How Doomscrolling at Work Lowers Employee Engagement

Employees who obsessively consume negative news during the workday experience hidden costs that extend well beyond lost productivity, according to a study published in the journal Computers in Human Behavior. Researchers found that workers who engage in doomscrolling on the clock suffer from lingering cognitive preoccupation that directly reduces work engagement.

The Impact of Workplace Doomscrolling on Engagement

Ian Hughes, an assistant professor in the psychological and brain sciences department at Texas A&M University, led the research examining how continuous negative information consumption affects daily job performance. Across two studies involving workers in the United Kingdom and the United States, investigators identified a consistent behavioral pattern among participants. Employees who doomscroll on the job are significantly more likely to ruminate on distressing material, which subsequently drives down their workplace engagement.

The study reveals that the consequences of the habit persist long after a worker locks their screen. What we find is that workers who doomscroll on the clock are less engaged, in part because their mind is preoccupied, sort of replaying the images and messages that they encountered during their doomscrolling sessions, Hughes said, according to findings from Texas A&M University.

Why Employees Turn to Negative News

The research indicates that the behavior is growing increasingly common across all age groups, with particularly high rates among individuals aged 18 to 35 globally. Hughes, whose work centers on occupational health psychology and organizational behavior, noted that the habit is rarely driven by a desire for distress. Instead, people often seek out continuous updates as an emotional coping mechanism during periods of widespread uncertainty.

During very uncertain, rapidly unfolding social situations, whether it’s a pandemic or a war or some sort of armed conflict, a public safety threat, something like that, we see people turn to social media and really refresh their feeds constantly to stay informed and up to date, Hughes said.

While the behavior begins as an information-seeking strategy to soothe anxiety, it creates a persistent psychological loop. Doomscrolling is a sort of double-edged sword in that it is, at its core, an information-seeking behavior, Hughes said. But it’s an information-seeking behavior that exposes people repeatedly to distressing or otherwise negative information. Modern office environments amplify this vulnerability because portable devices and continuous digital connectivity allow employees to carry the entire news cycle directly into their workspaces between meetings and tasks.

Managing the Habit Without Strict Bans

Despite the documented toll on focus and engagement, Hughes does not advocate for rigid corporate prohibitions against smartphones or social media use. Organizational policies that attempt to ban these devices outright frequently generate employee frustration while yielding minimal behavioral change.

Instead of total bans, researchers advise establishing intentional spatial and temporal boundaries around information consumption. If you’re going to doomscroll, try to contain that behavior to one physical location in your life, Hughes said. Rather than doing it at work, maybe it’s at home in a comfy chair, maybe at a lounge or a coffee shop or a bar, someplace where you allow yourself to doomscroll and take in some of this negative information.

Because social media algorithms and expanded digital access ensure that attention-grabbing content will remain readily available, experts emphasize moderation rather than complete avoidance. Staying informed remains a priority, but researchers caution against allowing negative information streams to dominate every waking hour.