The Problem With "10 things to read instead of doomscrolling"

When Gathering Knowledge Becomes the New Doomscroll

Off-line is the new cool, and most people promise themselves that they will get off their phones more. Some set reminders to wake them up from the depths of their digital sleepwalking (or sleepswiping!), some find new hobbies to keep themselves busy, and some find new consuming habits. This is where the “10 articles and media I consumed instead of doomscrolling” and came from. It usually encompasses Substack posts, articles, Youtube videos (long form content), movies, books, and essays. While I totally agree that these forms of content are better than consuming copious amounts of useless, AI generated, short form videos all day long; I argue that this is just another form of consumption just for the sake of consumption but it seems better. That is to say, the pursuit of knowledge is now a trend, because it is better than just scrolling. Yet, the reality is that if learning is not done mindfully, with the right means, and for the right reasons, it is only a reaction rather than a firm action; it becomes just another form of consumption that is more performative, and knowledge becomes commodified.

Background

According to the Oxford dictionary, ‘doomscrolling’ is an informal term that refers to “the action of continually scrolling through and reading depressing content”. The term gained popularity after the rise of short form content in social media spaces. The cause of its creation is usually attributed to surge of widespread misleading information, conspiracy theories, and false reports during COVID-19 pandemic. Doomscrolling can occur even when it is not intended because of the nature of engagement on social media platforms. Algorithms are designed to prioritize emotionally charged content, pushing users toward an endless stream of alarming news, commentary, and speculation. This phenomenon has been linked to increased anxiety, reduced attention span, and a distorted perception of reality. For many, doomscrolling becomes not simply a habit but a coping mechanism; an attempt to regain control in moments of uncertainty by seeking more information, even if that information intensifies stress.

I/ A proposed scientific explanation

1- Post doomscrolling guilt and frustration

In his article "Toxic Positivity and Epistemic Injustice" (2025), Shené Jheanne de Rijk explains this phenomenon as “people being positive and optimistic to a degree that is unreasonable in a given situation, and as such makes others feel as if their own (less than positive) feelings are invalid or in some way wrong”. The study also showcases the features of toxic positivity, its effects, and the injustices induced by it. The author here exemplifies on the topic with the emotion of grief; Joe’s grandmother died and he felt really sad. to comfort him, his friend told him that she’s [his grandmother] in a better place now. while Joe is aware of his friend’s positive intention, he still felt sad but now even felt bad for having such emotion. From this example, it is understandable how toxic positivity denies the negative emotions to people and forces them to always be positive.

take another example, that is; social media and consumption, and particularly the guilt or frustration we feel after doomscrolling. A person doomscrolls for the dopamine rush they get out of it, to avoid the ‘FOMO’ (fear of missing out) they feel if they do not get to understand the latest memes, and to distract themselves from daily anxieties; then after a few (or many) scrolls, they encounter a “10 things to do instead of doomscrolling” post. Suddenly they wake up. this very well edited, visually beautiful post gives the impression that “this person is more cooler because they’re learning things while I am just injecting brain rot, I need to be better.” This is guilt, and it’s a negative emotion and simply seeing that post is a form of denying yourself the feeling. That is toxic positivity, it forces you to instantly and constantly move on and improve. The inner narrative instantly becomes “ I should learn more, improve more. I know I’m smart but I need to be smarter.” Learning shifts from genuine curiosity to social approval; it becomes a need to broadcast intellectual virtue, which then encourages shallow excessive consumption of information.

Eventually and very naturally, this becomes another problem: information overload. There’s a fallacy (if i may name it that) today in the digital age, and it is the way consumers of short form content, now consume long form content and written literature the same way. Consuming one Reel is easy, it’s fast, practical, often comes in a very simple language, and mostly does not contain philosophical depths. Consuming 100 Reels of the same nature is also easy (although you have to flip to your other side of the bed because this hand is tired). However, An essay is not the same. An article is not the same. One can watch +100 Reels a day but cannot read even 50 articles or essays (one technically can but the idea is that she/he will retain nothing). This fallacy gives the impression to the consumers that they can read as much as they watch; but that does not pay respect to the essays and articles they read, nor does it to their cognitive faculties.

2- From emotional influence to mental saturation

In Cognitive Load Theory (2011) John Sweller, explains the difference between biologically primary and secondary knowledge. He says that we are born with an inherent motive to learn to listen and speak and it happens without an official educational system, so that is ‘biologically primary knowledge’. However, “without schools, most people will not learn to read and write.” This means that reading and writing is a ‘secondary knowledge’ “and so learning reading and writing is likely to require considerable conscious effort over long periods of time” (41). In simple words, the easiest form of learning is listening (the way you listen to what is being said in a Reel or Tiktok) but it takes more time and effort to read and write; therefore, trying to read or white essays and articles as fast and efficient as reels causes cognitive dysfunction. It lowers attention, because of trying to understand a large amount of DIFFERENT information all at once.

