Doomscrolling Test

Doomscrolling entered everyday language in 2020, when lockdowns and rolling crises left millions of people glued to their feeds long past the point of learning anything useful. Psychologists define it as a media habit in which social media users persistently attend to negative information about crises, disasters, and tragedies - continuing to scroll even as the content makes them feel worse rather than better informed. Unlike ordinary news reading, doomscrolling is defined less by what people read than by the way the reading refuses to end.

This test is based on the Doomscrolling Scale, developed by Bhakti Sharma, Susanna Lee, and Benjamin Johnson at the University of Florida and published in Technology, Mind, and Behavior in 2022. The original instrument asks respondents to rate statements about their newsfeed habits and was validated across several samples of social media users, where it behaved as a single coherent tendency that some people show far more strongly than others. The present test consists of original items written to measure the same tendency and reports it across three components.

Compulsion captures the urge-driven quality of the habit: reflexively refreshing feeds, checking for alarming headlines without deciding to, and finding it hard to stop once a grim story has taken hold. Negativity Pull captures the selective appetite for bad news - the way frightening material grabs and holds attention more strongly than positive or neutral stories, and the suspicion that one's own clicks have trained the algorithm to serve ever darker content. Lost Time captures the distortion that doomscrolling works on the clock: sessions that stretch far past their intended end, evenings that disappear into one grim story after another, and planned activities that quietly give way to the feed.

Research on doomscrolling links the habit to higher anxiety and psychological distress, a stronger fear of missing out, more problematic social media use, and lower psychological well-being. Studies following the original publication have connected doomscrolling to personality traits such as neuroticism, and to poorer sleep and lower life satisfaction. Researchers also note that algorithmically ranked newsfeeds can reinforce the loop: negative content earns engagement, and engagement teaches the feed to supply more of the same. At the same time, attending to bad news is not irrational in itself - monitoring threats is a normal and ancient human tendency, and doomscrolling is best understood as that tendency running unchecked on an infinite feed.

The comparison markers shown in your results, including the typical adult reference of around 31%, are estimates. They were derived by rescaling published sample averages from the doomscrolling literature onto this test's 0-100 format and are provided for orientation only; they are not validated population percentiles for this exact set of questions. Published samples suggest most adults sit in the low-to-moderate range, with a smaller group scoring markedly higher.

This test is intended for educational and entertainment purposes only. It is not a diagnostic instrument, and a high score is not evidence of a mental health condition. The test is not affiliated with Bhakti Sharma, Susanna Lee, Benjamin Johnson, the University of Florida, or the journal Technology, Mind, and Behavior. If your news habits are causing you significant distress or interfering with your daily life, consider discussing them with a qualified mental health professional.

References

• Sharma, B., Lee, S. S., & Johnson, B. K. (2022). The dark at the end of the tunnel: Doomscrolling on social media newsfeeds. Technology, Mind, and Behavior, 3(1).
• Satici, S. A., Gocet Tekin, E., Deniz, M. E., & Satici, B. (2023). Doomscrolling Scale: Its association with personality traits, psychological distress, social media use, and wellbeing. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 18(2), 833-847.