Hello and welcome to another episode of the Working Conversations podcast where we talk all things leadership, business, communication and the future of work. I'm your host, Dr. Janel Anderson.

Imagine this. It's late and you should be sleeping, but instead you're scrolling. Just one more article, one more post, one more comment thread, and before you know it, it's been an hour or maybe two. And you tell yourself you're just staying informed, you're keeping up with the world. But let's be honest, are you really better off spending all that time consuming bad news, or do you just feel more anxious, more drained, and maybe even a little more hopeless? That, my friends, is doom scrolling.

And if you've ever fallen into the rabbit hole of non stop bad news, which is all around us, you're not alone. In fact, researchers at the University of Florida found that people who consume excessive amounts of negative news experience higher levels of stress, higher levels of anxiety, and poor health outcomes. They even coined a term for it, problematic news consumption. So today we're going to unpack why our brains are in fact wired for doom scrolling. How it hijacks our focus on our mental health, and most importantly, how to break free from that cycle. By the end of the episode, you will have tools to reclaim your time, protect your mental well being, and stop the scroll before it stops you.

So let's dive in now. Why does your brain love doom scrolling even when you might hate it? Why do we keep doom scrolling even when we know it's bad for us? Because I'm probably not the first one to suggest to you that this is bad for you.

Well, your brain is wired to do it and there are a couple of reasons why. Some of them we've talked about on the podcast before, a negativity bias. And I did a whole episode on this a while back. We'll link that up in the show notes. Neuroscientists have shown us that our brains react more strongly to negative information than positive information. It's an evolutionary survival tactic. Our ancestors needed to pay more attention to saber toothed tigers than to, say, a beautiful sunset.

So we are predisposed to looking for the bad things and having them take over a decent share of our mental capacity. Now, another reason that our brains are hardwired for this is because of dopamine in our brain, and dopamine loops give us this feedback. I'll talk about more about that in a second. But there's also just this, just one more effect going on. I mean, how many times have we thought, oh, I'm about to stop, but I'll just look at one more article or I'll just do, you know, I'll read the comments on this one more thread. Every time you scroll and you see something new, your brain releases that tiny bit of dopamine. Again, that's with the one more time, one more thing. It's looking for one more little hit of dopamine.

So this is the exact same chemical behind gambling addiction. The gambler who is addicted to the slot machine or to playing roulette thinks just this next one, this next one is going to get it. And so your brain wants that next dopamine hit and it figures that next little hit of dopamine, that's going to be the last one I need. That's the last one I need. But in fact, it's just fueling your brain to want even one more.

Now, social media and news platforms absolutely exploit this by feeding you endless content which keeps you glued to your screen. And I think what most of us are looking for is maybe one more piece of good news. If I hang in there a little bit longer, I'll hear something better or he'll hear something that satisfies or puts this to rest. But it doesn't. And again, the social media platforms, the news outlets, they know that our brains work this way and they are literally preying on us to stay connected and keep scrolling.

Now, another thing that's going on in our brain that keeps us scrolling is the illusion of control. We trick ourselves into thinking that if we just keep reading again, we will find that one piece of news or that one social media post, or if we're reading a thread of responses to something that we will get to that just one fun that makes everything else fall into place, that ties it up with a neat bow and makes everything make sense. But guess what? The world is uncertain and no amount of scrolling will change that. So the bottom line here is that your brain thinks that doom scrolling is keeping you safe, but in fact, it is doing the opposite. It is actually fueling anxiety, stress and burnout. Now, if you hadn't surmised this already, there are some dangers, some absolute dangers of doom scrolling.

So we know it's bad, but how bad is it really? Well, let's take a look at some of the research and some of these dangers. Now, there are absolute mental health costs to doom scrolling. A 2022 study in Health Communication found that people who obsessively consume bad news have higher levels of stress, higher levels of anxiety, and even higher levels of fear. Physical illness. They literally feel sick from the constant exposure to negativity. Another danger is our sleep disruption. So if you're looking at distressing news before bed, well, bad idea. That bad news is going to disrupt your sleep.

And there's a double whammy here. The blue light coming off of your screen also disrupts melatonin production. And that negative content, of course is going to keep your brain on high alert while you're trying to fall asleep. And both of those things are going to make it harder to fall asleep. Okay?

The third thing that's going on here is that it is a productivity killer. Research from Microsoft's human factors lab shows that the average knowledge worker switches tasks every 40 seconds, often because they are checking their phone, which is where most of our doom scrolling happens.

