If you've typed "why do young people doomscroll" into a search bar at 1 a.m., you have a lot of company. In a new survey of more than 1,400 people aged 13 to 24 by Hopelab and Data for Progress, 88% said they doomscroll, and lead researcher Mike Parent told Spectrum News that was far more than his team expected. The main reason is plain. Social media is now where young people get their news, so scrolling feels like keeping up.
The cost shows up in bed. Asked how much sleep they lose to doomscrolling, the most common answer was the top option on the list, "more than an hour", which the researchers hadn't expected many people to pick. Below is what the survey found, why the habit sticks, whether it does any good, and how to keep the informed part without giving up the sleep.
What the Hopelab survey found about Gen Z doomscrolling
The figures here come from news coverage of the survey, and all of them are self-reported. That means they tell you what young people say about their habits, which is useful, though people are famously bad at estimating their own screen time.
Among those who doomscroll, 32% do it daily or several times a day, according to SheKnows. So for roughly a third of doomscrollers this is a routine, something that happens most days without much of a decision behind it.
The sleep answer deserves a small caveat. "More than an hour" was open-ended, so it lumps together someone losing 70 minutes with someone losing three hours. Even so, it being the most popular choice is striking.
Why do young people doomscroll? Three reasons that hold up
Social media replaced the evening news
Parent's explanation is that young people feel informed this way. They watch traditional news less than older generations did and get most of their news from social media (Spectrum News). If your news arrives in a feed, then doomscrolling to stay informed is just what reading the news looks like.
I've written before about how many people now get news from TikTok. The problem with a feed as a news source is that it has no last page. A newspaper tells you when you're done. A feed never does.
Feeds put the most eye-catching posts first
A Sungkyunkwan University team tracked people's eyes as they looked at a fake social media feed. Misleading images that were more brightly coloured than the posts around them got looked at sooner (Phys.org). It was a lab setup, so it doesn't show what happens on your own phone, but it fits a familiar pattern: the loudest post wins the first glance, true or not.
Self-control and FOMO matter more than personality
A Semmelweis University study of students aged 18 to 35 linked problematic phone use to low self-control and fear of missing out, and not to neuroticism alone (ScienceDaily). In other words, being an anxious person doesn't explain it by itself. I covered the FOMO side in more detail in does FOMO cause phone addiction.
Is doomscrolling ever good? The 60% who felt inspired to act
About 60% of respondents said the negative content they saw made them feel inspired to act (Spectrum News). That's a real finding and worth taking seriously. Bad news can wake people up, and plenty of young people first heard about a cause they now care about through a feed.
The limit is that the figure describes a feeling. From the coverage, the survey tells us how many people felt moved, and nothing about how many then donated, volunteered or showed up somewhere. Inspiration at 1 a.m. is also hard to act on, because there's nothing to do at that hour except keep scrolling.
So a fair answer to "is doomscrolling ever good" is: the urge to know what's happening is good, and sometimes the feed delivers it. The endless format around that urge is what costs you.
What doomscrolling costs: sleep, attention and memory
Losing sleep to doomscrolling is the cost the Hopelab survey caught most clearly. The other two come from separate studies, and they're weaker or narrower than headlines tend to suggest.
In that study, people doing a Stroop task (a standard attention test) slowed down after notifications. How often they interacted with their phone, measured by notifications and checks, predicted the slowdown better than total screen time. It's a short-lived effect in a lab, and nobody should read it as permanent damage. It does suggest the number of interruptions matters more than the number of hours.
The Semmelweis study found that about a third of students were "heavy process" users, spending 4 to 5 or more hours a day mostly consuming content instead of talking to people. They scored worse than expected for their age on memory and attention tests, reported poorer sleep and found it harder to resist checking (ScienceDaily). The authors are clear that this doesn't prove scrolling causes those problems. Total phone time, meanwhile, was more closely linked to physical effects like "text neck".
Seven in ten people your age think they use their phone too much
The same Pew Research Center survey found 45% of US adults tried to cut back in the past year, while 46% didn't. If you feel stuck, that's the normal experience. Feeds are designed to hold attention, so this is a design problem as well as a self-control one, and there's no reason to treat it as a personal failing.
How to stop doomscrolling as a student without missing the news
The goal here is to do the information job better, so you can stay informed and still sleep. Each step is tied to one of the findings above.
- 01Cut notifications first
Turn off news and social alerts and keep messages from people, since how often you check predicted the attention cost better than total hours.
- 02Read the news at set times
Pick one or two slots a day and a source that ends, like a daily newsletter or a news site's front page, instead of an open feed.
- 03Keep the chats, close the content
The Semmelweis students who struggled most were consuming content rather than talking to people, so messaging friends is the part worth keeping.
- 04Protect the hour before sleep
The Semmelweis team recommends avoiding the phone before bed, and the Hopelab sleep answers show why that hour is the one most at risk.
- 05Pause on the bright images
Vivid posts get looked at first whether or not they're true, so give a striking picture a second look before believing or sharing it.
- 88% of 13- to 24-year-olds in the Hopelab survey said they doomscroll, and 32% of them do it daily or more.
- The most common sleep answer was losing more than an hour, though this is self-reported.
- Young people doomscroll largely because social media is where they get their news.
- About 60% felt inspired to act, which shows a feeling, and the survey coverage doesn't say how many followed through.
- Fewer notifications, fixed news times and a phone-free hour before bed keep the useful part.
Wanting to know what's going on in the world is a good instinct. Acting on one piece of news does more for you, and for the cause, than reading the fortieth post about it at midnight.
Questions people ask
Why do young people doomscroll so much?
Many get most of their news from social media, so scrolling feels like staying informed. Research also links heavy phone use to low self-control and fear of missing out, and feeds tend to put eye-catching posts first.
How common is doomscrolling among Gen Z?
In a Hopelab and Data for Progress survey of more than 1,400 people aged 13 to 24, 88% said they doomscroll. Of those, 32% do it daily or several times a day.
How much sleep do people lose to doomscrolling?
In the Hopelab survey, the most common answer was "more than an hour", the highest option offered. The figure is self-reported and open-ended, so it covers a wide range.
Is doomscrolling ever good for you?
About 60% of young people surveyed said negative content made them feel inspired to act. That's a feeling, though, and the sleep and attention costs are real, so it works better to get news from a source that ends and turn inspiration into one concrete action.
How do I stop doomscrolling without missing the news?
Turn off news and social alerts, read the news at one or two set times a day from a source with an end, and keep your phone out of the hour before bed. Keep messaging friends, since chatting was not the pattern linked to problems.
Sources
- Hidden doom of doomscrolling includes potentially lasting mental health effects Spectrum News · 2026-10-27
- Surprise! Doomscrolling Leads Gen Z to Take Positive Action. But Here's the Problem SheKnows
- About half of Americans say they spend too much time on their smartphone Pew Research Center · 2026-09-01
- Scientists find a hidden problem with endless smartphone scrolling ScienceDaily (Semmelweis University) · 2026-10-12
- Attention hijacked: How social media notifications disrupt cognitive processing Computers in Human Behavior · 2026-06
- How eye-catching social media feeds steer attention toward misinformation Phys.org · 2026-10-13