A Christian Response to Scrolling and Doomscrolling

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In recent years, scrolling and what is referred to as doomscrolling have become major points of discussion in sociology, and even discussions regarding legislation. Scrolling relates to the compulsive or uninhibited engagement with online sources, especially social media. It can indicate a trance-like state of passive engagement and an addictive-like compulsion to engage with online content. Doomscrolling, on the other hand, is a particular version of scrolling that seeks out negative news. As University of Florida advertising researcher Bhakti Sharma and his colleagues conceptualize it, this compulsive behavior is “habitual, immersive scanning for timely negative information on social media newsfeeds.”¹ While scrolling may seem less problematic than doomscrolling (the use of the word doom added to it is a good indication of this reality), both practices have impacted people all over the globe, and the impacts of these behaviors are causing people to seek out solutions.

Concerns with these two practices have mounted since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. With increased screentime, shelter-in-place orders, and general anxiety borne from the ever-changing situation related to public health, people turned to their smartphones for answers, comfort, and confirmation that they would be okay.² Further, political unrest and increasing social tensions have added fuel to the fire of an already-present problem. People of all generations are spending more time online, more time on social media platforms with algorithm-based “for-you” pages, and more time engaging with sensationalized headlines and online content.

THE CHRISTIAN’S NEED TO ENGAGE WITH THE WORLD

When Jesus prayed His high priestly prayer to the Father in the garden of Gethsemane, He said, “I do not ask that you take them [my followers] out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world” (John 17:15–16).³ Jesus asks for God the Father to intervene to protect and guard His people from being influenced by the devil, to stand apart from the world. And so, Christians, or “Christ-followers,” must critically engage things in the world. Social media and scrolling may seem innocuous, but Christians are called to stand apart from what the world calls “good” and be thoughtful about our engagement.

Scripture tells us that the fruits of the Spirit are “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Galatians 5:22–24). When we engage with social media, we must employ these fruits of the Spirit. Paul exhorts us to “keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another” (5:25–26). How frequently do we fall into the trap of social media that encourages us to be conceited, provoke one another, and envy one another? Christian philosopher Douglas Groothuis explains in his article “Understanding Social Media” that “Facebook and related social media tend to foster the overexposure of the underdeveloped self by facilitating the mass distribution of text and images related to oneself” (emphasis in original).⁴ Groothuis likewise warns against gossip, narcissism, immodesty, and disconnecting from in-person relationships as a result of social media use.⁵ These are all important things to consider when weighing social media’s impact on one’s own life.

Christian teacher Kyle A. Keating further warns Christians of social media’s compulsive pull: “While it is tempting to view social media as a morally neutral tool used for good or ill, the inclination toward idolatry (already so natural to fallen people) is actually being programmed into our brains” (emphasis in original).⁶ This is particularly relevant to the topic of scrolling and doomscrolling. We must “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God” (Colossians 1:10). When we take our eyes off our neighbor, being fully consumed by the compulsive pull of our handheld devices, we are no longer focused on Jesus, His will for our lives, caring for our neighbor, or bearing good fruit.

Paul tells us that “‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things are helpful. ‘All things are lawful,’ but not all things build up” (1 Corinthians 10:23). Scrolling on social media is indeed one of these things. Yes, it is lawful, but can it be helpful? Can it build us up? What about when it becomes compulsive and destructive?

SOCIAL MEDIA AND ITS ADDICTIVE QUALITIES

People often use the word “addiction” colloquially to refer to things that are sometimes not, in fact, addictive. For example, “These cookies are addictive!” typically means something to the effect of: “these cookies are delicious, and I would like to eat more of them.” The question that arises from the discussion regarding scrolling and doomscrolling is: can we rightly use the word “addiction” to refer to social media use, since it is a non-substance?

