Doomscrolling means reading bad news online without stopping: scrolling through your feed on a phone or computer for hours, going from one worrying story to the next. People usually say it about themselves, with some annoyance. It isn't narrow slang: the word appears both in conversation and in the press, so it's fine in IELTS Speaking. In an essay, it's safer to describe the habit directly: spending too much time reading bad news online.
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spend + time + doomscrolling; doomscroll + through + the news/your feed; stop doomscrolling
- I was up till two again, doomscrolling through the news about the floods.
- Put your phone down, you've been doomscrolling since breakfast.
- New rule for me: no doomscrolling in bed, the phone stays in the kitchen.
What changed
First versionI spent the whole evening to doomscroll through the news.
RevisionI spent the whole evening doomscrolling through the news.
After spend + time, English uses the -ing form of the verb: spend hours reading, spend the evening doomscrolling. The infinitive to doomscroll isn't used in this pattern, so it's replaced with doomscrolling.
Doomscrolling is only about bad news. If you spent the evening watching funny videos, that's just scrolling: I spent the evening scrolling through funny videos. There's also a verb, doomscroll: I doomscrolled until 2 am.
Your turn
I only meant to check the weather, but I ended up ___ through bad news until midnight.
Show the answer
doomscrolling — End up is also followed by the -ing form: ended up doomscrolling, just like ended up staying late. To doomscroll isn't used after end up.
Describe the last time you couldn't stop reading bad news. Say until what time it went on and what the news was about.
Last Sunday I was doomscrolling until one in the morning, reading about the storm in the south.
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