Attaching to God: Neuroscience-informed Spiritual Formation 139 Why A Doomscrolling World Needs a Return to Joy
Mar 31, 2026
They unpack why doomscrolling hooks us: negativity bias, dopamine loops, control-seeking, and emotional avoidance. They explore how constant news overload puts the nervous system into protection mode and fuels comparison. They describe simple practices to retrain attention: savoring beauty, brief prayers before scrolling, phone boundaries, and lock‑screen prompts to invite joy.
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Why Doomscrolling Hooks Our Nervous System
- Doomscrolling is driven by evolved negativity bias, dopamine loops, fear of missing out, emotional avoidance, and seeking control in a chaotic world.
- Geoff and Cyd list mechanisms like revenge bedtime procrastination and hypervigilance that make phones feed protection-mode nervous system responses.
Hosts Confess Bathroom Phone Habit
- Cyd confesses she and Geoff sometimes take phones into the bathroom and use them longer than needed as a small personal admission of the habit.
- She uses this to illustrate boredom, avoidance, and the need for explicit boundaries like no-phone bathrooms.
Global News Overload Exceeds Our Design
- Constant exposure to global danger on social media overwhelms our nervous systems because humans aren't built to protect against worldwide threats.
- Cyd notes we gain information we cannot impact, which fuels helplessness and protection-mode responses.
