With the internet and its widespread accessibility, many of us have front-row seats to widespread suffering and death across the globe for the first time in history, even when we are not directly affected.
We’re living in what scholars describe as a “polycrisis” — a set of interconnected crises that compound and intensify one another. Climate change intensifies displacement and conflict, economic precarity fuels political extremism and public health emergencies expose structural inequality.
As a result, the future can feel more uncertain than ever. If you feel overwhelmed by the constant influx of bad news and find it difficult to focus on day-to-day tasks, that response is understandable.
But research in psychology and cognitive science suggests there are ways to fight back against this and reclaim your attention.
The business model of outrage
Developing a critical awareness of how digital systems operate is an important first step. This sense of overwhelm is deliberately amplified by the way digital platforms and their profit-driven algorithms are designed.
Many of us go online to cope with stress or to escape, but the content that captures our attention most effectively often makes it worse.
Content that provokes anger, fear or moral outrage generates higher engagement. Negative headlines tend to attract more clicks than positive ones, creating incentives for media outlets to push content that increases engagement.
One study found that social media users are nearly twice as likely to share negative news articles that evoke strong negative emotions. Each interaction — a like, share or comment — signals to algorithms that similar content should be shown again. Increased engagement also reinforces users’ continued posting of negative material.
The result is a positive feedback loop in which emotionally charged content is amplified, often leading to the spread of misinformation and sowing of conflict.
Your brain is in a 24/7 threat environment
Part of why we are so drawn to outrage lies in human neurobiology. Studies show that we choose to read more negative or cynically framed news stories even when positive stories are also available.
Much of this is just how humans have been wired: we evolved to pay attention to the most threatening stimuli. From a very early age, we show a biased attention toward spiders, snakes and threatening faces, which activate an acute stress response from the sympathetic nervous system and trigger a fight-or-flight response.
However, we have only just recently started living in a world where negative stimuli are constantly at our fingertips. Digital media now intentionally uses these neural biases to hijack our attention for profit.
At the same time, we can only pay attention to so much at once. Our cognitive capacity is limited by what psychologists call our perceptual load.
If you’ve ever tried to work in an environment with many distractions — like in an office with construction next door — or attempted to juggle multiple tasks at once, you have experienced how quickly your attention can fragment. Multitasking typically results in poorer performance across tasks.
Doomscrolling and the stress spiral
This is where doomscrolling enters the picture. Doomscrolling refers to compulsive scrolling through negative news on digital platforms.
An unlimited stream of negative information that our brains must both react to (through sympathetic arousal) and sort through (perceptual load) can lead to information overload and chronic stress.
Stress and perceptual load interact to worsen our attention and diminish performance on certain attention-demanding tasks, suggesting that each utilises similar attentional resources.
You may find yourself in a vicious cycle: stress impairs your attention and task performance, leading to more stress, which then worsens your attention. You may then reach for your phone seeking distraction or relief, only to encounter more alarming content.
Research shows doomscrolling is more likely to cause psychological distress and worsen mental well-being, since the content that we are using to distract ourselves is often negative.
How to reclaim your attention
In the face of our current global polycrisis, the algorithmic manipulation of our emotions poses a serious challenge. If you want to interrupt this cycle, research suggests there are several practical steps you can take.
First, try to reduce time online. A particularly healthy time to be screen-free is before bed as screens can negatively impact sleep. Notably, poor sleep can lead to stress, and high stress can impair sleep.
Second, replace screen time with new hobbies. Behavioural economics shows that reducing unwanted behaviour, such as drinking alcohol, may be easier when people engage with other activities they enjoy. Ride a bike, do a puzzle or take a cooking class.
Third, reduce stress through exercise, meditation or spending time with friends to break the negativity cycle. Form new, healthy habits that bring you joy.
But perhaps the most important step is simply becoming more aware of the behind-the-scenes forces vying for our attention that exploit our most visceral emotions. While we shouldn’t completely disengage from the news media, we need to better equip ourselves to defend against these threats to our attention and well-being.
- is a Behavioural Neuroscientist and Fellow at the Cascade Institute, Royal Roads University
- is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University
- This article first appeared in The Conversation
