The cognitive damage of doomscrolling is measurable, psychology says, and it can look like anxiety - Silicon Canals

"A recent Washington Post piece pulled together what a lot of us have been describing for years: the "brain rot" feeling isn't just slang. Researchers are linking heavy social media use and rapid-fire content to measurable changes in attention and memory, and the way it shows up day-to-day can look a lot like anxiety."

"Short-form feeds train your brain to expect a steady drip of novelty. Each swipe is a tiny reset. Your attention never has to tolerate boredom, or effort, or the slow warm-up it takes to focus deeply. Over time, sustained attention starts to feel uncomfortable, even when nothing is wrong."

"You sit down to read something longer and feel almost itchy. You open a tab, then another tab, then you forget why you opened the first tab. You try to listen to someone talk and you keep mentally reaching for your phone. You walk into a room and your brain does that blank "what was I doing?" thing more often than it used to."

Doomscrolling creates both emotional and cognitive impacts that extend beyond mood changes. Short-form social media feeds train the brain to expect constant novelty, making sustained attention feel uncomfortable. This training effect produces observable symptoms: difficulty reading longer content, inability to focus during conversations, and frequent memory lapses. These changes are not moral failures but neurological adaptations to platforms designed for rapid engagement. The physical sensations accompanying doomscrolling—tight jaw, buzzy chest, anxiety—reflect real nervous system responses triggered by content consumption patterns rather than actual life events.

Read at Silicon Canals