Last week, I joined Dr. Mark Ropeleski on The Caregivers Podcast to talk about caregiving and doomscrolling. With all the things going on in the U.S. and around the world, revisiting the negative effects of doomscrolling is, unfortunately, very timely, especially to those who are routinely in stressful situations which they can’t control.
Whether you are caregiving by choice or by necessity, it is a role that can be difficult, but also meaningful. There are benefits to social media use, but the traits of caregivers, like heightened sensitivity to danger, make them more vulnerable to getting stuck in the doom. Despite intentions, it can activate your nervous system in unhelpful ways and impact your health, your mood, your relationships and the quality of care you give.
This is a short summary of the call. There are some tips to help you balance staying informed with maintaining your well-being. You can check out the full podcast here: https://lnkd.in/gtPdziVC
Caregivers’ threat sensitivity makes alarming content feel necessary and relevant.
Doomscrolling increases anxiety and helplessness without improving control.
Chronic stress activation disrupts sleep, mood, and physical health.
Setting limits on media protects attention needed for effective caregiving.
Caregiving takes many forms. Parents, teachers, nurses, adult children supporting aging parents, and partners caring for someone through illness all share a common reality: their daily attention is centered on the well-being of another person. The circumstances differ, but the physical and emotional demands are similar.
Social media can offer moments of relief or useful information. It can also expose caregivers to a constant stream of attention-grabbing but distressing content that can be hard to resist. This is doomscrolling, the continual consumption of negative information that amplifies stress and erodes well-being (Price et al., 2022). As a caregiver, you are especially susceptible because of the intensity and nature of your role.
Doomscrolling happens when information-seeking turns into a cycle of checking and worry. It is driven by anxiety, vigilance, and the urge to monitor potential threats (Sharma et al., 2022). It is not limited to traditional news. Any content that leaves you more distressed than informed can pull you into the same loop.
Checking often feels responsible, like staying on top of what matters. But excessive monitoring increases hyper-vigilance and reinforces the urge to keep checking, even when no useful information is gained. The result is a self-perpetuating cycle. Seeking increases worry, worry drives more seeking, and the sense of control never arrives.
The traits that make you a good caregiver also make doomscrolling harder to resist. You carry a high sense of responsibility and must stay prepared for the next problem. Your attention is already tuned to detect risk. This makes alarming content feel relevant and necessary, not optional.
You also manage multiple emotional states at once, often suppressing your own feelings. Over time, it leads to cognitive fatigue, making it harder to regulate impulses or step back from distressing information. When life feels unpredictable or out of control, the pull becomes stronger. Seeking more information can feel like restoring control, even when it has the opposite effect.
The impact of doomscrolling accumulates across emotional, cognitive, and physical systems. Repeated exposure to fear- and outrage-driven content increases anxiety, sadness, pessimism, and helplessness. These are states you are often already managing (Price et al., 2022). Chronic stress leads to sustained cortisol release that can suppress immune function, increase inflammation, and contribute to headaches, muscle tension, nausea, and elevated blood pressure (Knezevic et al., 2023).
Stress activation does not shut off quickly. Elevated arousal makes it harder to fall asleep, stay asleep, or mentally unwind. A brain in threat-detection mode also struggles with sustained, present focus. You may be physically present but mentally pulled away. Stress and irritability can spill into relationships, increasing conflict and reducing patience in the very relationships that could provide support.
These responses do not reflect a lack of resilience. They reflect a nervous system doing its job too often. Staying informed and doomscrolling are different. More information does not increase control. In many cases, it increases distress. Scrolling may numb your brain temporarily, but it doesn’t resolve the underlying stress.
News consumption and spending time online are not inherently harmful. When used intentionally, they can help you understand your environment, reduce isolation, provide practical guidance, and connect you to supportive communities. The issue is unbounded, distress-driven consumption. When consumption becomes continuous and reactive, the costs far outweigh the benefits.
Cognitive reframing is one of the most effective tools for managing caregiver stress (Wiegelmann et al., 2021). Positive reframing is the practice of catching unhelpful automatic thoughts and replacing them with more accurate, balanced ones.
