Why ‘things to read instead of doomscrolling’ won’t actually fix your doomscrolling
Six months ago, just as the winter of 2025 was creeping in, I noticed that along with the influx of sweater ads, there was a new addition to my Instagram feed: carousel posts that were titled ‘things to read instead of doomscrolling.’ Or some combination thereof; things to watch, do or consume, but crucially, instead of doomscrolling. Screen fatigue has been a point of discussion in both digital and non-digital spaces for a couple of years of now, and those of us who work in culture writing or trends forecasting have been speaking about the ‘anti-brainrot movement,’ the popularity of ‘touching grass’ and the ‘rise of tactile hobbies and hobby clubs’ for a few years before that, too. I, who had spent the past couple of years thinking and writing a book about growing up with the internet in India, agree with both the presence and its actualisation of the desire to become more offline.
In my book, Never Logged Out (published by Bloomsbury), I call this the ‘touching grass fan club’. ‘I believe that the rising anti-internet sentiment brewing in a few corners of the internet—the ‘touching grass fan club’—resonates with Gen Z because we know how it feels to exist offline. After all, we did. A lot of nostalgia that is emanating from these online places is based on the realisation that one day, we logged onto the internet. And then we never logged out. The monumental consequences of that decision are becoming ever clear to us, but for those of us who remember how our brains and lives felt when we logged out, these consequences don’t live on statistical charts, but in our actual memory. We remember what being on the internet used to feel like. An internet that was smaller, safer, and infinitely more intentional. And it doesn’t feel like that anymore,’ I write in my book. Combine this nostalgia with increasing research about the psychosocial effects of a digital life and a rise in ‘curator culture’ online, and you have people making and reading lists of what they could (and should) be doing instead of scrolling (which, funnily, is the very thing they are doing at the moment).
Five months later, ‘things to read instead of doomscrolling’ is more prevalent than ever. I conducted an informal poll on my Instagram Stories and found out that many people in my circle have been seeing more carousels about that and more people making those lists. ‘Things to read/do instead of doomscrolling’ follows a format: a title slide with a colourful background and the headline in a catchy font, and then 8-10 slides with screenshots of various Substack essays, books, movies, YouTube videos. If you comment ‘links,’ the caption says, the person who posted the carousel will send all those essays to your inbox. Convenient, quick and easily bookmarkable. Chances are, you comment. Great for the algorithm, which then boosts that post. You get the links. Maybe you even read a few of them. And then… what? You stop doomscrolling? Or do you doomscroll more, and wait for the next carousel, the next set of links to essays? Do you remember what you read last week? Do you even remember which essays you have in your bookmarks? Or are you just replacing one form of mindless content consumption with another?
To be clear, I think anything that gets people to read more is a good thing. And if it is these carousels, who am I to argue otherwise? My argument is a more foundational, fundamental one: a habit built solely to negatively drive out another will inevitably lead to either relapse or irritation. Think of it this way: the fact that you cannot maintain a steady, healthy gym habit if your sole motivation is that you hate your body. Or that your sexy rebound can never offer you the tools you need to heal from your relationship. If you frame your solution to a problem in a way that still centres the problem, you’ve already lost.
There are three other problems I want to briefly touch upon: algorithmic recommendations, even when framed as ‘anti-doomscrolling’, are still algorithmic recommendations and therefore never unbiased. The essays you find and the carousels that find you are all mechanically reaching you because you have been consumer-profiled a certain way. This isn’t always a bad thing, just something to be aware of, because it may keep you in echo chambers that don’t allow you to discover new writers and ideas. Secondly, a lot of writing these days is ‘engineered’ to go viral—anything that competes in algorithmic markets, by default, wants to win. Which means the recommendations you get may not be worth your time. And thirdly, sometimes the problem really is the damn phone. Scrolling on an essay instead of on a feed may not change your fundamental problems of attention fragmentation and dopamine-seeking; you are just replacing one with another.
So what’s the way forward? Once you genuinely accept that doomscrolling is a habit you want to break, you need to figure out exactly what desire this maladaptive behaviour is fulfilling for you. Do you like the dopamine hit of seeing something funny? Do you scroll through ‘intellectual’ content because you have a desire to be perceived as smart? Do you stalk attractive or successful people your age because you wish you were them? Is social media the one thing that makes you feel connected to friends? Do you genuinely just want to keep your mind occupied, but after a long day of work and commute, have no idea how to?
This exercise will take time, and you’ll need to do the work yourself. Can you redirect your desires elsewhere? If you crave validation, then you don’t need to read essays, you need to enrol in a competitive sport. If you have a shattered attention span, you need to take up gardening, crocheting or play with a baby. If you’re lonely, you need to make new friends or go on a few dates. If you need intellectual stimulation, go to a local trivia night, or start doing the sudoku regularly. Find things that make you forget that scrolling exists.
Ria Chopra is the author of Never Logged Out, a collection of essays about growing up with the Indian internet.