It is driven by a human negativity bias and algorithmic design, and traps the brain in a stress loop that heightens anxiety, fatigue, and poor sleep.
It is written as a single word, and while it may have appeared with a hyphen (doom-scrolling) or as two separate words (doom scrolling) in its early days, the single-word form is the one that has been officially adopted by major dictionaries like Merriam-Webster and Oxford.
More about doomscrolling
The term gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic to describe the tendency for people to compulsively consume negative news online.
It was officially recognized by Merriam-Webster in September 2023.
The term is a portmanteau (a new word made by sticking two or more words together) and combines “doom,” to represent feelings of pessimism, with “scrolling,” which refers to the action of swiping or moving through content on a screen.