Doomscrolling and news anxiety: a practical reset

A patient told me recently that she checks the news three times before she speaks to another human being. Once at about six, still in bed. Once on the bus. Once at her desk, before she opens her email. Nothing has usually changed between the first check and the third. She knows that. She checks anyway, because not checking feels worse than checking.

I hear some version of this most weeks. It is almost never what someone books the appointment for. It comes out at the end, when I ask how they are sleeping.

The short version

• Compulsive news checking is usually an attempt to make uncertainty go away. It works for about a minute, then the uncertainty returns, so you check again.
• Heavy exposure to distressing coverage is linked to real distress, more strongly than most people expect. The evidence comes from extreme events and cannot prove cause and effect.
• Going news-free is not the goal, and the trial evidence for simply cutting down is weaker than the internet suggests.
• Two changes do most of the work: get news out of the first and last hour of your day, and swap an endless feed for a source that ends.

Why the feed keeps you on alert

Checking is uncertainty management

When something frightening is happening, reading about it is a reasonable thing to do. You are working out how close it is, whether it affects you, and what happens next. Researchers call this uncertainty management. That is not a character flaw. It is what a sensible brain does when a threat has not resolved.

The problem is that rolling news is not designed to resolve anything. There is always another update, another angle, another fifteen seconds of footage. The relief you get from checking is real, and short, and the only thing that reliably produces more of it is checking again.

The loop can feed itself

The best evidence comes from a three-year study of just over 4,000 people in the United States, followed across two mass violence events. Exposure to coverage of the first predicted post-traumatic stress symptoms six months later. Those symptoms predicted worry about future bad things happening, two years on. And that worry predicted both how much coverage people consumed after the second event and how distressed they were by it.

So distress drives consumption, and consumption drives distress. That circularity is why willpower alone tends not to fix it.

How much is a lot

An earlier study by the same group looked at the week after the Boston Marathon bombings. Six or more hours a day of coverage was associated with higher acute stress than having actually been at the bombings. That deserves a caveat: it is observational, six hours a day is a lot of exposure, and it does not mean the news gives people PTSD.

A separate survey of 1,100 US adults found around one in six showed signs of severely problematic news consumption, the sort where the story follows you into work and sleep. That group reported far higher rates of mental and physical ill-being, though a snapshot cannot tell us which came first.

You cannot be well informed and permanently braced at the same time. Those are two different jobs, and only one of them ends.

Across the countries surveyed by the Reuters Institute in 2025, four in ten people said they sometimes or often avoid the news, up from under three in ten in 2017. A lot of people have quietly concluded this is not working.

What actually helps

Here is the finding that changed how I talk about this. A systematic review of 23 studies on social media use interventions found only 39 per cent improved mental wellbeing: 30 per cent were mixed and 30 per cent showed no effect. Interventions built on therapy techniques such as CBT did far better than simply limiting use or abstaining. Most of those studies were rated weak in quality, so hold it loosely.

That matches what I see in clinic. Deleting an app is a subtraction. It leaves a gap, and by Thursday the gap has been filled by the same app under a different name. What works better is putting something into the gap, small enough that you will still do it on a bad day. It is the same reasoning behind our sessions being 20 minutes rather than an hour: a change that fits the life you already have gets done, and a better one that needs you to clear the diary does not.

So, four small things.

1. Protect the first hour and the last

The NHS advises avoiding phones, tablets and computers for an hour before bed. I would add the hour after waking, for a different reason. Whatever you read first sets the tone for the day, and at 6am you have no capacity to do anything about a war. If you are already awake at 3am, the 3am worry cycle is the better place to start.

Practically: charge the phone in another room and buy a clock. Boring, and the one I see work most often.

2. Swap the feed for a source

A feed is built to continue. A bulletin or a once-a-day briefing is built to finish. Pick one or two outlets you trust, one time of day, and let it end. You will lose almost nothing that matters.

I should declare an interest, because we built one of these. Our daily Pulse takes the day's main story, says plainly what it might stir up, and gives you one thing you can do about it. Then it ends. That last part is the whole point, and it is the part a feed cannot do.

3. Turn off the alerts you did not choose

Push notifications hand the decision about when you think about a disaster to a stranger optimising for engagement. Go through them once and keep the ones from actual humans.

4. Give the worry somewhere to go

If the urge to check is really an urge to do something, separate what you can act on from what you cannot, and write the second category down rather than carrying it. The NHS suggests writing worries down before bed for this reason, and worry time covers the method.

When it is more than the news

If the checking has become hard to stop, if it is eating into work or sleep, or if you feel on edge most days regardless of the headlines, that is worth raising with someone. Media habits are often the visible edge of a more general anxiety rather than its cause. When to see your GP about anxiety covers what to say.

This article is general information and is not a substitute for personal medical advice. If you are struggling with your mental health, please speak to your GP or a qualified professional. If you are in crisis or at immediate risk, contact your GP urgently, call 111, call 999, or contact the Samaritans on 116 123. brightloaf is not a crisis service.