Possibly there has not been since the use of the internet has become universal and smartphones are an extension of the human body, an issue that has affected practically everyone equally: the Coronavirus . This has meant that the way of consuming content on the Internet has changed significantly and that this disease has become the center of almost all conversations and the subject of the headlines of all the news.

A new way of life that has brought with it new behaviors. Among them, doomscrolling . What does this mean? ‘Doom’ in English means’ death ‘or fatality’ and scorolling is the action of scrolling through the screen of a digital device . In other words, it consists of spending many minutes , even hours, scrolling through the screen of our mobile phone through different applications looking for information on a specific topic, particularly on Covid-19 .

It is an important factor that all those hours invested in reading news or articles online do not bring us much more knowledge than we already had before doing so . Doomscrolling is simply carried out to compensate our desire to know something at that moment , to resolve a momentary doubt that was not generating any uncertainty, to feel informed about what is happening … although, unfortunately, the psychologists have already come informing that this action is, contrary to what is thought, much more harmful than beneficial .

The reason is very simple, especially the information about the Coronavirus is concerned: it will be negative . At a time when the situation is still not under control (as it has been since March 2020), notable events tend to be negative. Greater number of infections; significant number of deaths; countries where the incidence level continues to grow; second, third wave … Data that does not paint a good present or a hopeful future and only generate negative feelings in all those who receive them and, especially, in those who spend hours and hours of their day reading them almost without stop. Doomscrolling addicts.

This now coined activity is motivated by what is known as the ‘negativity bias’ : something emotionally negative will have much more relevance to a person than something emotionally positive . This transferred to the information means that the attention of the readers is focused on a news story with negative information rather than one that highlights a positive event, so that the hours dedicated to that empty need for information end up turning into time of negativity that ends up diminishing our psychological well-being.

How to End Doomscrolling

And now the million dollar question: Do you have a solution? Of course, although it all depends on what you do yourself . Experts have established a series of things that people who believe they are prey to droomscrolling can do to get out of this spiral of need for information.

Choose well through which means to inform us

Despite what it may seem, being informed is not a bad thing, on the contrary, but being very informed does not always mean being well informed . For this, the experts recommend limiting ourselves to receiving information from a few media and that these are reliable on the topics we want to receive news from . This then prohibits us from reading information told from a sensational point of view where the negative may prevail and even the error of repeatedly reading the same information several times told in a slightly different way.

Dedicate a moment of the day to inform yourself

One of the main problems of doomsrolling, in addition to the negative information that can be consumed, is also the time that is dedicated to it. If the interest in information is used as a simple entertainment to kill time at certain times of the day, this can end up causing the saturation of information that was previously discussed. If this activity is limited to one or two periods of time -not very long- during the day, it will not make the mistake of wasting hours wandering the internet of negative things.

Silence what we should not read about

Despite the fact that more and more social media algorithms are able to get to know us better than our own mothers to throw us that information in an apparently casual way to capture our attention, these same networks put at our disposal certain tools so that we can control in some way. way that is what we want and what we don’t want to see . An example of this is the possibility of silencing certain words on Twitter. This will mean that when we are seeing the publications of the people we follow or who are retweeted, we will not find what we do not want to know about.

Uninstall certain applications

But when all this type of advice is no longer enough to avoid making the mistake of spending hours sliding, the best of all is always not having what to do it in front of. A smoker cannot smoke if he does not have a pack of cigarettes in front of him, so do you. Many times it is better to remove the temptation in front of you so as not to fall into it and therefore the best solution is to remove from your mobile device those places from which it is better to get away . Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, news media apps … There is nothing wrong with being for a while without constantly receiving information.

FROM BEKIAPSYCHOLOGY WE REMEMBER THAT THE BEST ADVICE IS ALWAYS TO GO TO A SPECIALIST WHEN THE HELP OFFERED ONE LESS IS NOT ENOUGH. NOBODY IS ABLE TO DO ANYTHING IF THEY DO NOT HAVE THE NECESSARY TOOLS, MENTALLY AND PHYSICALLY.