienced trauma previously—whether or not they have PTSD—to retraumatization and a worsening of their trauma-based distress.

Physiologically, doomscrolling changes nervous system activity by activating the stress-based fight-flight reactions of the sympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system that occur when we feel unsafe. This is a series of reactions that happen in response to threats—whether those threats are real and present (e.g. someone is pointing a gun at us) or perceived, existing only in the realm of our thoughts and the internal stories those thoughts combine to create, or a more vague sense that terrible things are imminent.

As a result, breathing becomes fast and shallow, heart rate goes up, blood pressure goes up, muscle tension increases, and cortisol and adrenaline are released. Because the mind-body connection is so direct and intimate, this leads to increased anxiety, fear, depression, distrust, and even despair.

All of this reinforces how important it is for people to practice being mindful of their online habits. Our mental-emotional health and well-being requires paying conscious attention to how much time we spend on social media and to become more aware of the ways it affects our thoughts, emotions, and relationships—especially when it comes to negative news and events. Each day presents us with the opportunity to start making changes to reduce the amount of that time and begin to take regular breaks from social media and exposure to disturbing content.

3

愿景

打造

独立思考 | 国际视野 | 英文学习

小组

01 2024年第二期翻译打卡营 

4位一笔，3位二笔

30天录播课程

既有中译英，也有英译中。

从翻译的流程策略，

英汉语言特点，方法，类型，

背景知识到细致的语言点，

我们都逐一讲解以及答疑，让同学们吃透翻译。

点击下图，即可了解翻译打卡营详情！

02 经济学人打卡营 

每周一到周六阅读经济学人

并在群里以及小鹅通内写分享

分享是文章的总结或者观点或者语音打卡

字数不少于100字，中英文都可以

群里每周免费分享最新外刊合集

点击下图，即可了解打卡营详情！

03 早起打卡营 

两年以来，小编已经带着25000多人早起打卡

早起倒逼自己早睡，戒掉夜宵，戒掉手机

让你成为更好的自己，创造早睡早起的奇迹！

早起是最简单的自律！

早起打卡营

欢迎你的加入！

点击下图，即可了解打卡营详情！