So doom scrolling fuels distraction, procrastination and mental exhaustion. Now, it might be a ding or a ping from the phone that takes your attention away from the work task that you are working on. If you've heard me talk about productivity before, you've heard me tell you you need to turn those alerts off because they are not helpful. Now you may have also listened to one of the most downloaded episodes of this podcast on why the human brain can't Multitask. It's episode 136. Stop multitasking. And we'll link that up in the show notes which you can find at janelanderson.com/209 for episode 209 which is what you're listening to now.

The fourth thing that can happen here is emotional drain and helplessness. The more you doom scroll and the more of that negative content you consume, the more powerless you feel. It creates a loop where you are absorbing stress without being able to take meaningful action. Action because you're stuck in the loop, scrolling and looking at the next and the next and the next, just like we talked about before.

So what can you do about it? Or are you completely stuck? Well, I'm glad you asked. You do have some personal agency in the matter here. So let me give you some tips, some tactics and some strategies on what you can do to break the doom scrolling cycle, let's get tactical.

Okay, here's what you can do. Step 1, recognize when you're doing it. Before you can fix or change any sort of habit, you have to be able to notice it in real time. So when you catch yourself on your phone doom scrolling or perhaps on your laptop, on a website, a news website perhaps, ask yourself, am I learning something useful or am I just consuming negativity or avoiding other responsibilities? Again, you have to be able to catch yourself in the moment. You could also do a little inventory at the end of the day and look back on how you spent your time to see if you caught yourself retrospectively in any of that doom scrolling. Then, whether it's retrospective or in the moment, ask yourself, how do I feel? How do I feel after scrolling and consuming this content? And then third, is this helping me take action or is this just making me feel worse? Now sometimes we're chiming into those news site posts with our comments or Facebook, Twitter, X, whatever you want to call it. We're chiming in with our own perspective and sometimes that just gets us churned up as well. So ask yourself, is this helping me or is this making me feel worse? So that is Step one Recognize that you're doing it and when you're doing it.

Step 2 Set some boundaries on your news and social media intake so you can use screen time limits. And both Apple and Android have built in tools to help you set up time limits. And even if you're not using the time limits, you can reflect back through the data that your phone is gathering about your own behavior on how much time you spent, whether it's on different websites, whether it's on certain social media sites, and so forth. So even if you don't think you're spending much time, you might want to just double check the data that your phone is already collecting on you to see where things are at. And then if it's helpful, set yourself some limits or maybe even remove some of the apps that are the most challenging for you to control. Remove them from your phone entirely. Now you can still access them through your PC, through your laptop, through a tablet, but having them just a little bit less accessible than right there on your phone might be just the limit that you need.

Schedule some news check in Windows or some social media check in Windows. Instead of constantly checking all day long, pick a couple of set times per day to read the news or to look at your social media feed. A third thing you can do is to curate your feed so unfollow accounts that make you feel worse and follow more solution based content. Now, I do this specifically on Facebook. I think of Facebook as my electronic living room. The things I want to see on Facebook are not people complaining about the political environment that we might be in or a terrible news story. I can find that on all of the news outlets myself. What I want to curate on my Facebook feed is, you know, updates on people's lives, maybe a beautiful sunset or photos of somebody's dog.

I want my Facebook feed to be fairly light hearted. So I'm looking for that. I'm curating that, I'm liking that, I'm following that. And when things happen on Facebook where there is an absolute deterioration of civility, for example, I will unfollow. And there's a couple of different ways you can do this. You can snooze somebody for 30 days. So there are certain people who maybe they're politically wired differently than I am or they have different values that undergird their political views. And maybe I still want to know what's happening in their personal life.

But maybe, and especially if they are contributing to incivility online, I will snooze them for 30 days. I will just give them the benefit of the doubt and say, you know what, I don't need to hear from this person for 30 days. Now if something happens in those 30 days that, I mean, I might legitimately miss, like the death of a parent of a high school friend or something positive happening in somebody's life that happens during that 30 day window. But honestly, if they are contributing to an uncivil space on my Facebook feed, I'm going to snooze them for 30 days. And if after those 30 days they're back in my feed spewing negativity, it's just a simple unfollow, my friends. So you do have to do a fair amount of curating your feed.

