What Doom Scrolling Does to Your Mental Health (11:15)
Doom scrolling triggers stress responses, emotional numbness, and burnout by constant exposure to negative content.
Broadcast Retirement Network’s Jeffrey Snyder discusses the implications of doom scrolling on an individual’s mental health with Sharzad Jalali, PsyD., Align Remedy.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
This morning, what doom strolling does to your mental health and joining me now to discuss this is Dr. Sharzad Jalali. She’s a clinical psychologist and also author of the upcoming book, The Fire That Makes Us, unveiling the transformative power of trauma. Dr. Jalali, so great to see you. Thanks for joining us this morning.
Shahrzad Jalali, Psy.D., Align Remedy
Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, this is a topic that I think gets a lot of coverage that is doom scrolling, but doctor, this doom scrolling does play a big role or can play a big role in our mental health.
Shahrzad Jalali, Psy.D., Align Remedy
Yes, very true. When we’re exposed to constant stream of alarming content, things like war, disasters, political chaos, our nervous system doesn’t just observe it. It kind of goes through the experience of actually experiencing that event.
So you can imagine that this repeated exposure can activate the body’s stress response significantly and put us in survival mode.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, and I’m a middle-aged person. I grew up with three television channels barely any cable TV. I don’t recall this mental health concern back in the 80s.
Maybe it was existent, but maybe not as much as it is in today’s society.
Shahrzad Jalali, Psy.D., Align Remedy
Yes, because unfortunately, we have so much exposure or fortunately, depending on how you’re looking at it, that your system never gets a chance to calm down from this state. So it can lead to emotional numbness, sleep issues, burnout, chronic fatigue. It’s not just psychological at this point, it’s also physiological.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
I was reading in the story where I think you were interviewed by Scripps News Service, the ages and the amount of time that people spend on the screen, looking on the screen is quite alarming. Even boomers, my generation, which is Gen X, millennials, Gen Z, the younger people, everyone seems to really find a lot of time to scroll through their screens.
Shahrzad Jalali, Psy.D., Align Remedy
Well, there is a psychological dynamic behind that. So doom scrolling actually hijacks our brain’s dopamine system. So essentially, you’re responding to it as you would to any other drug.
So your brain is constantly seeking that dopamine release, and we’re imagining that it’s going to make us feel good. So we tell ourselves, if I just look at this next post or this next piece of news, I’m going to get that high that I need. And this happens very unintentionally, by the way.
But the problem is we’re keeping ourselves in a very negative feedback loop, because we hear the next thing, it’s dysregulating, and then we’re going to need to regulate ourselves again through the doom scrolling. So we just get stuck in that loop.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah. And you mentioned some of the physiological changes. You talked about the dopamine, the creation, or I’m not a doctor, but the creation of more dopamine in the system.
Are there other physiological elements that we would see that present themselves as a result of this constant churning through social media?
Shahrzad Jalali, Psy.D., Align Remedy
Absolutely. It can impact our sense of self. So you see people feeling more anxious, more depressed.
You see people struggling with poor sleep habits because of it. You see a lot of compassion fatigue, because at this point, you’re not just carrying your own life. You’re also carrying whatever is happening in the world in a negative way.
So there’s a lot of extra emotions that need to be dealt with. And as you know, most of us have enough difficulty just handling our own emotions. So adding all of this to what’s already happening within our own psyche can feel very overwhelming to us.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
And doctor, how does misinformation or disinformation play into this? Because I’ve seen many posts, not that I go on and doom scroll all the time, but I’ve seen posts that at the end of the day turned out to be incorrect, or maybe one quarter of the story. Being able to discern between what is true and what is maybe half true, not true, that can also, I would think, lead to some challenges with mental health.
Shahrzad Jalali, Psy.D., Align Remedy
Absolutely. So when you’re continuously exposed to things that are not even to your point, correct, you feel a baseline of tension, even when nothing is happening. So you’re checking these headlines first thing in the morning and last thing at night before you go to bed.
