What it means
To doomscroll is to keep scrolling through grim, depressing news long past the point it makes you feel awful, unable to look away from the endless bad headlines. A late-night habit nobody enjoys but everybody falls into.
Usage examples
"I doomscrolled until 2am and felt terrible the next day."
"Put the phone down, you have been doomscrolling for an hour."
"I opened Twitter for two minutes and ended up doomscrolling myself into a full-on 1am spiral."
"She said she was just checking the news, then boom, pure doomscroll for the whole train ride home."
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Where it comes from
It’s a straight blend of doom and scroll. The word took off online around 2020 during the pandemic, when people kept dragging their thumb through wave after wave of bleak headlines, disaster updates and bad vibes, even while knowing it was frying their mood.
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