Let’s talk about doomscrolling.

We think it’s a technology problem.

Put the device down… problem solved. Oh no it isn’t.

Here’s what actually happens after a while: the scroll keeps going. In the shower, on a walk, lying in bed staring at the ceiling. Your brain has learned the pattern so well it runs it on autopilot. No feed required.

That’s the part nobody talks about. You can delete the app and still be scrolling. Not through posts, but through takes, reactions, arguments, half-formed opinions. The content is gone but the motion remains.

And that’s when you realise the technology was never really the problem. It was the training ground.

It taught your brain a new default state: constant, low-grade consumption and processing. Something to feel, or do. And once that’s wired in, closing the app is just… closing the app. The habit lives somewhere deeper now.

I lived the experiment last year, as I took six months off social media. Not deliberately, just because I was having a rough time and had nothing to say. I certainly couldn’t cope with the feed either.

I expected to feel rested. Free, even.

Instead, FOMO showed up almost immediately.

Not fear of missing out on fun. Fear of missing context. What’s happening? Am I behind? The feed was gone but the need for it wasn’t. If anything, the absence made it louder.

That’s when it clicked: a break isn’t the same as recalibration. Stepping away from social media while still needing validation, context, exposure… is just abstinence. It’s white-knuckling it. The pull is still there, you’re just not giving in.

Real recalibration is different. It’s getting to a place where you genuinely don’t need to know what everyone else is doing, don’t need the likes to feel like the work matters, don’t need the feed to feel oriented.

That takes longer than six months, apparently. And it probably looks different for everyone.

But for all of us it starts with naming the right problem. It’s not the scroll. It’s what we’ve learned to need from it.