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Mental health · 2 min read

What Doomscrolling Does to Your Head, According to the Research

By Max Ward, co-founder of DisConnect · · Updated

A woman lying in bed surrounded by her devices

You already know the feeling. You open one app to check one thing, and 40 minutes later you're tense, a little hopeless, and it's somehow past midnight. Researchers have a name for it, doomscrolling, and over the last few years they've been measuring what it does.

The reviews all point the same way

A 2026 systematic review of young adults found doomscrolling consistently associated with depression, anxiety, distress and disturbed sleep (Research Square, 2026). A separate scoping review in Mental Health and Digital Technologies linked it to psychological distress and pointed to two mechanisms: rumination, and a growing intolerance of uncertainty (Emerald).

In plain English: the feed trains you to keep checking because something might have changed, and the checking makes you more anxious about what might have changed.

It changes how you see people, too

A 2024 cross-cultural study of people in Iran and the US found doomscrolling drives existential anxiety and a darker view of human nature (Computers in Human Behavior Reports, 2024). Harvard Health describes habitual doomscrolling as a measurable risk factor for distress, not a harmless habit (Harvard Health Publishing), and Medical News Today lists physical effects like headaches, tension and poor sleep (Medical News Today).

Gen Z isn't guessing

Three in four Gen Z blame social media for their mental health decline (New York Post, 2024). A 2025 review in Frontiers in Psychiatry links excessive smartphone use with loneliness, anxiety and depression (Frontiers in Psychiatry, 2025). And FOMO, the fear something is happening without you, is a big part of what keeps people compulsively checking (HelpGuide).

The part that matters: cutting back works

This isn't only correlation. In a 2025 randomized controlled trial published in BMC Medicine, people who cut their smartphone screen time to two hours a day or less for three weeks saw improvements in depressive symptoms, stress, sleep quality and overall wellbeing, with small-to-medium effect sizes (BMC Medicine, 2025).

Three weeks. Two hours a day. Measurable change.

Why "just use it less" doesn't stick

Every screen time limit on your phone comes with a button to ignore it. When you're tired and anxious at 11pm, that button wins. The research says cutting back helps. It doesn't say cutting back is easy when the off switch lives inside the thing you're trying to stop using.

That's why we built DisConnect around a physical card. Once you tap to block, there's no "15 more minutes" to press. The only way back in is the card.

No card, no feed. The DisConnect Card puts a physical barrier between you and the apps you pick. Tap to block. No timer, no "ignore" button. Tap again to get back in. Get the card.

Sources

Who wrote this

Max Ward co-founded Before The Internet, the Toronto company behind phone-free nights across North America, featured in The Globe and Mail and on CBC Radio. DisConnect is the same idea: a physical barrier, in your pocket.

We make a screen time app, so yes, we have a horse in this race. Competitor prices and features were checked against their own listings on the date above. Spot something out of date? Tell us.

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As seen in

  • The Globe and Mail
  • CBC
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