Doomscrolling

 Graham Joseph Hill

Doomscrolling is the habit of endlessly scrolling through negative news or distressing social media content, especially during times of crisis or uncertainty.[1] It’s the compulsive consumption of bad news—natural disasters, political unrest, global pandemics, social collapse—often late at night or in moments of anxiety. It feels like staying informed, but it’s frequently driven by fear, helplessness, or a subconscious craving for control.[2] Doomscrolling is digital overexposure to crisis without stillness, prayer, or discernment. It's a habit of looking that forms us, often away from love, presence, and peace.

Doomscrolling is a liturgy in disguise, a ritual of staring into glowing rectangles, searching not for beauty or truth but for some glimmer of control amidst the chaos.[3] It feels like focus, like paying attention, but beneath the surface, it hollows the soul. It promises knowing but delivers numbness. What happens when the act of watching becomes a substitute for the act of praying? How are our souls shaped by the practice of constantly scrolling for information, stimulation, validation, and connection?

There’s space for presence, encounter, and prayer in the silence we avoid. But silence has become unbearable. The crisis is more comfortable than stillness, outrage more familiar than peace, noise more common than silence, and bad news more attention-grabbing than the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ.[4] We scroll not because we’re curious but because we’re lonely, anxious, afraid, and addicted. These feeds become temples of false transcendence, where meaning is manufactured, not received. For many people today, searching for news replaces searching for wisdom.

This restless seeking reveals a deeper ache for intimacy, transcendence, grounding, and belonging. Our fingers flick the screen, but our hearts long to touch eternity. The world is chaotic and in crisis, but our souls long for the peace and reassurance of God.

Why do we keep returning to what leaves us more anxious than before? Since the Garden of Eden, humans have traded the peace, love, and security of God’s shalom and presence for the noise, conflict, and anxiety of our egos, ambitions, distractions, rebellions, and distorted desires. The problem is ancient. The solution remains the same. Our only hope is God.

We become what we behold. The gaze forms the soul.[5] If we feed our eyes on disruption, our hearts will mirror the noise. Doomscrolling forms anxious, reactive souls rather than grounded ones. What might it mean to reclaim attention as an act of love, not compulsion?