DOOM SCROLLING

As soon as Katie Rosseinsky wakes up, she grabs her phone. Overnight notifications. Morning-routine TikToks. Missed Instagram stories - and 30 minutes can go by in a flash. She asks experts why she does it, and how to kick the bad habit

- Katie Rosseinsky

My morning routine goes something like this. Every weekday, I wake up to the sound of one of Apple’s default alarms and reach for my phone to turn off the noise. Then, without fail, I embark on scrolling through Instagram, squinting at the bright screen like a mole that has just emerged from hibernation. Five, 10, 30 minutes can easily pass by while I’m flicking through other people’s holiday photos, learning about the best way to tie your hair into a slicked-back bun or listening to a Californian surgeon explain a celebrity’s dramatic facial transformation.

Sometimes I watch videos in which other people show off their productivity-enhancing, aesthetically pleasing morning routines. They tend to be a merry-go-round of matcha lattes, matching athleisure sets and reformer pilates classes, rather than what I do: endlessly pressing snooze and holding my phone too close to my face in a dark room.

The most irritating part of all this? It’s the fact that I don’t even get much enjoyment out of scrolling; instead, I start the morning frustrated by my lack of willpower. In my heart of hearts, I know I’m being bombarded with pretty pointless ephemera. I know that watching an influencer buy an iced latte and a pastry to “romanticise their day” won’t improve my own quality of life. I don’t even really care about mastering slickedback buns, because I look like a founding father when I tie my hair up. Yet this habit proves impossible to break. And I’m surely not the only one whose first moments of the day are thrown off kilter by social media: according to one study, 80 per cent of smartphone users check their device within 15 minutes of waking up. So what is the impact of this compulsion, and how can we break free from it?