Doomscrolling: The Shocking Truth
Sep 11, 2026
Put an animal in a cage. Divide the cage with a small fence. Shock the animal when it occupies the left side of the cage.
What will it do?
Jump to the other, non-electrified side of the cage. Just as you would.
What happens when we electrify both sides of the cage?
The animal will eventually succumb to its fate and sit, trembling and depressed, in the inescapable electric field.
Just as you would.
We call this state learned helplessness, and it was famously demonstrated by Martin Seligman and colleagues in the early 1970s.1
Fast forward to 2023.
A coalition of state attorneys general sues Meta, the social media giant behind Facebook and Instagram, alleging that those platforms were deliberately engineered to keep children and adolescents engaged for as long as possible.
According to the complaint,2 Meta’s recommendation algorithms continually select material calculated to hold the user’s attention, while infinite scrolling, autoplay, notifications, visible popularity metrics, and other “gamification” features made disengagement progressively more difficult.
The complaint goes on to say that Meta knew these mechanisms could encourage compulsive use and expose vulnerable young people to content associated with body dissatisfaction, anxiety, depression, sleep disruption, and other harms, but continued using them because engagement generated advertising revenue (emphasis mine).
(By the way, what is it potentially going to cost Meta to settle this case? Between 12.1 and 17.1 billion dollars. If that’s sustainable collateral damage, imagine the sum total of their revenue—the majority from advertising.)
What can a lab experiment from the 1970s possibly have to do with 21st-century social media?
Everything. Different cage, same outcomes.
Now imagine spending 30 percent of your waking hours scrolling through social media.3 Look! It’s a cat on a vacuum cleaner!
The dopamine wave hits like the drop in a Guetta set.
But the next image is not cute. In fact, it is tragic:
Brutality, abuse, oppression; outright hardcore pornography (yes, on some of the most popular platforms - not specifically named here for what should be obvious reasons).
Our hypothetical teen is shocked—metaphorically, in this case—and desperately tries to jump the fence to a safer part of the virtual cage, thumbs flying over the phone.
But the algorithm has seen the pattern.
A second’s hesitation on a meme—not necessarily because of interest, but possibly as a result of revulsion and disbelief—and impossibly powerful machines make a predetermined choice to feed more of the same to that particular user.
Our teen, neurophysiology in an especially fragile state as a function of age, is mentally, emotionally “shocked” no matter how fast they scroll. And scroll they do, for many hours each day.
The result is what you would predict: epistemic collapse and psychological harm.
Is this scenario too Orwellian to be believed (if only we were as psychologically safe as we were in 1984…)?
Current studies are producing alarming, but sadly predictable, results:4, 5, 6
Increased doomscrolling was associated with increased anxiety, depression, and perceived stress—and with decreased resilience and well-being.
I don’t think it’s too far a stretch to compare this scenario to the use of nicotine: purposefully engineer dependence to the very thing that is causing harm.
So our teens—tomorrow’s adults—are losing hope before they ever get into the fight.
The lens through which they could otherwise view a bright and beautiful world is being smudged, perhaps irreparably broken.
On purpose. For profit.
The paradigm is ancient but the pervasiveness is new, enabled by the ubiquitous proliferation of connected Internet devices and a lack of guardrails by adults who should know better.
Perhaps they too have relegated themselves to the land of “What can you do?” In their own morass of helplessness.
Where does this all lead? Estimates vary but the collective consensus is, “Nowhere good.”
People in all times have had some version of “The sky is falling!” with which to contend. But teenagers have never before been beat over the head with Chicken Little for thirty percent of their waking lives.
Will the Meta settlement (possibly extending to other platforms) bring proposed restrictions to bear on younger users in a meaningful way? Hope springs eternal, but I doubt it. Users—of all ages—will find a way around lame technological barriers and the media conglomerates will be able to afford the fines.
So what can be done?
Adults:
Your children’s mental health, their futures are at stake in a real and measurable way. Do your most important job, and parent. Limit your own use, while you’re at it - you’ll be a happier person.
Teens:
You are old enough, and the most sophisticated and “worldly” the world has ever known. Stop making yourself sick. Use the tools that already exist to limit the content you consume. Use the algorithm’s own tricks to your benefit: Spend more time on things that are interesting, enlightening, entertaining.
When you feel depressed, stressed out, hopeless; realize this is what’s doing it. Not your school, your caretakers, your peers, your lack of a Lambo.
Take your power back.
If it hurts to hit your hand with a hammer, be smart enough to put the damn hammer down.
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1. Seligman ME (1972). "Learned helplessness". Annual Review of Medicine. 23 (1): 407–412. doi:10.1146/annurev.me.23.020172.002203. PMID 4566487.
2. https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2026/attorney-general-james-secures-171-billion-and-groundbreaking-reforms-meta
3. https://news.gallup.com/poll/512576/teens-spend-average-hours-social-media-per-day.aspx?utm_source=chatgpt.com
4. https://iprpk.com/ojs/index.php/jpap/article/view/464
5. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1893800/abstract
6. https://doi.org/10.1108/MHDT-10-2025-0068
Read my recent interview with Dr. Mehmet Yildiz here.
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