Matt Richtel, in an article for the New York Times, argues that we absolutely can use “addiction” language to refer to social media. Citing David Greenfield, a psychologist and founder of the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction (West Hartford, CT), Richtel claims that technological devices can become addictive by way of “intermittent reinforcement.”⁷ This is the same thing that makes gambling so addictive: the idea that someone using the platform could be rewarded at any time. “As with a slot machine, users are beckoned with lights and sounds but, even more powerful, information and reward tailored to a user’s interests and tastes.”⁸

“Problematic Interactive Media Use,” or PIMU, is an expansive term that can include online gaming, gambling, and other kinds of internet addictions. Although studies related to PIMU tend to refer to children and teens, the related data is helpful in highlighting trends and pitfalls related to scrolling and doomscrolling. Pediatric psychologist Emily Pluhar and her cowriters cite a multitude of ways that PIMU presents itself, including scrolling and doomscrolling (albeit using different terms to refer to these activities). They write, “The majority of youth now use mobile media almost constantly to communicate, learn, and entertain themselves, but for some, uncontrolled video gaming, social media use, pornography viewing, and information-binging on short videos or websites contribute to functional impairment.”⁹

The key to understanding PIMU is that it relates to “uncontrolled use of interactive screen media that results in negative consequences affecting an individual’s functioning,”¹⁰ without narrowly defining the kind of media causing the problem or the behavior resulting from its overuse.¹¹ PIMU can cause negative behaviors or feelings to result with restricted use of screens. Negative outcomes of this kind tend to be associated with withdrawal, much like a substance abuse withdrawal. Pluhar and co-writers list other psychiatric conditions often associated with PIMU, including “depression and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD),” which “are prevalent among young people struggling with PIMU. Co-morbid and pre-existing anxiety, sleep disorders, and autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are also common with those struggling with excessive media use.”¹²

There are a handful of determinants of PIMU, according to David S. Bickham from the Digital Wellness Lab, Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine in Boston Children’s Hospital. The “most widely documented risk factor is being male. Prevalence among boys and young men has been found to be 2, 3, or even 5 times higher than among girls and young women.”¹³

Other risk factors that increase the chance of PIMU include lower socioeconomic status, less maternal education, and a single-parent household; “throughout early adolescence PIMU increases with age,” Bickham explains, “but peaks around 15–16.”¹⁴ Certain personality traits, such as impulsivity, lacking self-control, neuroticism, and high levels of urgency can, likewise, play into PIMU. Bickham writes, “Working from models based on the brain functioning in gambling and substance use addicts, researchers have looked for similarities with these disorders. [Child and adolescent psychiatrist Clifford J.] Sussman and colleagues call attention to the viewpoint that people are not actually addicted to a substance or a behavior itself but rather to the brain’s response to the drug or activity.”¹⁵ Therefore, there can be an addiction to the physiological response in the brain that mirrors substance activity when an individual engages in compulsive use of social media.

Writing in the Washington Post, Luis Velarde takes this idea one step further, making the claim that social media platforms have capitalized on our human need for connection and forced a neurological response in users. Velarde quotes Anna Lembke, a professor of psychiatry and addiction medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine: when individuals scroll, they may feel increased connections with others socially, releasing “oxytocin, our love hormone, which in turn releases dopamine in the reward pathway, which makes connection feel good.”¹⁶ Velarde continues, “Lembke explains that social media has taken the work out of how we connect with other human beings, placing that effort online and adding three major ingredients: novelty, accessibility and quantity, making scrolling a very potent drug.”¹⁷

A chasm exists between what people desire and what they do when it comes to technology. In My Tech-Wise Life, Amy Crouch explains that 80 percent of people surveyed claimed that they would prefer to talk with friends in person, rather than text them (20 percent), but they actually chose to be in person with their friends only 35 percent of the time, opting to text instead almost two-thirds of the time (65 percent).¹⁸ She summarizes: “However, in all these cases, people also had to admit that they actually tended to do the opposite of what they desired to do” (emphasis in original).¹⁹ This is precisely what addictive behavior looks like. Scripture uses this kind of language to describe the undeniable pull of sin as well. Paul writes,

For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. (Romans 7:15–20)

As Christians, we can see how being sucked into addiction regarding social media or the devices we find ourselves spending time on mirrors the pull of sin that Paul describes above: “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”

THE COSTS AND BENEFITS OF SCROLLING

While there can certainly be an addictive compulsion that attends scrolling on social media that leads into problematic behavior, scrolling can also be a form of mental relief. Reading on social media has been linked to experiences of dissociation that range from feeling calmed and “reset” to feeling “the 30-Minute Ick Factor.”²⁰ Human-computer interaction and social media researcher Amanda Baughan and her co-writers explain that this sensation is the feeling of “disgust people report upon suddenly noticing they have spent a notable amount of time on social media when they only meant to check it briefly.”²¹ Other experiences range: “In prior work, users describe experiencing ‘Internet blackout’ and compare browsing social media to entering a ‘trance.’ Similarly…smartphone addiction positively correlates with hypnotisability [sic], and hypnosis is generally agreed to be a dissociative state.”²²

