Down with Doomscrolling

Eco-anxiety, the dread that comes with the constant deluge of catastrophic climate change news, can be hard to wrestle with. How do we quell this anxiety while staying informed?

Story by Annika Taylor || Photos by Nicola Wasmuth

March 16, 2022

On any given day, news feeds are plastered with headlines of environmental destruction: ‘Highest Washington State Heat Record Confirmed,’ ‘Photos Capture Dwindling Population of Ancient Tree’ and so on. Environmental studies students spend their days in the classroom studying these problems and their nights scrolling through headlines about them.

Eco-grief has existed in one form or another since the beginning of the environmental movement. However, people today are experiencing eco-grief in an age of unprecedented information access.

Aldo Leopold, a 20th-century ecologist, conservationist and author, described the emotional pain of ecological loss early on in his 1949 book “The Sand County Almanac.” But in recent years “eco-grief” has gained more traction. The term “eco-anxiety” even made the 2019 Oxford shortlist for Word of the Year.

The American Psychological Association (APA) has reported on the mental health effects of climate change for the past several years but has not gone as far as to label eco-grief, eco-anxiety or eco-depression as mental illnesses. According to the APA, the mere awareness of environmental disturbances can cause feelings of fear, powerlessness, anger and exhaustion.

Jennifer Atkinson, associate professor of environmental humanities at the University of Washington, started teaching a seminar on eco-grief and eco-anxiety in 2017. She created the class in response to her students’ fears that a career in climate work would lead to heartbreak and drudgery. Some of her students are pursuing scientific fields which don’t leave room for emotional responses to environmental information, Atkinson said.

“[Students] tend to think about climate change in terms of its impacts on external landscapes rather than our internal landscapes,” Atkinson said. “Watching the things that they’ve devoted their lives and careers trying to protect and watching that unravel and be put at risk is leading to pretty high levels of depression for environmental scientists.”

No one can operate healthily while suppressing grief, according to Atkinson. Suppression can prevent scientists from thinking creatively about the climate issue because so much of their energy is dedicated to managing those feelings, she said.

Eco-grief has been on Brianna Doran-Moriarty’s radar since she was 8 years old. Snowless Christmases in the Midwest and invasive zebra mussels in the Great Lakes clued her into the climate imbalances happening in her hometown of Chicago.

Before becoming an environmental science student at Western Washington University, Doran-Moriarty studied music. The psychological aspect of climate change is too often overlooked, and the arts have the power to lift our spirits, Doran-Moriarty said.

“There can be a catastrophe on the other side of the world that you hear about in minutes. And that’s just a lot to process all the time.” -Brianna Doran-Moriarty

“One of the really valuable things about the arts is its ability to carry people through times that are really tough,” Doran-Moriarty said. “One of the reasons why I was split between, ‘Do I want to pursue a music career, or a scientific career?’ was because both of those things are so valuable to our ability to get through the day.”

The more environmental doom and gloom populating people’s newsfeeds, the more anxious people can become. This anxiety can cause them to feel powerless in their ability to make a difference, according to a growing body of research.

“There’s a lot to be said for the psychological impact of living in the age of information, where we are so connected,” Doran-Moriarty said. “There can be a catastrophe on the other side of the world that you hear about in minutes. And that’s just a lot to process all the time.”

Sarah Jaquette Ray, an environmental studies professor at California State Polytechnic University in Humboldt, said the media tends to cover what is spectacular, negative and scary.

Doomscrolling through negative environmental content can make viewers feel like they are working to solve a problem when they really aren’t, Ray said. Merriam-Webster defines the new term as the tendency to surf or scroll through bad news even though that news is saddening, disheartening or depressing.

The problem with doomscrolling, Ray said, is that it can be a deflection of responsibility. It keeps her students from working to prevent the destruction they are seeing.

“Doomscrolling reinforces that we are somehow doing the best we can to solve a current problem if we’re constantly staring it in the face,” Ray said. “People feel like it’s their obligation to witness this stuff.”

Laura Wagner, an environmental science student and the Associated Student Vice President for Sustainability at Western, struggles to think of an instance where an environmental story was reported responsibly. Environmental reporting is full of fear-mongering and too often contradicts solutions-oriented research, she said.

“I think it’s more of an issue of also trying to realize that you can look at the original information and make conclusions yourself,” Wagner said. “See if the scary things that the media is trying to tell people are really as scary as they portray.”

Scientists and the media are responsible for reporting information in a way that doesn’t stoke the flames of eco-anxiety, Wagner said.

Although the wealth of available information can be overwhelming and disheartening, it also allows people to build a community around their shared eco-grief. Atkinson, the UW professor, has released a podcast called “Facing It” all about eco-grief and coping strategies.

Facing eco-grief head-on can give people a more complete worldview and prevent burnout in environmental work. It also reconnects them to why they got involved in the first place, according to Atkinson.

“Once we find a way to let go of that overwhelming anxiety, it frees up our mental and emotional space and allows us to start focusing on what we CAN control,” Doran-Moriarty said in an email. “Climate change is a global issue. It’s too much for one person to worry about at once. But one small action like volunteering at a community garden? One person can do that.”

Annika Taylor is a senior at Western studying business and sustainability. She enjoys finding ways in which people and the planet can co-exist.