Instead, the recommendation is to contain the behaviour. For people who find doomscrolling difficult to resist, he suggests designating a specific physical location where it can take place. Incidentally, this also works if one is naturally attempting to cut down the amount of time they lose to doomscrolling. Dr. Hughes explains, “Rather than telling people to not check their phones, what we recommend people do, because the unfortunate reality is, is that there are certain people where doomscrolling is something that can be oddly soothing, and so it can be hard to stop doing it once you start. And so what we recommend people do is if you’re going to doomscroll, try and contain that behavior to one physical location in your life.” What this does, is create a boundary between information consumption and professional responsibilities. That being said, this isn’t a ‘hack’ that can eventually do away with doomscrolling – Dr. Hughes too, doesn’t expect for it to completely disappear; access to social media and evolving algorithms is making sure to weave the habit into our daily lives as it increasingly becomes the primary way people consume news and information: “There’s a lot that we have yet to understand about this behavior. And we don’t think, experts do not think it’s going to go away. People think it’s going, if anything, it might get worse because the ease of access to social media is, it’s only getting easier. It’s only getting more omnipresent, if you will. And with that comes people’s connections to events that are occurring in communities that may not be in physical proximity to them. And so it’s not something that we think is going to go away.”