You feel detached from joy and connection, because the majority of your relationship is with gadgets that we look at all the time. So the best way to do it is to find one or two reputable sources that you can go to, that you get information that is correct from, and limit it to one or two times during the day for five or 10 minutes each. And make sure you follow that with some kind of nervous system de-escalation, like going into nature, listening to music, maybe talking to someone that makes you feel well, having some human connection.
So you definitely want to make sure that your nervous system goes from that dysregulation to a regulating dynamic afterwards.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Doctor, as I said, I’m a Gen Xer, my parents are boomers. A lot of us did not grow up with the phone, did not grow up with social media. And so maybe it’s a little easier for us to put it down and say, hey, I’m not going to do this.
I’m going to do exactly as you were saying, I’m going to look at it once, twice, three times a day, and that’s it. What about some of the younger generations? That to me, because they grew up with this technology, they grew up with the iPhone, the Android phone, they grew up with social media, that disconnect is maybe a bit of a challenge.
Shahrzad Jalali, Psy.D., Align Remedy
That’s an excellent question, because I always say we have to go with the times, right? We can’t just create a new reality for ourselves. So there is this dramatic increase in anxiety as we see in the world.
And I like to refer to it as secondhand survival mode, because of this exposure you’re referring to. So people are highly overwhelmed and they’re carrying this emotional weight of the entire world with them, which leads to a lot of dysregulation and burnout, as we talked about. So the key here is not to necessarily disengage from it or to walk away from it or to make yourself never look at the news again, but to provide a lot of literacy regarding your nervous system.
So learning how to navigate your nervous system. In fact, that’s the foundation of the type of work I do. I’ve created a course called Regulate to Rise that teaches people how to de-escalate their nervous system and kind of get out of survival mode and take ownership of their emotions.
It’s also the baseline of my upcoming book, The Fire, that makes us kind of teaching us how we all evidently live in response to the trauma we have experienced without even knowing that we’re doing this. And to be able to recognize these symptoms and learn how to regulate our nervous system afterwards becomes significantly important, because as you pointed out, technology is part of what the new generation does at this point.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah. I mean, they’re using AI. I mean, I can only imagine what things will be like a year from now, five years from now.
Tongue-in-cheek doctor, they should probably include your book or your course along with every new iPhone or Android phone so that people, in all seriousness, know how to understand the risks. And I guess my last question, is there a role here for local, state, federal government when it comes to social media? I’m not saying I’m an advocate for overregulation, but it seems like there’s this stimulation that’s happening, this overregulation, it could have significant negative effects that we don’t even know about because not all the research is in.
Shahrzad Jalali, Psy.D., Align Remedy
You’re absolutely right about that. However, if we go into that dynamic, we’re opening up a can of worms, right? To what extent are we comfortable with the government regulating our personal time and so forth?
In my opinion, we can’t really escape how the world kind of goes forward and expands. But what we can control is expanding ourselves and learning how to regulate ourselves properly. So we have proper boundaries with stuff and we learned enough of self-regulation and understanding our nervous system that we can navigate all these things properly.
If you ask me, this is the most important topic every human has to learn in their lifetime. So instead of taking all those courses in school when we are younger, that none of us ever remember, I think at the core of all that should be emotion regulation. So our children learn how to become more controlled beings for themselves.
I think that helps our relationships, our careers, impacts every aspect of our life, turning the world into a better place. Because as the world is right now, it’s a bunch of hurt people hurting other people.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Go ahead. I’m sorry.
Shahrzad Jalali, Psy.D., Align Remedy
Want to go is regulating, irregulated people regulating other people, right?
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, well said. I never saw the reason why I needed to know the Battle of Hastings was in 1066. Dr. Jalali, great to see you. Thanks for joining us and we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon.
Shahrzad Jalali, Psy.D., Align Remedy
Pleasure is all mine. Thank you.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
And that wraps up our show this morning. We’ll see you all tomorrow. Until then, I’m Jeff Snyder.
Stay safe, keep on saving and don’t forget, roll with the changes.