The study goes on to explain the categories of cognitive load, one of which is ‘Intrinsic Cognitive Load’. This category concerns itself with the complexity of the knowledge that is being acquired. The author elucidates with this example: students who have to learn chemistry symbols. Although there’s numerous symbols and the task is difficult, the working memory is not overwhelmed by this task if the student learns one symbol in separation from the others. If the student attempts to learn them all together though it will cause a high load of the working memory (58). This causes slower understanding, more mistakes, and weaker long-term retention. When we relate this to reading and understanding articles and books heavy with ideologies, we are left with one conclusion: if we want to truly retain and remember and be able to use the knowledge we learn, we have to consume less.

Because intrinsic cognitive load refers to the intrinsic complexity of the information being processed, it cannot be altered other than by altering what is learned or the levels of expertise of the learners. Once knowledge that is to be learned and what the learner already knows are determined, intrinsic cognitive load is fixed.(57)

To fix memory overload, sweller proposes to balance the ratios of what we already know and of what we are about to know. That is to say, one has to EITHER learn things in singularity, learn things one by one over enough periods of time. Sit enough with that book, article, topic…etc, explore it to its ends. Take all the time one needs to fully extensively and intensively learn, read or study something. For instance allowing oneself only one article a week and study it thoroughly. OR Match the levels of what one has to learn to the levels of one’s expertise in the topic. Curate very carefully what to learn, be very selective about the forms and mediums to learn from, even if one reads many things, it is not loading her/his memory because it is not complex content. If scientific articles are still too challenging for one’s understanding, she/he could always find short essays that are not as heavy in ideas, then when short essays feel underwhelming, it is time to scale up. This ensures better understanding and long term retention of information.

II/ A philosophical deep dive

1- Aristotle’s concept of Akrasia or Incontinence and the philosophy behind doomscrolling

In book VI of Necromachean Ethics, Aristotle explains how vice destroys the cause of action. He calls this concept Akrasia or Incontinence. Simply put, it is when the true cause of an action is still somewhere in a person (they know about it inside of them) but it becomes ineffective and veiled by immediate feelings. A person knows the good thing to do, yet pleasure and desire or fear and pain (vice) blurs their vision from doing the right thing. “The incontinent man acts knowing that what he does is bad, yet he does it as a result of passion.” . For Aristotle, every deliberate action begins with an originating cause, which is the end you have in mind the goal you’re aiming at. “I rest because I want to restore my health. /I save money because I want security.” The goal is what gives the action its meaning and direction. When someone is overwhelmed by pleasure or pain, they lose sight of that true goal (the true reason for when they started an action). Pleasure seduces them, pain intimidates them, and both “ruin” their rational vision and they lose the meaning of the process of doing said action, and eventually end up directionless. The true cause (the rational end) disappears from the person’s field of vision.

And if you do not see the right goal, you cannot choose the right means.

In application to our topic, this theory makes so much sense. Because of the pleasures or pains of scrolling, a person knows that they should not doomscroll instead of going to bed, or replying to an email but they do it anyways. Scrolling has become an automatic human action. We open social media, and scrolling is the thing to do, even when we are busy. There’s no goal for this action, no outcome either. Before short form content, people would get on Youtube for example, with the intention of watching something funny, some cooking video, a vlog of some specific niche Youtuber that posts every Sunday, a horror game episode of some gamer a friend doesn’t shut up about. There was intentionality, there was a specific tool, a specific amount of content; for one ultimate goal: entertainment, inspiration, or genuine curiosity. Today, people get on scrolling with no purpose, yes we can say for entertainment, but there’s no intentionality, no specific tool or amount of content, though it gives lots of dopamine to your brain. Therefore, it becomes an endless, directionless, and meaningless action that invokes guilt or frustration afterwards.

For the originating causes of the things that are done consist in the end at which they are aimed; but the man who has been ruined by pleasure or pain forthwith fails to see any such originating cause-to see that for the sake of this or because of this he ought to choose and do whatever he chooses and does; for vice is destructive of the originating cause of action.

This is why Aristotle says vice destroys the originating cause of action; it blinds the person to the purpose that should guide their choices, so their action becomes directionless, impulsive, and no longer grounded in the Good. Instead of using social media (the tool) for it’s ending outcome (entertainment), it is used only for the very temporary dopamine hit, only for the emotional reaction it gives, disregarding whether the content consumed is entertaining or not. That is why sometimes we watch a totally meaningless, unfunny AI video; just to pass the time, and move to more consumption.

In the next section, is the explanation of how this concept also applies on a bigger scale; that is knowledge pursuit. How when a person wants to improve herself or himself, by reading and learning more, makes the same mistake out of being mindless with what she or he learns. In this case when knowledge becomes the end point instead of the tool (or process) to reach the end point.

2 - When knowledge turns into a product instead of a process

The digital age has no mercy, and it pays no attention to the pace of each individual it keeps thrusting new trends and ideas at people before they are able to process what is already there. After the rise of short form content, and some people’s total addiction to it, anti-intellectualism started rising as well and consuming lots of short form content is deemed anti-intellectual and being ‘chronically online’ is uncool. This is when people started looking for alternatives to being online all the time, motivated by avoiding a negative social perception of them (being anti-intellectual) besides avoiding the damage caused to memory and the brain, “10 things i read instead of doomscrolling” became a trend, these posts show up everywhere. Pursuing knowledge is the cool thing to do.