Now when I look at my Instagram feed versus my daughter's Instagram feed, we get totally, totally different things because I am liking and commenting on things that have oftentimes to do with like workplace humor or workplace insights. And of course she, she's 15, almost 16 years old, so she has very, very different things. She's following recipes and all kinds of different stuff on, on her feed than I am. So but we can curate the feed because the more funny dog videos I like, the more funny dog videos I'm going to get. So take some time to intentionally curate your feed.

And then step three, replace the habit with something better. So when you are feeling that urge to doom scroll, swap it out with something else. Remember that your brain is getting a dopamine hit. So what else could you do to give your brain a positive dopamine hit? Maybe take a quick walk around the block. Just five minutes of brisk exercise will make you feel better.

Read a book. Really, you don't have to read the whole book. Read one or two pages of a book. Just something like that will give your brain something to do. You'll probably learn something. Or if it's, you know, fiction, a novel, it will just engage you and entertain you for a few moments. You could write one page or one sentence in a journal. You could make a bullet journal.

You've heard me talk about bullet journals before, where you just jot down quick ideas of things that are top of mind just to get it out of your head. Send a text or call a friend. Instead of scrolling the trick, you are going to give your brain a better reward than scrolling and looking at negative news or negative things in your social media feed. Again, remember that that dopamine hit that your brain gets from doom scrolling. Well, where else can you get a dopamine hit? Ideally from something that's good for you.

All right, and then the final step shift from information overload, which is really what is out there, to taking intentional action. If the news is stressing you out, ask yourself, is there something I can do about this? And if the answer is no, just let it go. If you haven't already listened to last week's episode on ambiguity and uncertainty and how to handle that, you're definitely going to want to check that out for additional strategies on how to still remain functional and productive in an ever shifting environment, especially when it's bad news.

Now, if the answer is yes, there is something you can do about it, then actually do something proactive. Donate some money, volunteer your time, start a positive discussion. Do something that is going to take forward action on the thing that has you troubled from your doom scrolling. All right, my friends, I know doom scrolling hints, almost all of us and I want to give you a call to action because we have covered a lot of ground today from talking about from in your brain, what's happening that makes doom scrolling so addictive and makes it so challenging for you to stop doing it. And we've talked about some proactive strategies that you can take to catch yourself in the act and then to do something else instead. So we have covered a lot on this episode, even though it's been a shorter episode doom scrolling isn't just a time waster, it is a brain hijacker. It takes control and that keeps you trapped in anxiety and distraction. And again, those negative health outcomes.

So here is my throwdown challenge for you my friends. Try a 24 hour doom scroll detox. Now you don't have to put your phone down altogether, but just this is no unnecessary scrolling and no scrolling that is causing you to spiral in doom. If it is scrolling that's causing you to laugh and giggle and share funny videos with your friends, by all means keep that up. Although put some brackets around that so that you're not unduly wasting tons and tons of time on that. But if it is news consumption or if you find yourself going to some of the social media outlets, I mean Heck, even LinkedIn you can find yourself doom scrolling on. So no unnecessary scrolling that is negative in nature, just necessary or intentional information consumption. Then notice how you feel after that intentional information consumption.

Are you feeling more clear headed? Are you feeling more focused? Did you get some new positive information that can help you do better in your job? Are you feeling less drained? Those are positive outcomes from taking in news or social media. Now if you have found today's episode helpful in any way whatsoever, I respectfully ask that you do me a favor. Number one, share this episode with somebody else who needs to hear it. Number two, send me a message. What have you struggled with with regards to doom scrolling and what has worked for you? Let's keep the conversation going and not just have it be a one way conversation from me to you and most importantly my friends, be kind to your mind. You deserve better than an endless scroll. So again, I will double down on my challenge for you. Do that 24 hour doom scroll detox then let me know how it went.

How often do you doom scroll and how well do these techniques we've talked about today stop you from doom scrolling or catch you in the act and interrupt your behavior? So send me a message and let me know how it goes. I want to know what's working for you. And again, if you found this episode helpful, please share it with somebody else else until next week. Keep working on what matters most and put the phone down when you find yourself slipping into that Doom Scroll Doom Scroll trap.

As always, stay curious, stay informed and stay ahead of the curve. If you learned something or if you simply enjoy this content, please subscribe to my channel on YouTube, subscribe to the podcast on your podcast platform of choice and follow me over on social media. These are excellent no cost ways for you to support me and my work and you'll find the links to my social media over on the show notes page, janelanderson.com/209 for episode 209.

Until next time, keep thriving, keep working toward the future that we all want and crave. Stay connected, stay curious and I will catch you next week, friends. Be well.