Are you guilty of doomscrolling? What it is - and how to stop it 

Ireland ranks sixth in Europe for scrolling on our phones. Geraldine Walsh looks at why we do - and how to unplug from the destructive habit

Do you doomscroll?

A specific kind of agitation settles on my shoulders as I hop from news apps to social media feeds. Ten minutes pass. Twenty. The same words crop up as I click to expand, skim through articles, and hit the back button to scroll again, getting lost in threads, becoming enraged by comments, and digesting only brief but consistent pockets of information that pull my attention in a very limited and destructive way.

Completely lost in a never-ending feed, half an hour has disappeared. Almost everything I have read or glanced upon has been disheartening, depressing, sad, troubling, and difficult because my brain has wired itself to examine the negative. I find it difficult to put my phone down, and if I do, it's not long before I pick it back up again. Scrolling incessantly for anything new to validate the anxiousness and tension flooding throughout my body.