Baughan and co-writers show that there is a difference between those who enter these dissociative states electively and those who enter unconsciously. For example, someone who slips into this kind of state passively may do so in the same way someone experiences “daydreaming” or “highway hypnosis” (a phrase that indicates the sensation of losing time while driving long distances). In contrast, someone who electively attempts to enter this state of dissociation may do so for relaxation or in an attempt to improve their mood. Think of binge-watching a television show, becoming immersed in the story; or listening to music for long stretches of time. There can be positive effects from scrolling in this case. Baughan and co-authors write, “Research has demonstrated that media consumption can help in the restoration of depleted resources, and that the effects of media-induced recovery are linked to outcomes such as increased vitality, enjoyment, cognitive performance, and subjective well-being….Therefore, it appears that in at least some instances, social media consumption can help people recover and improve their well-being and subsequent task performance.”²³ But when people electively enter a dissociative state by scrolling on social media, it can also be a bad form of escapism.

There is a well-documented correlation between social media use and mental illness symptoms, but it is “unclear if time on social media is the problem, or if it’s time away from other things like exercising or sleeping. And the studies obscure, for instance, if someone is spending hours on screens to escape mental duress or to seek support from friends,” Claire Cain Miller points out in the New York Times.²⁴ It is a difficult thing to parse out the cause-and-effect relationship of these things, but the fact that social media consumption and mental illness symptoms are correlated is certainly of note.

Because of this, we need to be aware of those who have greater risk factors for problematic social media use. Those who tend to have body image issues, or social struggles, or who already have a history of mental health issues are more likely to engage with social media in a way that exacerbates those issues. But social media can have an equally positive impact on these individuals as well. For example, when a lonely person connects with others online, it can help mitigate the feelings of disconnection. Overall, there is a cost to social media engagement, and those costs must be weighed with serious consideration against the benefits.

DOOMSCROLLING

Doomscrolling stands in stark contrast to typical scrolling on social media. While scrolling can be done at a leisurely pace and with the intention of relaxation, doomscrolling has the opposite effect. It is an intense version of media intake wherein the individual scrolls obsessively on their phones to observe as much information as possible, with a pattern of negativity. Doomscrolling is a habit where the individual intakes primarily negative or depressing information in large amounts.²⁵

This kind of behavior was magnified by the COVID-19 pandemic; with stay-at-home orders and feelings of no control over the situation, people wanted to gain as much information as possible from their devices. It is completely normal to evaluate your environment for threats and variables that could potentially lead to harm. For example, if you hear from your doctor that you are diagnosed with a disease, you will want to know all about how it affects your body, what your prognosis is, what the treatment plan is, and how it affects your life expectancy. Seeking out information to better understand a situation can be incredibly wise, and it is a great tactic for self-defense.

However, with social media algorithms placing shock-value first, encouraging clickable links, and using heightened rhetoric to frighten and alarm readers, the impulse to evaluate potential threats can lead to doomscrolling.²⁶ As noted, this compulsive behavior is “habitual, immersive scanning for timely negative information on social media newsfeeds.”27 The compulsive nature of doomscrolling produces a cycle or pattern of seeking out negativity and depressing information. Further, psychology researcher Seydi Ahmet Satici and his colleagues explain that “doomscrolling has positive relationships with neuroticism, sensation-seeking, and negativity bias and negative relationships with conscientiousness, and positive affect.”²⁸ Therefore, those who tend to engage in doomscrolling tend to desire the negative headlines over positive ones.

Research psychologist Kathryn Buchanan and her co-writers conducted a series of experiments to see if doomscrolling about COVID-19 information produced negative mental health outcomes compared to interfacing with online content related to COVID-19 that could be perceived as positive. Reports of negative effects to well-being were noted after as little as two minutes of exposure to COVID-19-related online content.²⁹ This indicates that even casual engagement with negative news on social media can impact feelings of well-being, underscoring the severity of how doomscrolling can impact individuals.

