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Just two minutes of COVID-19 'doomscrolling' can bring you down

Publicly released:
International
PHOTO: Vladimir Mun/Unsplash
PHOTO: Vladimir Mun/Unsplash

Researchers wanted to test the emotional impact of Covid-related news, given that bad news has been ubiquitous during the pandemic. Participants had to read through a Covid news feed on Twitter or watch a YouTube reaction video. They found it took just 2-4 minutes of news consumption to impact how good the participants were feeling. However, consuming stories about Covid-related acts of kindness did not have the same negative consequences. The team suggests people might want to balance out the doomscrolling with "kindness-scrolling".

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Journal/
conference: PLOS One
Research:Paper
Organisation/s: University of Essex, UK; Simon Fraser University, Canada
Funder: n/a
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