What if we doomscroll because we are distracting ourselves from a life that feels unsettling?

Modern life presents us with periods of change we don’t know what to do with. We spend it on more screen time because we lack alternatives

Mar 27, 2026

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Francis* is in an interesting phase in his life. He’s unemployed—by choice. His advanced degree programme is starting in a few months, so he’s taking it easy while he finishes the required paperwork.

“Because I’m not working, I can do whatever I want. And because I don’t have any responsibilities, no obligations, I just wanted to indulge myself. This might not be something I can experience again when my study starts,” Francis said.

“When you get the chance to do anything, your idea is, ‘I get to have more screen time’. Why is that?” I asked, bringing up a point he made earlier in our conversation.

Francis had previously told me about his lifelong relationship with doomscrolling—or a version of it, back when “doomscrolling” was yet a thing. He believes it started when he was a kid. He was a big gamer. He would look forward to Sunday—the only day of the week he was allowed to play his console games—and spend the entire day gaming. He would wake up as early as possible and sleep as late as possible.

“That was a really, really fun period in my life. But I had a conversation with an older cousin who told me that life is not all about games. It was a wake-up call, and it got me thinking, ‘Oh, what else is there, then?’ I ended up switching to social media,” Francis said, enticed by the social aspect of the platform. “One bad habit to another.”

These days, he averages around eight to nine hours of screen time per day. He attributed it to a lack of compelling alternatives.

Francis currently lives in Jakarta, after spending some years abroad, in cities better suited to his disposition to wander around. In the city where he used to live, any time he felt bored, he would take a stroll. It’s not as enjoyable doing that in Jakarta, he reckoned. Jakarta’s streets are packed to the brim. Not to mention the humid climate and heavy pollution.

“Over time, I went back to my old habit. I would stay in, be on my laptop. Or, I would visit a cafe, to scroll. And eat, and try out the coffee,” Francis said.

He expects his screen time to go down once he moves cities and starts a new routine.

I asked Francis a similar question I asked people I’ve conversed with: What role does doomscrolling serve in your life?

“The first thing that comes to mind is nothing but a time killer,” he replied. It’s pure entertainment, and it’s not even quality entertainment. In the sense that he wouldn’t be able to recall the ten Reels he watched the previous day. It’s more of a distraction. “Maybe if we think of it as a person with a hole in their heart, it’s just there to temporarily patch up that hole.”

“This plug—as in a time plug or emotional plug or activity plug? What does the plug solve?” I asked.

“Maybe emotions. It removes feelings of boredom, feelings of… Maybe sometimes when I feel anxious, or I’m feeling an unpleasant emotion, I unconsciously scroll social media to distract myself from the feeling,” Francis explained.

“In periods when those anxious feelings arise more often, do you spend more time doomscrolling? Is that the case?”

“I’m generally an anxious person. I don’t know why, specifically. But I don’t think social media is the ultimate contributor.”

Francis has been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. It is something he has now learned to manage, but he still wonders to what extent social media affects his well-being. It’s context-dependent, he said. He remembers struggling with his anxiety during the pandemic years, but that was also because there were so many things happening at the same time—he had to deal with social isolation and losing a relative, among other things. Naturally, by virtue of staying indoors, his screen time skyrocketed. But eventually he learned how to cope with it—the Covid-related anxieties.

At this point in our conversation, I had noticed Francis’ laissez-faire attitude when it comes to doomscrolling. It was clear to me he didn’t see it from a moralising lens—as in, he wasn’t weighed down on whether or not he should or shouldn’t be doing it. It seemed to be the case that, from his point of view, it is simply something he does. He would do more of it in certain periods of his life, and in others, less. As he said, it’s context-dependent.

So, I asked: Were there periods in which you were more critical and periods where you were more relaxed about it?

Yes, he said. There were times he was very conscious and self-critical. During those periods, he would actively try to limit his social media usage. At one point, he deleted all social media apps from his phone. But he realised he couldn’t find an alternative as satisfying and stimulating as scrolling down his feed.

“It reminded me of the time when I was little and was monitored by my parents to not play PlayStation outside of weekends. When I recalled the feeling, it made me wonder, ‘Why am I self-regulating myself this much?’ It felt like I was punishing myself,” Francis explained, adding that he felt worse off with excessive self-regulation.

“That’s so interesting. So, in what phase are you in right now?” I asked.

“I’m in a phase where I’m very much coddling myself,” he replied.

I wanted to explore a bit more about the relationship between his anxiety and his social media usage. I asked him whether it was okay for me to inquire further. I brought up the point about how he uses social media to regulate his emotions and asked: “When you doomscroll, what is it that you feel?”

“That’s the thing. When I doomscroll, I don’t feel anything,” he replied.

Most of the time, there are no feelings that arise when he doomscrolls. If anxiety can feel overwhelming, feeling nothing is a refuge.

Of course, there are moments he gets affected by rage-bait content, making him feel, in his words, “hopeless and helpless”. But there have also been instances where he’s nudged to be more mindful and grounded.

There are hidden gems on the internet, Francis told me. He showed me one he stumbled upon while he was doomscrolling. It’s a quote he now has as his phone’s wallpaper. I read it out loud.

It will probably work out. Instead of feeding worst-case scenarios, I relax my grip and trust that what I need will arrive in its own time.

“That’s beautiful.”

*Note: The name is pseudonymised.

This edition is part of a series called “An Algorithmic Becoming”. I’m exploring how our lives have become deeply entangled with algorithms and algorithmic technologies. Follow along to see where it leads.

Read the previous editions here: