Doomscrolling isn’t all bad, as Nepal shows
Used to describe social media addiction, doomscrolling is also a reality check to jolt people into action
It’s usually in the nature of Indian Uncles (and Aunties) to dismiss Gen Z (born 1997-2012) as self-centred, distractible and addicted to the internet—compulsively doomscrolling through their social media feeds all day, and then complaining of anxiety. News media outlets in India recently stepped in as proxy for similar avuncular moral guardians as Nepal went up in flames. “Gen Z protests against social media ban" became a simplified, catch-all headline trend to describe an event that had its origins in a long-simmering brew of dissatisfaction: a corrupt regime, staggering unemployment, and a bleak future for the country’s youth.
Doomscrolling has a bad rep, and rightly so. It was Oxford English Dictionary’s word of the year for 2020, as our collective brain was being turned into mush by panic and fear induced by the covid-19 pandemic at the time. Scientists researched the phenomenon, concluded that it was a terrible habit, not only for our mental health but also physical well-being (it impacts the brain’s limbic system negatively, especially for those with a history of trauma).
The chief trigger for doomscrolling is bad news, and humankind’s appetite to seek more of it, until it sends us spiralling, putting our flight, fight and freeze reflex into an overdrive. A recent report by Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism points out that 40% of the respondents, surveyed from 50 countries, admit they avoid the news these days because it affects them negatively. While it’s only fair to hold up a shield against psychological damage, is it also possible that doomscrolling can act as a mirror to society, a reality check to jolt you out of your bubble?
To take the example of Nepal’s youth, their glimpse into the excesses of the political elite and their scions, accessed through those very social media platforms they had been cut off from, became a moment of reckoning, a push for change. The agency that the internet gives people in societies with systemic inequality cannot be underestimated.
For one class of young people, doomscrolling ends up being a pathway into a den of toxic capitalism, where self-worth is measured in terms of body type, outfits of the day, or the number of Labubus one owns. For the rest of their peers, whose education has seemingly proved futile in getting them a job (Nepal, for instance, has a high outflow of young people from the country looking for a better life), doomscrolling becomes a fuel for righteous anger, a desire to restore some semblance of balance.
A decade before Nepal, there were the youth of Egypt, assembled on Tahrir Square of Cairo in 2011, demanding the downfall of the corrupt dictator, Hosni Mubarak. It was one of the first popular uprisings to be mobilised through the power of the internet, especially social media platforms like Twitter (before it became X). The internet has come a long way since, acting as a vehicle for social justice movements like Dalit Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter, MeToo, the farmers’ protests in India, and so on.
Sceptics scoff at online social justice warriors—often rightfully so. The misuse of social media as a tool for virtue signalling is widely visible. But it’s also foolhardy to dismiss the internet’s ability to forge meaningful solidarities. There is now a medical term for the overstimulated: popcorn brain. If doomscrolling makes kernels of self-doubt pop in some brains, it can also make other brains sputter with a desire to shake up things.
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