We’ve all been through it. You’re saturated with headlines and just scroll and scroll, with no real purpose or agenda. But what if we flipped the script? This is where “hopescrolling” comes in.
According to a 2020 survey, over 60 percent of Americans believe social media is hurting their country. However, most Americans don’t realize this problem has been growing and becoming more complex in recent years.
In recent years, the frequency of posts highlighting hate speech, misinformation, violence, crime, and catastrophic events has risen dramatically on social media. This is because such negative content is being reposted and shared more than anything else.
As a result, doomscrolling has become a thing. When doomscrolling, people spend an excessive amount of time reading large quantities of negative news, on the web and social media. Usually, this is done on a phone, hence the “scrolling”.
Doomscrolling can have important consequences. It can end up distorting people’s perception of reality, making them believe that the world is full of negativity and there is nothing positive happening around them. Health experts suggest that doomscrolling can adversely affect the mindset and mental health of individuals, leading to stress, anger, anxiety, and even depression. This makes them consume and post more negative content, creating a negative ecosystem.
However, according to a new study, you can save yourself from doomscrolling and its ill effects by practicing hopescrolling (also called kindness scrolling).
What is hopescrolling?
When a person avoids negative posts on social media and deliberately searches and consumes content that promotes positivity, acts of kindness, happiness, uplifting personal stories, reforms, innovations, art, beautiful places, laughter, etc. This behavior is called hopescrolling — and one researcher wants to make it a thing.
“The idea with hope scrolling or kindness scrolling is to intentionally look at content that is more positive. So, whatever makes you smile,” Kim Penberthy, an expert in psychiatry and neurobehavioral sciences at the University of Virginia, said in an interview.
“As negative content can drive negative emotions like anxiety, positive content through hope-scrolling can drive positive emotions like optimism and even joy, happiness, and relief,” Laura Marciano, a behavioral science researcher at Harvard, added.
However, it is almost impossible to completely ignore negative content. You probably shouldn’t even try to do that. If someone posts something against your favorite celebrity or politician, you may feel a strong urge to check the post and respond. This is normal human nature.
Also, there are days in our lives when we don’t want to see content related to happiness or positivity. One way or another, you’re likely to consume some amount of negative content on social media.
What hopescrolling does is that it prevents the negative perception of reality from overpowering your thoughts and affecting your mental health. It balances your perspective by reminding you that, while negative events may occur, there is also a lot of positivity around you.
“What we know from decades of psychophysiology research is that these perceptions of positive things send out hormones in our body that are going to promote that feeling of connectedness, of safety. They’re good for us. They’re good for our body. Our body is saying, ‘Oh, you can relax here. You’re safe. This is good.’ And when we do that over time, it is more helpful. We feel more positive, we are more relaxed, our stress is reduced, and thus our stress hormones,” Penberthy said.
Switching from doomscrolling to hopescrolling
Hopescrolling sounds easy but it’s not, especially when you’ve been doomscrolling for some time. This is because the algorithms that decide what posts come next on your screen are accustomed to providing you with negative content you can’t resist. We’re more triggered by negative emotions and the algorithms detect that, feeding us more and more of the things that get our angry.
But we can fight it.
Let’s say you enjoy watching the videos of a political leader who gives fierce speeches against his opponents. You may ignore one, two, or five such posts — but what happens when that is your entire feed? It becomes hard for you to ignore such content in the long run. You’ve developed a liking for it, and the algorithms know what keeps you hooked.
So, the first step for you would be to begin seeking and liking content that makes you feel happy and positive. The more you like such content, the more it will appear in your feed. Slowly, it will replace the negative content.
For instance, “I personally love the videos of someone being caught doing something kind and seeing humanity at its best. I have been intentionally seeking more of those out and “liking” them. And it is working. I’m getting fed more of those things,” Penberthy said.
Another challenge is to find what type of positive content suits you specifically. Not everybody feels happy and uplifted by watching the same things. For example, some people have strong liking for inspirational content and success stories, and liking such posts can help them.
However, many people don’t feel joy from watching success stories. If they keep liking them, soon they might get bored or irritated with their feed and return to doomscrolling. So, what you can do instead is search for, watch, and like different types of positive content and see what keeps you interested for longer.
Is it the cat memes, the acts of kindness, travel videos, clips from old TV shows, some cool stories from ZME Science, or something else?
No matter how much negative content appears on your screen, always remember, “You get to decide what you look at. You are in charge of your phone, and you can manipulate the algorithm back,” Keneisha Sinclair-McBride, a psychologist at Boston Children’s Hospital, said.
