Doomscrolling, attention and what to build instead

Your attention is the most valuable thing you own, and a lot of the internet is built to take it. You cannot fix the world by staring at everything that is wrong with it. You can change what you point your attention at, and then do something with it.

I want to write this without a lecture and without pretending the bad news is not real. There is a lot happening in the world that is awful, and I am not telling you to look away from it forever. I am telling you that a life spent mostly looking at it is a life spent mostly not building anything, and that you have more say over that than the feed wants you to think.

What the research says about heavy exposure

Two pieces of evidence changed how I think about this.

The first is a study of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Researchers surveyed thousands of people in Boston, New York and across the United States in the two weeks after the attack, and compared people who had been directly exposed with those who had only watched the coverage. After adjusting for mental health before the event, six or more hours a day of bombing-related media exposure in the first week was associated with higher acute stress than direct exposure to the bombing itself. The authors concluded that repeated engagement with trauma coverage for hours a day may prolong acute stress, and that mass media can spread the effects of a community trauma well beyond the people directly affected. You can read the abstract of Holman, Garfin and Silver (2014).

I want to be careful with it. It is a survey and it shows association, not proof of cause, and it studied one kind of extreme event. But it fits what many of us feel: a steady drip of alarming content is not neutral.

The second is what people say about the news itself. The Reuters Institute's Digital News Report 2025 found that about 40% of people across countries say they sometimes or often avoid the news, up from 29% in 2017. The reasons people gave were mostly that the news lowers their mood (39%), that they feel overwhelmed (31%), that there is too much conflict (30%), and that they feel powerless to do anything about it (20%).

That last reason is the one I keep coming back to. Feeling powerless is what happens when you consume a great deal of information about problems you cannot act on.

Why an ADHD mind is an easy target

I did not find good research measuring doomscrolling in ADHD specifically, so I will not give you numbers. What I can describe is the pattern that many people with ADHD, myself included, recognise.

• The feed is novelty on tap. An ADHD brain is drawn to new, intense, emotionally loaded input, and a feed produces it endlessly.
• Outrage is a strong signal. Anger and fear are attention-grabbing feelings, and they feel like being awake and engaged.
• Starting is hard, so scrolling wins. When a task feels heavy, the scroll is the easiest possible thing to do, and the difficulty is the same one I describe in the 15-second reset for when you cannot start.
• Stopping is also hard. There is no natural end to an infinite feed, and time blindness makes an hour disappear. My post on time blindness tools has some ways to add an end.

None of this is a character flaw. It is a mismatch between how a fast mind works and how the product is designed.

The trap in "just ignore it"

I do not think the answer is to switch off entirely. There are things you need to know, and being informed is part of being a decent neighbour and citizen. The aim is a different balance, and one you choose. A few principles I use:

1. Ask whether you can act on it. If there is a step you could take, take it. If there is not, decide how much of your day it deserves.
2. Read once, not on a loop. One good article on a subject tells you more than fifty alerts.
3. Prefer slow sources to fast ones. Longer, checked reporting is usually less inflammatory than the quick clips.
4. Check before you share. Anything that makes you furious is exactly the content most likely to be wrong or missing context. I cover a two-minute habit for this in truth is a habit.

Attention is not a spell

I want to say this clearly, because it is easy to hear "shift your focus to what matters" as "think positively and things will improve". I do not believe that. Attention on its own changes nothing in the outside world. What it does is decide what you spend your hours and energy on. If those hours go toward building a garden, learning a skill, helping a neighbour, starting a small project or organising something in your area, then the outside world does change, in small and real ways, and the people around you change with it.

That is the whole argument. It is not that good thoughts create good outcomes. It is that a person who has stopped drowning in things they cannot influence has time and energy left for things they can.

What to look at instead

Here are some things that are real, checkable and hopeful. They are not a replacement for facing hard problems. They are a counterweight.

• Solar is now the cheapest electricity: the numbers, and their limits.
• Plug-in solar is legal in the UK: a practical change to your own home.
• Cities that already work differently.
• Building with earth.

Spending a few minutes a day on things like these does not make the bad news go away. It reminds you that people are also building things.

Getting outside helps too

I keep suggesting this because it works for many people, and it is cheap. A 2024 systematic review and meta-analysis found that access to gardens and more time in green spaces were associated with lower odds of depression and anxiety and lower stress, although the authors rated the overall quality of evidence as very low, so please read it as a hint. Even so, a twenty-minute walk costs nothing and gives your attention somewhere different to rest.

A seven-day experiment

Do this for a week, and see how you feel. It is an experiment, not a rule.

1. Day 1. Check your screen time. Do not judge it. Write the number down.
2. Day 2. Mute or unfollow the three accounts that leave you angriest.
3. Day 3. Pick one time of day for news, say twenty minutes, and stick to it.
4. Day 4. Go outside for twenty minutes without your phone.
5. Day 5. Choose one small thing to build or grow, and do the first five minutes of it.
6. Day 6. Tell one person about it.
7. Day 7. Look at your screen time again, and notice how you feel.

If you want company for the week, the ADHD MindFlow community is a good place to share what you are building instead. And if your mind is racing when you try to switch off, a few minutes with one of the listening sessions can help you come down before you start.

A personal view, with sources linked. This is not medical advice, and it is not a substitute for support if you are struggling. Read the studies for yourself, and keep their limits in mind.