The problem thus, is that people make the same mistake of consuming content with no intention again with consuming knowledge with no intention. Because scrolling primarily is not a bad thing, it only becomes bad when it is done with mindlessness. The same is with knowledge, when it is consumed with no selectivity of the amount, the type, and the medium and with no goal; consuming it becomes automatic, just like what happened with scrolling (scrolling on substack is one example). The process of learning is now pleasurable (or helps in avoiding stress), there’s thousands of things a person wants to learn, only partial time because of work or school, no specific goal to use this knowledge or to share it, and the person gets obsessed with the means and mistakes them for the ends.

When the pursuit of knowledge ceases being a tool with which a person achieves goals, solves problems, and improves outcomes in situations, it will be done for the wrong reasons (ahem performative reasons) and will end up nowhere near beneficial. Knowledge is nothing but a tool and gaining knowledge is not the goal. Because when knowledge becomes the goal, the vision of the person acquiring it gets distorted by the pleasure of the action itself. The person then mistakes the pleasure of the PROCESS for the end goal, and feels achieved and prideful; the knowledge acquired becomes a product consumed, owned, shown off and never really used in contexts where it is helpful. Basically the pursuit of knowledge becomes selfish, self-centered, and an object of social approval and status.

III/ Final discussion

if knowledge is pursued as a substitute for scrolling, because of guilt and frustration, and the toxic-positivity induced by posts compelling people to be better NOW; The knowledge gained here is just another form of doomscrolling. Just another need to overload the mind with information ‘that is better’ that might not even be needed or remembered. It is not improvement, it is simply still consumption. There’s the illusion that one needs to know more, to be smarter, in order to be better; but in truth what is needed is the wisdom to know that less is more. Without this wisdom one constantly lives life replacing action with more learning. One has mistaken a tool (knowledge) for the goal (life, action, creation). That is not a bad or “immoral” life, it is an unhealthy one. In this case the most knowledgeable action to take is to allow your self to go to sleep or to respond to that email, not to read another essay on Substack, because “it’s fun and it makes me smarter”, because as it turns out for us all, it really does not.

Posts such as “10 things i read instead of doomscrolling” often pop up on one’s feed without ever knowing the person or their area of expertise, their job, or their social life. One does not know if that person has read those articles in the span of a week, a month, or a year. Nonetheless, the interplay of the guilt of doomscrolling and fear of missing out, leads them to feel the need to know it all at once. The person who has posted the post, may have their life dedicated to content creation as their job, they need ideas to post everyday and jumping on trends is necessary for advancement, regardless of whether they maintain authenticity or not. They may be just a random person sharing things they read in the span of months. They also may have already achieved some sort of financial security and they have lots of time to pursue knowledge and they share that as their content. In both cases, what they are doing is creation. What the consumer does is just consume. Both mindful creation and mindful consumption are flattering actions (it is important to note that creativity naturally requires mindfulness and cannot be done without it); however, mindless consumption as an emotional reaction is non-beneficial to the consumer.

Conclusion: An ode in prose to all learners, thinkers, and guilty doomscrollers (myself included)

To put all of the above into one handy sentence; consume less, create more. I personally go with one concept in this digital overload; if I am not creating, I am consuming, any act that I am doing (for entertainment or curiosity) that does not involve creating something, it automatically is a form of consumption. This might sound radical, but I think it is necessary. That is, anyone who wants to stop consuming meaningless content, has to fearlessly, unapologetically, and diligently CREATE. Creation is the only effective way of fighting anti-intellectualsm, fighting AI content, but now also (and most importantly) to fight the commodification of knowledge.

Make bad art, write bad essays, write bad poems, make bad cookies, whisper a poorly worded prayer to god, meditate, dance , make awful low budget short films. Do this with already acquired knowledge. And when it is time to learn more, to ACTUALLY improve! do so with utmost presence, with attention, with a specific goal, a specific time frame. Keeping in mind, although the process is very pleasurable, it is only a process to hone your skill. Learning is a process that aims to one day put a contribution in the world, YOUR CONTRIBUTION.

Learning for the sake of learning, learning with no further action, learning without creation is like going to the sea without swimming, or like getting a driver’s license without a car, or like having a beautiful voice but never singing. How would you know you learned if you have not yet created! How would you know you are a believer if you have never been tested! How would you consider yourself a wanderer if you have never wandered too far! The answer lies not in assumption and self-doubt, but in relentless creation.

At the end, in order not to contradict my previous words; this conclusion by no means is imposing the need to improve instantly. It is a meditation upon the wisdom of knowing when less means more. When to learn less in order to have enough space to use it in creation. If this post bears for you any message, it would be to question and measure whether the next step is to read another text or to respond _to the ongoing collective discourse of being human_ in making one.