Brandwatch Bulletin 11/09: Doomscrolling

Brandwatch Bulletin #18: Doomscrolling

Swipe up for misery.

9 November 2020

Welcome to the first bulletin of the week. Today we’re exploring an activity a lot of us have been guilty of this year—doomscrolling.

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Doom, doom, doom

Doomscrolling is a social trend sweeping devices around the world. The term was coined in March, as the pandemic began to rage around the world, to describe the unrelenting need to consume an endless procession of negative online news.

When we checked out English-language mentions of the term on social media using our Consumer Research platform, we found 144k mentions of it from January 1 to November 8 2020.

Recently, usage has hit a new high. We found 45k mentions from people admitting that they were guilty of doomscrolling in the first week of November.

While doomscrolling was coined back in March, it wasn’t used very much at the time. It wasn’t until June that mentions really started gaining traction.

In fact, it was in part thanks to the US election that the term became so widely used. US politics was a huge driver in conversations about doomscrolling on social media, with 18k mentions of the election, Biden, and Trump alongside the term between June 1 and November 8 2020.

An unhealthy habit

Ultimately, doomscrolling conversation on social media really focuses on the unhealthiness of the habit. Between March 1 and November 8 2020 we found 62k mentions about quitting doomscrolling.

Unsurprisingly, that conversation reached a peak last week (12k mentions) as the world waited for the big election result.

We also found that the conversation focused on how droomscrolling affected wellbeing:

Exacerbated stress levels – 3k mentions
Heightened anxiety – 5k mentions
Lack of focus and hindered productivity – 6k mentions

This year has been tough, and the internet is coming up with new words to describe our experiences. Much like when WFH was added to the Merriam-Webster dictionary earlier in the year, it’s likely we’ll see more terms coined during the pandemic in the next round of additions.

Thanks for reading

That’s it for today, you may return to your doomscrolling if you wish. If you want to find out how to use Brandwatch to do your own analysis, have a chat with our team.

And if you’d like to get all of our future bulletins, sign up here.

Stay safe,

Brandwatch React Team

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