Author Name: Abhishikth Gajulavarti Date: 27-03-2026
Doomscrolling — the compulsive consumption of negative news content despite awareness of resultant distress — emerged as a widely recognized behavioral phenomenon during the COVID-19 pandemic and has persisted as a clinically significant pattern across subsequent crises. Despite its prevalence and popular attention, doomscrolling lacks a consensus definition, a validated psychometric scale, and a theoretically grounded account of its psychological mechanisms and consequences that would enable clinical assessment and intervention. This paper addresses these gaps through three integrated contributions. First, it provides a conceptual analysis distinguishing doomscrolling from related constructs including news addiction, problematic social media use, health anxiety-driven monitoring, and trait neuroticism, identifying the core defining features: compulsive negative news seeking, awareness of self-harm, failure of self-regulatory inhibition, and temporal acceleration under negative affective load. Second, it reviews the existing empirical literature and available measurement instruments, critically evaluating Sharma, John, and Sahu’s (2022) Doomscrolling Scale (DSS) alongside Altay, Acerbi, and Berriche’s (2023) threat-sensitivity account and Rosen et al.’s (2022) technoference framework. Third, it proposes the Compulsive News Monitoring Scale (CNMS-24), a theoretically grounded 24-item instrument integrating compulsivity (inability to stop despite distress), content specificity (negative news bias over positive), temporal dynamics (nighttime acceleration), functional impairment (sleep, concentration, social functioning), and cognitive intrusion (involuntary news-related thoughts during non-monitoring periods). A five-factor structure is proposed with parallel items designed for self-report and clinician-administered formats, with validation protocol specified.
Keywords: doomscrolling; compulsive news monitoring; psychological distress; scale development; news addiction; health anxiety; technoference; media psychology.
