Biden won the US election, but doomscrolling is here to stay

The term doomscrolling has been in use since at least 2018, but it's become more popular with 2020's surfeit of bad news and our inability to escape the Internet by socialising, attending live events or just going outside. — Dreamstime/TNS

About six weeks ago, Kurt Thorn began feeling a pain in his left arm. It started as a burning sensation in his tendons. Then there was a cyst in his left thumb.

In the lead-up to the US election, the pain got so bad that Thorn, the director of data science at biotech company Zymergen, started wearing a brace on his wrist to prevent himself from bending his thumb in a way that hurt.