Doomscrolling

finding treasures in the darkness

According to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, doomscroll is an actual word. It is a verb, meaning “to spend excessive time online scrolling through news or other content that makes one feel sad, anxious, angry, etc.” M-W also tells us that the first known use of this word was in 2020. Go figure—the year of doom.

I never paid attention to the actual word until yesterday, when I was reading through the Notes section of Substack and someone (I’m sorry I don’t remember who) commented that reading on Substack did not have the same feel as doomscrolling other social media outlets like Facebook, Instagram, or the app formerly known as Twitter. I agree wholeheartedly with this assessment. Substack is a home for writers and readers. We don’t do ruin-your-attention-span reels and doomscrolling here, and we’d like to keep it that way.

But the doomscrolling comment got me thinking, and naturally I have some thoughts.

Years ago when my older son was unmarried and enlisted in the Air Force, he worked in the intelligence community, doing I-didn’t-know-what at the time. I imagine he could have told me but then he’d have had to kill me. I knew he flew around in airplanes in unsafe parts of the world and that his deployments usually lasted four months. He would usually tell us approximately when he was going overseas, but not when he would be back, and never where he was going. He promised to check in occasionally as he was able, but that was all we knew.

Thanks, Air Force, for all the stress on this mama.

During one of these deployments when there was excessive unrest in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, et al., social media became uglier than I ever imagined it could. Remember, Facebook started out as a social platform for college students. Social, as in, friends making plans and hanging out. Happy socializing.

But with all the worldwide unrest and Al-Qaeda spreading terror, it was the beginning of the era of sharing “news” no matter where it came from and no matter how accurate or inaccurate it was. Common sense went out the window and the collective world developed a trigger finger over the “share” button. The gorier, the better. Everyone wanted to one-up everyone else’s posts of doom. And remember, my son was deployed, working for the US military.

One day while I was scrolling through my Facebook feed, I came across a shared article with a photo of an American serviceman in a large metal cage, surrounded by ISIS men who were burning him alive. I did not stick around to read the article or try to determine whether it was legit or not. I threw my phone across the room and broke down sobbing. That was the end of all social media for me until I knew my son was home safe.

That is where the term doomscroll comes from. “. . . [C]ontent that makes one feel sad, anxious, angry, etc.”

From that day forward my relationship with social media has been different. Where before that experience I scrolled looking for happy news from faraway friends and children at college, I became wary, not trusting anything anyone said. I turned defensive. I detested all the drama.

Listen, I know the world is a dark place, but there is also light and we need to figure out how to find it.

And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the LORD, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.
(Isaiah 45:3)

God said he would give Israel treasures that are found in the darkness, riches hidden in secret places. Yes, there is darkness. But God has hidden treasure there, and I realized long ago that Facebook wasn’t where I was going to find it. I have to look elsewhere.

I gradually made the switch to Instagram, erstwhile home of pretty photos and happy children and puppies and rainbows, all accompanied by thoughtful captions. Then Instagram stories were introduced and we were suddenly privy to every minute of everyone’s day, good, bad, or ugly, in the name of not believing the highlights were all there was to life. It became a marketplace to hawk whatever you were selling. (I am as guilty of this as anyone, although I still take the supplements I was trying to get you to buy back then because they still help me a lot.) Nowadays people are not selling products so much as they are promoting their own brand of look-how-awesome-my-life-is. It’s all just so icky.

I know it’s not all bad and there is a lot we can learn. I follow a few accounts that give me helpful information about gardening, chicken keeping, and healing from trauma. But there is so much garbage to weed through to find the good. Is it worth the search? Is it worth it to me?

So I’ve been considering what it is that keeps me on Facebook and Instagram, the only two social media sites I’ve used with any regularity. On Facebook it’s the chicken group and the local group where I can get recommendations on where to get a truckload of compost for the garden. On Instagram it’s (1) photos of my grandson and (2) life updates from one daughter. I could live without all the rest and have been considering doing it for quite a few months. Why do I hesitate?

