key: cord-0974557-p5m0pkcl
authors: Anand, Nitin; Sharma, Manoj Kumar; Thakur, Pranjali Chakraborty; Mondal, Ishita; Sahu, Maya; Singh, Priya; J., Ajith S.; Kande, Jayesh Suresh; MS, Neeraj; Singh, Ripudaman
title: Doomsurfing and doomscrolling mediate psychological distress in COVID‐19 lockdown: Implications for awareness of cognitive biases
date: 2021-04-20
journal: Perspect Psychiatr Care
DOI: 10.1111/ppc.12803
sha: 2c4d65c874e7788e3f48374509c6ee10cf7d0ce8
doc_id: 974557
cord_uid: p5m0pkcl

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic has led to a significant increase in the consumption of the internet for work, leisure time activities, and has also generated substantial amounts of anxiety, and uncertainty, which has lead individuals to spend a lot of time surfing the internet for the latest news on developments in the COVID‐19 crisis. This ends up as scrolling or surfing through a lot of pessimistic news items. This search for information during COVID‐19 is apparently influenced by a number of cognitive biases as well as mediated by poor affect regulation skills. Thus, there is a need to address these cognitive biases and promote affect regulation strategies across health settings.

since March 2020. 3 Doomsurfing related to COVID-19 pandemic can be reflected in behaviors, such as frequently checking the number of affected cases, the number of morbidities, staying up late checking for the latest information about the new symptoms, newer ways through which severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 can spread and ways to minimize the risk. Doomsurfing and Doomscrolling lead to the experience of emotions of intense anxiety, uncertainty, apprehension, fear, and feelings of distress which in turn lead to difficulties in the initiation of sleep, poor quality of sleep, decrease in appetite, decreased interest in activities and low motivation to continue with tasks of the day. 4 There are various factors contributing to this phenomenon of doomsurfing, one of them being the human tendency to make better sense of the uncontrollable situation and filling the information gap.

To overcome the information gap in the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated negative feelings, the people tend to engage more in the phenomenon of doomsurfing or doomscrolling with the expectation to access some positive information or perspectives about the COVID-19 pandemic so that their anxiety, fear, and apprehension decreases. However, in this search of optimistic or positive news, they end up scrolling or surfing through a lot of pessimistic news which leads to further exacerbation of feelings of anxiety, apprehension, uncertainty, and panic and this becomes a vicious circle where the individuals appear to become trapped on the internet via doomsurfing with unpleasant emotions and stress. This search for optimistic news or information during COVID-19 is influenced by the optimism bias wherein the individual overestimates the likelihood of occurrence of positive events which will happen in the COVID-19 pandemic either tomorrow, next week or next fortnight and underestimates the probability of negative events. 5 Another thinking error that influences the doomsurfing in individuals is their inclination to constantly seek out information and assign higher weightage to evidence that supports their hypothesis and dismiss or offers lower weightage to evidence which disconfirms their perspective. This phenomenon is known as confirmation bias. 3 In addition, doomsurfing is also influenced by anchoring bias wherein the individuals put their trust heavily on the initial piece of information which comes their way and then continue with their online search to accumulate more information that supports their initial set of information while ignoring the other information which is inconsistent. 3 In addition, to thinking errors, the affect regulation also influences the excessive use of digital platforms. When individuals are experiencing low mood, decreased interest in activities, and high fatigue levels they have a higher tendency to spend increased amounts of time on digital platforms to up-regulate their mood. 6 The presence of psychological distress like depressive symptoms has been evidenced to have a stable relationship with engagement in problematic or excessive use of the internet. [7] [8] [9] This relationship apparently further increases the feelings of depression when the individual is not engaging in internet use. Thus with time, it leads to the formation of a seemingly unending cycle. The cognitive biases also lead us to feel anxious, apprehensive, and increase our levels of uncertainty, which triggers us to surf, scroll for more information which may be crucial for our survival and in anticipation of information that elevates low mood, minimizes emotions of anxiety, uncertainty, and apprehension and would give us back our sense of lost control over the environment. In such a situation, we are also vulnerable to consuming inaccurate and incomplete information which rather than increasing our sense of control decreases the control, validates our fears, increases anxiety, uncertainty and pushes us towards a vicious cycle of the constant need to know, a constant need to doomsurf or doomscroll over the internet. 10 This report highlights that there is a need to explore the un- 

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3645-0815

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