It’s 2 a.m., and you feel your eyes burn after you promised you’d check one last thing two hours ago. But here you are trapped in an endless scroll of funny reels on Instagram. Well, that’s a habit that many of us are guilty of, yet it’s hard to break. With that, here are the 7 alarming ways that this behavior is rewiring something in your brain in a bad way.
7. Your Stress Hormones Are Chronically Elevated
Too much time spent on doomscrolling actually increases the levels of your stress hormones. This leads to mental and physical fatigue! Doomscrolling is linked to high levels of stress hormones like cortisol. With this, it impairs your memory and cognition through structural changes in the hippocampus, where our experiences are turned into organized mental frameworks.
6. You’re Creating a Trauma Response Without Experiencing Trauma
One of doomscrolling’s overlooked impacts is shown through trauma, even in users who never experienced distressing events. They see themselves resembling post-traumatic stress disorder through emotional numbness or anger issues. Neuroimaging actually reveals the identical activation patterns of PTSD, which involve the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex regions.
5. You’re Developing “Popcorn Brain”
Endless doomscrolling actually gives us the “popcorn brain” as Dr. Aditi Nreukar calls it. It’s a phenomenon described to us as feeling your brain popping like popcorn because you’re overstimulated online. This overstimulation actually makes it hard to engage with the world you’re living in, as it moves at a much slower pace compared to the fast delivery brought by our devices.
4. Your White Matter Integrity Is Compromised
Yup, it’s been found that you lost integrity to your brain’s white matter, which connects the different brain regions. This white matter connects your lobes within each hemisphere, and it links between the right and left, along with paths between higher cognitive and lower emotional to the survival centers. Interrupted connections slow down the signal or short-circuit it, which leads to communication breakdowns in your nervous system.
3. Your Amygdala Is Stuck in Overdrive
Doomscrolling arises in the amygdala, which is the brain’s alarm system that drives the fight-or-flight response to danger. When you encounter something alarming, the emotional center of your brain revs up, and the amygdala sends stress signals. However, repeated procedure brought by doomscrolling keeps your system switched on. Over time, this activation disrupts the stress response and your brain’s reward system.
2. Your Prefrontal Cortex Is Losing Control
When your amygdala becomes hyperaroused, your prefrontal cortex’s dominance decreases. It’s a part of decision-making and impulse control. Excessive information processes your brain’s working memory, which loads from charged and conflicting information. This leads to cognitive fatigue, impaired focus, and reduced capacity to manage your tasks effectively. Eventually, it will make it harder for you to manage your emotions and make rational decisions.
1. You’re Creating a Dopamine Addiction Loop
Yup, doomscrolling activates the release of dopamine in the brain and other addictive behaviors. But TJ Power explains that humans have historically accessed dopamine about three or four times a day when finding their needs. Now, we experience 500 dopamine increases daily in every swipe. What could go wrong? Well, it leaves you craving for more without doing the action. It creates a feedback loop where you seek out the negative and feel anxious, but are rewarded when you’re supplied.