Good morning dopamine junkies! If you are like most people surrounded by modern technology, you probably engaged in what is now being called doomsurfing last night. This is the act of scrolling through your favorite feed on your phone. The funny thing is that you might have done this while streaming a show. So you are streaming a Netflix show and at the same time scrolling down your phone through a social media, or news feed. The reason that you are doing this is because your mind has become addicted to the dopamine hit you get when you find something. Ah…look at this….this man taught his dog to howl in time with the Happy Birthday song….how cute. Dopamine levels increase slightly, yes, my fix is in.
The science is starting to catch up with technology again. For a while there the behavioral scientists were behind, trying to just catch up with the impact of the Internet, chat rooms, SMS group txt messages but this last couple of years there has been influx of new research around smart phone use, social media and related areas. The research is conclusive, doomscrolling is just not good for you. It is not a way to relax, it is a way to become addicted to quick fix dopamine release and to cause anxiety and stress. So while you are watching your Netflix drama, causing artificial stress, you are compounding that by doomscrolling through another feed! Wow. You really like to torture yourself!
The reason I can with certainly say that you are doing this, because the research is also confirming that this is a behavior pattern that exists in almost 100% of the population that uses a mobile device. Meaning if you have a phone, you are probably engaging in this type of behavior. It is causing a serious mental health issue. You are prone to forgetting things, you cannot pay attention to important things in life, you are distracted because over half of your mind is handling your constant doomscrolling. Yes, you can multitask, but here is a newsflash. The research also indicates that your the effectiveness of your brain gets reduced by half when paying attention to a feed on your phone.
My suggestion, and what I want to try to do, is to replace doomscrolling with a more mindful activity. For example, if you were to just sit quietly in a dark room for 15 minutes rather than looking at your phone that would be infinitely better for your mental health. Instead of looking through a feed on your phone before going to bed every night, replace that activity with a silent moment where you consider what you did today and how you could improve. When you wake up in the morning, instead of reaching for you phone to scroll through posts that occurred over night, create a list of what is the most important things that you could do today.
Research indicates that the best thing that you can do with your phone is to use it for the intended purpose. It is a communications device and you should use it for that. You do not need to respond to every message in real time, you can actually schedule time to respond to and communicate with people. You can reserve time in your day to focus on functional tasks that are really important to you goal. Start by learning how to turn off all notifications on your phone. When you need to see who is trying to communicate with you, open the appropriate messaging tool and find out. There is no need to focus on what other people want you to focus on, until you are ready. You need to and should be focused on what is important to you.
Please start to realize that when you are doomscrolling you are feeding the desires, ambitions of companies, organizations and people into your mind at a rapid rate. You are filling your head with thoughts that are not your own. You are not being mindful, you are being lulled into a state of mindless receiver, a drone. You will eventually do and say the things and be interested in the things that the dominate players of the day want. You get your quick fix, moment of elation, chemical release in your mind and you feel better each time but it is not worth it – at all. If you do not believe me, spend an hour today and look up the research on it. Most of the studies have a quick synopsis that you can read through. Very enlightening. Hate to say this, but frequent and habitual phone use is just plain bad for you.
Replace doomscrolling with something healthy and mindful. Do it for a week and see what happens to your mental state. I predict massive improvement.
Guy Reams