Some scholars pose that positive content on the internet can outweigh and counteract the effects of negative news. Buchanan and her cowriters refer to this alternative kind of scrolling as kind-scrolling. “Hearing news about COVID in a YouTube reaction video negatively affected people’s mood in the same way as did reading similar information in a Twitter feed. However, hearing about COVID-related acts of kindness (i.e., kind-scrolling) not only avoided the negative effects of doom-scrolling, but lifted mood compared to the control condition.”³⁰

Drawing from research psychologist Jade Wu, BBC correspondent Jessica Klein reports that doomscrolling mimics gambling behaviors “because we don’t only scroll for bad news, but also anything uplifting.”³¹ Even though kind-scrolling can help improve the mood slightly, it is important to remember that the cycle may continue. “Losing, for doomscrollers, means exposure to the same bad news, and the negative psychological and physical effects that come with it.”³² But the chance that the news may be good acts as a reward, like playing the slots, and it makes it harder to stop.

The fact that many journalism sites make money based on clicks, rather than the validity of their information, can help make sense of why doomscrolling is so prevalent. We can easily get sucked down the tunnel of sensationalized article after sensationalized article without knowing the difference between truth and falsehood. Citing psychologist Mike Brooks, Rylan Vanacore explains that “clickbait” titles “promise…something compelling” and activate “a particular dopamine pathway. Once released, it creates an itch that is scratched by obtaining the information that was promised.”³³ This kind of sensationalism drives doomscrolling. Drawing from North Carolina State University communications professor David Berube, Vanacore writes, “One of the biggest uses of sensationalism is headlines. When you are looking at a magazine or website and see those big bolded words, they attract your attention. News and media outlets know that headlines attract readers, so they use this to their advantage. Often times headlines feature an over-exaggerated display of events. With the right wording, the most mundane thing can be blown out of proportion.”³⁴ With print and digital sources at war for attention, the more engaging the headline, the more likely it will be read. While headlines can pull a reader in, they can also shape the kind of information people retain from the article.³⁵ These are major factors to take into consideration when we interact with social media.

REDEEMING SOCIAL MEDIA USE

With an adequate understanding of the risks and benefits posed by online access, Christians can learn to engage online content in meaningful, non-compulsive ways. Cultivating the ability to read well along with engaging in meaningful social relationships can offer Christians a key to reprogramming our brains to use social media in wise and proper ways. And, when we choose to abstain from the pull of the internet, there can be other options for meaningful engaging activities.

Paul encourages the church at Colossae to “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth,” and to “put to death therefore what is earthly in you” (Colossians 3:2, 5). What we choose to meditate on and put our thoughts toward matters. The reason for this, Paul says, is because “you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (3:3). We are not our own; our lives are intertwined with Christ’s life here on earth, and we are called to act like it. That means cultivating virtue within us and calling others within the body of Christ to do the same.

This brings us to a wildly different understanding of how we should conduct ourselves in the world. With social media, we may think, this makes me happy, or I just want to relax. But the addictive nature of scrolling and doomscrolling can rob us of our volition in engaging well. Christian ethicist Ken Magnuson argues that followers of Christ “must challenge the way that pleasure is made to be the highest goal, not because the pursuit of pleasure is wrong, but because it is so often misplaced and destructive, and too many people simply don’t know where or how to look for the greatest pleasures.”³⁶ Without rootedness in the Holy Scriptures, we lack the ability to discern what is good for us. However, when we are armed with God’s Word, we are able to see through the untruths that may arise in casual social media scrolling, and we are able to see hope instead of being stuck in patterns of doomscrolling.

With access to social media comes all kinds of benefits — social connectedness, networking, opportunities, information, and so much more. Social commentator Andy Crouch writes, “Technology is a brilliant, praiseworthy expression of human creativity and cultivation of the world. But it is at best neutral in actually forming human beings who can create and cultivate as we were meant to.”³⁷ When we view technology as something that can make us better people, we can lose the critical perspective that we must employ when using discernment.

One of the most important ways that social media, and technology more broadly, can help us as Christians is by giving us spiritual insight from other believers. It can also inform us of current events, important context for ministry and life, and even update us on beloved friends and family and their needs. But we must learn how to read virtuously as we do this, or we may end up with misunderstandings, broken trust, and all kinds of frustrations that can drive compulsive or flippant social media use.

