It is known that spending hours doomscrolling on social media can put people in a bad mood, but scientists have now discovered why — it 'traps' the user in a cycle of poor mental health.
Doomscrolling is the digital habit of seeking out negative information, even though it triggers negative emotions.
Scientists at University College London (UCL) discovered those with poor mental health are not only more likely to seek out and read negative content online, it also makes them feel more depressed.
The research, published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, involved more than 1,000 people who underwent psychological tests to check their state of mental health, then were tasked to browse the internet for 30 minutes before taking another mental health test and revealing their search history to the researchers.
The findings showed that the people with the poorest mental health scores sought out the greatest number of websites with negative themes.
A follow-up experiment then aimed to establish whether the trend was cause and effect — in other words, if the websites were to blame for participants' increased consumption of depressing material or their mental state.
Researchers performed mental health tests again before splitting participants into groups — one lot browsed more positive content, while others were given doomscrolling websites specifically.
They discovered that people who were given more negative content to browse were found to go on and find even more depressing content online.
Despite the study did look at participants' browser history, it was not able to access the history of password-protected websites, making looking at their social media history impossible.
However, the study authors hope to find a way around this for future research. Tali Sharot, professor of cognitive neuroscience at UCL, said that the findings contributed to a long-running debate.
"Lots of people are saying that there is a correlation between poor mental health and internet use," She told The Times.
"We spend many hours online, and as humans, we only just started doing so in the last few years. Is it causing problems?" she added.
Earlier this year, a UK study found smartphone obsession could be harming adolescents' health.
Experts found teens who report a problematic relationship with their smartphones could be up to three times more likely to be anxious, depressed, or suffer from insomnia.
About one in five older teenagers display "problematic smartphone" use and many are crying out for help to cut down on their usage, discovered experts from the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King's College London.
Almost half of teens who said they were unhealthily preoccupied with their smartphones also reported that they had symptoms of anxiety and even more said they had symptoms of depression.
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