How Doomscrolling Affects Workplace Productivity | Subject Matter Expert Dr. Ian Hughes

Members of the media are encouraged to use these expert videos in their coverage, in their entirety or edited as needed. To request an interview with the researcher or obtain a copy of a video, email tamunews@tamu.edu. Doomscrolling, the habit of obsessively scrolling through negative news on social media — is becoming increasingly common, particularly among young adults. In this video, psychology professor Dr. Ian Hughes of Texas A&M University, discusses his research that confirmed doomscrolling at work leads to lower employee engagement. After doomscrolling at work, people tend to remain preoccupied with the negative events that they encountered, Hughes said. “And so, it's something that people do oftentimes as a way of soothing their anxiety. And so during, you know, very uncertain, rapidly unfolding social situations, whether it's a pandemic or a war or some sort of armed conflict, a public safety threat, something like that, we see people turn to social media and really refresh their feeds constantly to stay informed and up to date on how these situations are unfolding and how these situations might impact themselves in their communities.” Doomscrolling isn’t going away, but rather than banning it at work, Hughes suggests limiting it to a specific place. “We don't recommend that managers just tell people to not use their phones. But what we do recommend in the short term, as we uncover more information about this behavior and how exactly to sort of stop it, or at the very least mitigate its effects, is try and contain that behavior to one, one location in your life, whether it's at your house, whether it's at a place after work, maybe at a lounge or a coffee shop or a bar, someplace where you allow yourself to doomscroll and take in some of this negative information. Because it is, it is important to stay informed. What is also important, though, is that you don't let that information-seeking occupy every moment of your life.” Future research will explore whether certain topics — like politics or health — are more harmful than others. “But generally, what we do see is that the, when people doomscroll, they more often than not report doomscrolling about various sort of sociopolitical issues, and so disentangling whether or not there are differences in the effects that we're seeing based upon what those issues are, is perhaps a fruitful first step in, sort of, getting a better idea for how this behavior works.”