Step 1: Catch the thought. Reframing starts with slowing down long enough to notice what you’re thinking. This intentional pause allows you to identify automatic thoughts so you can interrupt and replace them. After doomscrolling, your thoughts might include: “I’m failing; I should be doing more,” “Everything is getting worse,” or “I can’t handle this.” These thoughts feel true but are often shaped by an already stressed state.
Step 2: Name the distortion. Identifying the type of distortion creates useful cognitive distance from the thought, decreasing its intensity. Ask whether the thought contains all-or-nothing thinking, catastrophizing, “should” statements, or an excessive personalization of responsibility.
Step 3: Replace the unhelpful thought with a more balanced, accurate one. Reframing is not forced or artificial positivity. It is identifying negative thoughts or challenging situations and reinterpreting them from a more constructive, optimistic angle.
Example: I must stay on top of everything.
Reframe: I need enough information to act wisely, not constant exposure.
Example: If I stop checking, I’m being irresponsible.
Reframe: Setting limits helps me stay effective.
Example: I’m failing because I’m overwhelmed.
Reframe: This is hard, and feeling overwhelmed signals that I need support.
Example: I should be able to do this alone.
Reframe: Good caregiving often includes accepting help.
Example: I am totally worn out.
Reframe: I’m worn out because this work is demanding, and making time to restore my energy is part of doing a good job.
Example: This is too hard. What’s the point?
Reframe: It’s possible for something to be both hard and meaningful.
Step 4: Reframe the role. Shift how you think about the role of “caregiving” more globally rather than just personally. Try these descriptions when self-critical narratives start to take over.
“Caregiving is only one of my many roles.”
“Rest maintains the most important resource that all caregivers depend on.”
“As a caregiver, I do not need to carry the whole world to care well for one person.”
Agency is the sense that your actions matter. It is one of the strongest contributors to well-being and a powerful buffer against stress.
Doomscrolling sucks you in, but reduces agency. Action, even small action, does the opposite. Pairing a simple behavior with media use can interrupt the stress cycle.
After checking your phone, take a brief walk, step outside, have a cup of tea, or do one concrete task. The action itself is less important than the pattern. Small, repeatable behaviors reinforce a sense of control and help regulate the nervous system.
Setting limits on media use protects the cognitive and emotional resources caregiving requires. These changes do not eliminate stress, but they reduce unnecessary amplification.
Check the news at specific times rather than continuously.
Avoid scrolling first thing in the morning or late at night, when the nervous system is more vulnerable to activation.
Turn off nonessential notifications.
Follow a small number of trusted sources instead of relying on algorithm-driven feeds.
Add at least one calming or solutions-focused source to balance distressing content.
Create tech-free spaces, such as keeping phones out of the bedroom or away from meals.
Doomscrolling creates the illusion of preparedness. But the reality is that it reduces your effectiveness. You do not need to monitor every crisis. Your most important role is to maintain your capacity so you can continue to care for others.
Knezevic, E., Nenic, K., Milanovic, V., & Knezevic, N. N. (2023). The role of cortisol in chronic stress, neurodegenerative diseases, and psychological disorders. Cells, 12(23), 2726. https://doi.org/10.3390/cells12232726
Price, M., Legrand, A. C., Brier, Z. M. F., van Stolk-Cooke, K., Peck, K., Dodds, P. S., Danforth, C. M., & Adams, Z. W. (2022). Doomscrolling during COVID-19: The negative association between daily social and traditional media consumption and mental health symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 14(8), 1338–1346. https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0001202
Sharma, B., Lee, S. S., & Johnson, B. K. (2022). The dark at the end of the tunnel: Doomscrolling on social media newsfeeds. Technology, Mind, and Behavior, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1037/tmb0000059
Wiegelmann, H., Speller, S., Verhaert, L. M., Schirra-Weirich, L., & Wolf-Ostermann, K. (2021). Psychosocial interventions to support the mental health of informal caregivers of persons living with dementia: A systematic literature review. BMC Geriatrics, 21, 94. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12877-021-02020-4
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