Doomscrolling is what you're doing when you keep checking online news, especially on social feeds, expecting it to be bad and finding it hard to stop. That's close to the Dictionary.com definition, which describes the habit as a self-perpetuating cycle.
The word is newer than it feels. Here's how it was built and how it got into the dictionaries.
Doom plus scrolling
Wikipedia says the word combines doom with scrolling, echoing the older web habit people called surfing. Dictionary.com breaks it down as doomscroll plus the suffix -ing.
Two sources, two first dates
This is where it gets messy. Dictionary.com says the term was first recorded in 2016. Wikipedia says the earliest documented use was a 2018 tweet, and that Ashik Siddique is commonly credited with coining it.
I can't settle which is right, so I'd treat 2016 to 2018 as the window and not pin the word on one person with certainty. Wikipedia adds that it spread during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Not every scroll is a doomscroll
The word is specific: it's about news, and about expecting it to be bad. Social feeds are also where most internet memes spread now, according to Wikipedia, and scrolling through those isn't doomscrolling. Neither is reading a forum without posting, which has its own, much older name: lurking goes back to the bulletin boards of the 1980s.
What people ask about doomscrolling
What does doomscrolling mean?
Obsessively checking online news, expecting it to be bad, in a cycle that is hard to break, per Dictionary.com.
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Who coined doomscrolling?
The origin is unclear; Wikipedia says a 2018 tweet is the earliest known use and Ashik Siddique is commonly cited.
Is doomscrolling in the dictionary?
Yes, Merriam-Webster recognised it in September 2023 per Wikipedia, and Dictionary.com has an entry.
Is it a real word now?
Yes. Dictionaries have caught up with it, so I'd use it without quotation marks. Keep it for the bad-news kind of scrolling, though, because that's what gives it its punch.
Doomscrolling's dictionary timeline
- 2016: the first record of the term, according to Dictionary.com.
- 2018: the earliest documented use Wikipedia gives, a tweet.
- August 2020: Dictionary.com's top monthly trend.
- 2020: the Macquarie Dictionary's Committee's Choice Word of the Year.
- September 2023: recognised by Merriam-Webster as an official word after three years on its watching list, per Wikipedia.
