According to psychotherapist and coach Tess Brigham, MFT, doomscrolling is mindlessly scrolling through negative news articles, social media posts, or other content-sharing platforms. Essentially, it's reading one negative story after another. One Canadian study has even called this phenomenon “social media panic.”1

Although it may seem as if 2020 and all its hurdles (the COVID-19 pandemic, political tensions, and social injustice, to name a few) inspired the term “doomscrolling,” it actually likely sprung up on Twitter in 2018, and has been a cultural term ever since.
Source: Verry Well Mind