Because I needed a tipping point, something to push me over the edge, and yesterday I found myself there.

A few months ago our pastor announced the church would be putting together a trip to Ireland later this year to help our missionaries with a project, and I knew immediately I wanted to go. I love a good mission as much as anyone, and I love traveling to places I’ve never been.

But there’s this little problem of me panicking on flights, and last I looked, there’s no other quick way to get to that part of the world. No worries, I told myself. I can work it all out in therapy before the trip and I’ll be ready to go. E (my therapist) and I are currently working on increasing my bodily-felt sense of safety with in-office and at-home strategies I am learning. I was feeling good about things. I could do this.

Then Facebook happened. You are probably aware of the plane that crashed midair into an Army Blackhawk helicopter just short of the runway at Reagan National Airport last week. Everyone in both aircraft died and bodies are still being recovered from the 35°Potomac River. Families. Children. Figure skaters and coaches. Military members. Pilots and flight attendants. Duck hunters. A young lawyer. A farmer and his wife on the way to visit their daughter in Philadelphia.

I saw the first news story about it and had to stop reading halfway through. It is unimaginable.

Then the idiocy started. Blaming, arguing, Republican-vs-Democrating. Fighting about DEI policy that left the air traffic control tower undermanned.

Sharing. First it was a blurry photo of the crash about to happen. Then video. Then the last words of the pilot. It was like watching the Twin Towers fall all over again, and the effect is the same—trauma. We were never meant to know this much darkness. Why are we so obsessed with sharing the most horrific events?

I am shaken and unable to imagine myself ever setting foot on an airplane again. All my felt sense of safety has plunged into the river with 67 people who just wanted to get home that night.

We hear about tragedies on the regular, so why has this one been so difficult for me to handle? Is it because I have felt terror on a plane so I think I can relate?

Today, knowing I had a publication deadline of 5 am tomorrow, I knew I needed to go for a walk. Why beat my head against a keyboard when I could get outside on a warm, sunny day in early February? And somehow the act of walking in nature always helps me make sense of the confused mess inside my head.

While I was walking and thinking about all of this, I had the thought that I am not afraid of being dead. Not at all. I know where I am going and who I will be with for eternity. It will be glorious and that’s the easy part. I just don’t want the process of dying to hurt, as I imagine it must have for the people on that plane and helicopter. That’s what scares me and keeps the intrusive thoughts coming.

And while I don’t want to live with blinders on, I also don’t want to constantly be bombarded with all the darkness the world holds. I want to live in reality, but I know enough to shield my mind and heart from things that are too much for me. Your capacity may vary from mine, but if I am learning one thing in therapy, it’s to assess my ability to cope and take steps to manage my own self, my own life in a way that keeps me inside my window of tolerance, while working—very gradually—to increase that window. Scrolling social media does the exact opposite of this.

So have I left Facebook and Instagram completely? Not yet. But I have noticed, without giving it much effort at all, that in the last week I’ve spent substantially less time there. I find myself opening one app or the other, looking at two or three posts, and closing it. I’ve been reading the Notes on Substack more and being uplifted and encouraged instead of leaving with more anxiety I surely don’t need. Life is hard enough without pouring the garbage into my own mind.

Then I go sit and talk to the chickens or chat with the cows while I fill their water tank.

I go for a walk and stop to notice the old railroad bed whose demise made way for a state park where you can walk peacefully for 32 miles through the woods.

I breathe in the soft, warm air that is a respite from the usual cold, biting wind of February. I turn my face to the sun and notice (as my therapist constantly reminds me to), with all of my senses, what it feels like to be safe. This tells my body, which struggles to know how that feels, that safety is possible. It can happen. See? It’s happening right now.

I don’t know if I will ever board a flight again, but I know I will never stop trying to change what my body thinks about it. So I pay attention to the things around me that feel safe. And I put an end to doomscrolling.