Literary scholar Karen Swallow Prior calls the practice of reading with virtue “reading well.” She explains:

Reading virtuously means, first, reading closely, being faithful to both text and context, interpreting accurately and insightfully. Indeed, there is something in the very form of reading — the shape of the action itself — that tends toward virtue. The attentiveness necessary for deep reading (the kind of reading we practice in reading literary works as opposed to skimming news stories or reading instructions) requires patience. The skills of interpretation and evaluation require prudence. Even the simple decision to set aside time to read in a world rife with so many other choices competing for our attention requires a kind of temperance.³⁸

Though her book On Reading Well is targeted toward reading literature well, it can be broadly applied to all kinds of reading. When we read articles on the internet, we can employ the same virtues, and we can work hard to cultivate meaning and understanding. “Reading well entails discerning which visions for life are false and which are good and true — as well as recognizing how deeply rooted these visions are in language.”³⁹ When applied to scrolling, doomscrolling, and social media use in general, there is a better way. By noticing and caring about truth, we can overcome the need to seek out what upsets us. By being patient and employing thoughtful engagement, we can break the cycles of how media grabs our attention and keeps it.

Aside from making a specific, personal decision to engage well with the media presented to you, there are a few other practical solutions posed by scholars for reprieving social media scrolling and doomscrolling addictions. Brian X. Chen collects several in the New York Times: acknowledging that this pattern of behavior is bad for you; creating a realistic plan that you can abide by until it forms a habit; connecting with others in many different ways and even creating small support groups can all help with the propensity to doomscroll.⁴⁰

With these things in mind, it can be as easy as learning to do anything else with your hands that you find comforting or productive. Citing Kelly Lambert’s book Lifting Depression: A Neuroscientist’s Hands-on Approach to Activating Your Brain’s Healing Power (Basic Books, 2008), physician Susan Biali Haas details the connection between well-being and working with your hands. When participation in hands-on activities diminish, there is an increase in feelings of anxiety, depression, and other mood disorders. Working with your hands can also contribute to feelings of control over your environment in a way that is not possible with simply medicating the problem.⁴¹ Picking up a hobby like gardening, crocheting, cooking, working on cars, playing guitar, or yoyoing can make a world of difference in standing against the draw of the smartphone.

Ultimately, the hope our Lord offers us for what we will experience in eternity is so much greater than any hope we can secure from scrolling on the internet. We may feel better temporarily when we find those news stories that bring us joy, and we may feel smarter by accessing information on the internet and reading it well, but that joy and knowledge is fleeting. Christians have a better hope: “When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory” (Colossians 3:4).

Lisa Cooper is a senior copywriter at RevelationMedia and a freelance writer with Barna. She has a master’s degree in religion from The American Lutheran Theological Seminary.

1. Bhakti Sharma, Susanna S. Lee, and Benjamin K. Johnson, “The Dark at the End of the Tunnel: Doomscrolling on Social Media Newsfeeds,” Technology, Mind, and Behavior 3, issue 1 (Spring 2022), APA Open, https://doi.org/10.1037/tmb0000059.
2. Jeremy F. Huckins et al., “Mental Health and Behavior of College Students During the Early Phases of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Longitudinal Smartphone and Ecological Momentary Assessment Study,” Journal of Medical Internet Research 22, no. 6 (2020), https://doi.org/10.2196/20185. The authors note that increased smartphone usage, along with increased sedentary behavior, was noted immediately following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
3. All Bible quotations are from the English Standard Version (ESV).
4. Douglas Groothuis, “Understanding Social Media,” Christian Research Journal 33, no. 3 (2010), https://www.equip.org/articles/understanding-social-media/.
5. Groothuis, “Understanding Social Media.”
6. Kyle A. Keating, “Cream or Sugar: Fostering Authentic Community in the Expanding Age of Social Media,” Christian Research Journal 41, no. 3 (2018), https://www.equip.org/articles/cream-or-sugar-fostering-authentic-community-in-the-expanding-age-of-social-media/.
7. Matt Richtel, “Is Social Media Addictive? Here’s What the Science Says,” New York Times, October 25, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/25/health/social-media-addiction.html.
8. Richtel, “Is Social Media Addictive?”
9. Emily Pluhar et al., “Problematic Interactive Media Use in Teens: Comorbidities, Assessment, and Treatment,” Psychology Research and Behavior Management 12 (2019): 447, https://doi.org/10.2147/PRBM.S208968.
10. Pluhar et al., “Problematic Interactive Media Use in Teens,” 448.
11. David S. Bickham, “Current Research and Viewpoints on Internet Addiction in Adolescents,” Current Pediatrics Reports 9, 1 (2021):1–10, https://doi.org/10.1007/s40124-020-00236-3.
12. Pluhar et al., “Problematic Interactive Media Use in Teens,” 449.
13. Bickham, “Current Research and Viewpoints on Internet Addiction in Adolescents,” 4.
14. Bickham, “Current Research and Viewpoints on Internet Addiction in Adolescents,” 4.
15. Bickham, “Current Research and Viewpoints on Internet Addiction in Adolescents,” 5; Bickham cites Clifford J. Sussman et al., “Internet and Video Game Addictions: Diagnosis, Epidemiology, and Neurobiology,” Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics of North America 27, issue 2 (2018):307–26, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chc.2017.11.015.
16. Anna Lembke quoted in Luis Velarde, “How Addictive, Endless Scrolling Is Bad for Your Mental Health,” Washington Post, July 14, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2023/07/14/social-media-mental-crisis-youths/.
17. Velarde, “How Addictive, Endless Scrolling Is Bad for Your Mental Health.”
18. Amy Crouch and Andy Crouch, My Tech-Wise Life: Growing Up and Making Choices in a World of Devices (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2020), 75.
19. Crouch and Crouch, My Tech-Wise Life, 74.
20. Amanda Baughan et al., “‘I Don’t Even Remember What I Read’: How Design Influences Dissociation on Social Media,” in CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’22), April 29–May 5, 2022, New Orleans, Association for Computing Machinery Digital Library, https://doi.org/10.1145/3491102.3501899.
21. Baughan et al., “‘I Don’t Even Remember What I Read,’” 2.
22. Baughan et al., “‘I Don’t Even Remember What I Read,’” 2.
23. Baughan et al., “‘I Don’t Even Remember What I Read,’” 3.
24. Claire Cain Miller, “Everyone Says Social Media Is Bad for Teens. Proving It Is Another Thing,” New York Times, June 17, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/17/upshot/social-media-teen-mental-health.html.
25. Seydi Ahmet Satici et al., “Doomscrolling Scale: Its Association with Personality Traits, Psychological Distress, Social Media Use, and Wellbeing,” Applied Research in Quality of Life 18, 2 (April 2023):833–47, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-022-10110-7.
26. Satici et al., “Doomscrolling Scale.”
27. Sharma, Lee, and Johnson, “The Dark at the End of the Tunnel.”
28. Satici et al., “Doomscrolling Scale.”
29. Kathryn Buchanan et al., “Brief Exposure to Social Media During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Doom-Scrolling Has Negative Emotional Consequences, but Kindness-Scrolling Does Not,” PLoS One 16, 10 (2021), https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0257728.
30. Buchanan et al., “Brief Exposure to Social Media During the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
31. Jessica Klein, “The Darkly Soothing Compulsion of ‘Doomscrolling,’” BBC, March 3, 2021, https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20210226-the-darkly-soothing-compulsion-of-doomscrolling.
32. Klein, “The Darkly Soothing Compulsion of ‘Doomscrolling.’”
33. Rylan Vanacore, “Sensationalism in Media,” Reporter, November 12, 2021, https://reporter.rit.edu/news/sensationalism-media; Vanacore cites Mike Brooks, “How Does Clickbait Work?” Psychology Today, September 6, 2019, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/tech-happy-life/201909/how-does-clickbait-work#.
34. Vanacore, “Sensationalism in Media.”
35. Joshua Scacco and Ashley Muddiman, “The Current State of News Headlines,” Center for Media Engagement, Moody College of Communication, December 1, 2015, https://mediaengagement.org/research/the-current-state-of-news-headlines/.
36. Ken Magnuson, An Invitation to Christian Ethics: Moral Reasoning and Contemporary Issues (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Academic, 2020), 20.
37. Andy Crouch, The Tech-Wise Family: Everyday Steps for Putting Technology in Its Proper Place (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2017), 66.
38. Karen Swallow Prior, On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life through Great Books (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2018), 15.
39. Swallow Prior, On Reading Well, 26.
40. Brian X. Chen, “You’re Doomscrolling Again. Here’s How to Snap Out of It,” New York Times, July 15, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/15/technology/personaltech/youre-doomscrolling-again-heres-how-to-snap-out-of-it.html.
41. Susan Biali Haas, “Working with Your Hands Does Wonders for Your Brain,” Psychology Today, June 21, 2019, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/prescriptions-life/201906/working-your-hands-does-wonders-your-brain.