Doomscrolling has ruined our sense of time

The dual crises of the global pandemic and the war in Ukraine have been testing our governments, our institutions, our diplomacy — and our collective sense of time. In part because of social media, both events already seem intolerably long, even though the Russian invasion of Ukraine is less than a month old.

One of the most prominent words of the last few years is "doomscrolling." People can now easily imbibe new information 24/7, about COVID or the war, simply by scrolling through social media on their phones.

In the case of Ukraine, every day there are scores of events to learn about and react to. I can pop into my Twitter feed and see that Russian missiles have started hitting Odesa, the Ukrainian city of Mariupol refuses to surrender, and a shopping mall in Kyiv has been destroyed. I can read multiple analyses of how the China-Russia relationship is evolving, or get the latest about rumors of a coup against Putin. And all this is without even making much of an effort.

Once upon a time, news of war was lumpier and more periodic — people watched the nightly news or read the morning paper. They could turn on the radio and hear more frequent bulletins, but due to the absence of the internet and other means of modern communication, there were far fewer reports from far fewer sources.

The now-neverending stream of information shapes our perception of time. For many people, especially America’s news-intensive elites, it may make the war feel much longer than it actually has been.

This greater sense of witness to atrocities cements this impression. Each moral outrage, no matter how small, is taken in. Several generations ago, people may have heard that there was a big battle over a place called Dien Bien Phu. Nowadays, they can see, replay and share videos of people who died or were injured in the bombing of a theater in Mariupol. Each terrible event somehow feels more intolerable than the last, fueling the feeling that something must give and that the war has to end soon.

That is a dangerous feeling, if only because it makes it harder for leaders to pursue strategies of patience. Polls show high U.S. public support for a no-fly zone, although in my view that would lead to an unacceptably higher risk of escalating the war. This hawkish stance is not hard to understand. If the current situation feels intolerable, then surely something dramatic and decisive has to happen very soon — and better to act than be acted upon. At the very least action will imbue a feeling of having "done something."

Doomscrolling-induced impatience also induces people to underrate Russian military prospects. It is true that Russia failed to achieve its objective of an immediate Ukrainian collapse. Still, it took Hitler five weeks to conquer Poland, and that is usually regarded as an extremely successful military campaign.

It’s just not clear yet how well, or how badly, the Russians are likely to do. It is hard to embrace that fundamental uncertainty when everything else feels so intolerable.

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COVID is a much longer-running story, now more than two years old, but it has engendered similar reactions. People feel that the pandemic is or should be "over" by now. I myself favor a resumption of normal activity, but am distressed that Congress is treating the matter so cavalierly and refusing to make haste with additional COVID funding. The voter outrage simply isn’t there, in large part because the public has decided that the pandemic is over.

At one level that is a very healthy reaction that will help reboot economic activity. On another level, it is extremely dangerous. If a new and more serious variant were to come along, the U.S. would simply not be ready, not even after two years of suffering and more than one million deaths.

It is possible that, over the long run, people will become numb to all this detailed reporting of suffering from both the pandemic and the war. They might forget just how much those events commanded the world’s attention. These moments might come to feel like time-slices rather than eternities.

But for now, we are not at peace with our grasp on time — and this runs the risk of being a major problem for America and the world.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Cowen is a Bloomberg View columnist. He is a professor of economics at George Mason University and writes for the blog Marginal Revolution. His books include "The Complacent Class: The Self-Defeating Quest for the American Dream."

Previously:
• 01/22/22 Wokeism has peaked
• 01/31/22 The latest bias to worry about
• 01/17/22 America's loneliness epidemic
• 01/07/22 Some of America's top universities just revealed they're not morally serious
• 12/29/21 America would be more happy with more people
• 12/10/21 Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk . . . and Paul McCartney
• 12/08/21 The only two pieces of advice you'll ever need
• 11/29/21 Nuclear fusion is close enough to start dreaming
• 10/27/21 America's national mood disorder
• 06/10/21 Lifting of mask mandates poses a challenge for Libertarians
• 05/28/21 Why economics is failing us
• 04/19/21We need green energy. We don't need green jobs
• 04/14/21 Libertarianism isn't dead. It's just reinventing itself
• 04/05/21 What does the world need? More humans
• 02/10/21 If Biden goes big now, he may have to go small later
• 01/12/21 Covid improved how the world does science
• 12/07/20 How to make sure your complaint is heard
• 10/27/20 It's getting better and worse at the same time
• 09/14/20 How to be happy during a pandemic
• 09/04/20 Trump is winning the vaccine debate with public health experts
• 07/01/20 Why Americans are having an emotional reaction to masks
• 05/20/20 Covid-19 will expose the ghosts in the U.S. economy
• 05/07/20 Are aliens visiting us? US military seems to think so
• 05/06/20 America's reopening will depend on one thing --- trust
• 04/22/20 How the covid-19 recession is like World War II
• 04/15/20 America is returning to 1781
• 04/08/20 Covid-19 is is upending everything for status seekers
• 03/17/20 The coronavirus will usher in a new era of entertainment
• 01/28/20 Social Security isn't doomed for younger generations
• 01/08/20 Why 2020 is harder to predict than 2019 was
• 12/02/19 Equality is a mediocre goal so aim for progress
• 11/25/19 Inflation inequality creates winners and losers
• 11/09/19 OK kids. This boomer has had enough
• 10/20/19 Would you bet against Trump in 2020?
• 09/25/19 The right industrial policy for America
• 09/24/19 Harvard's legacies are nothing to be proud of
• 09/02/19 Yes, the Fed could still stop a recession
• 08/20/19 A trade deal with China wouldn't change much
• 07/29/19 How your personality traits affect your paycheck
• 07/16/19 Internet 101 should be a required class
• 05/28/19 How Dems actually are the ANTI-immigrant party
• 04/23/19 Want to help fight climate change? Have more children
• 03/22/19 America isn't as divided as it looks
• 03/12/19 The Twitter takeover of politics: You ain't seen nothing yet
• 03/04/19 How to tell which Dem dreams won't come true
• 02/07/19: Now the Dems want to end America's nuclear first strike option. How clueless is that?
• 01/29/19: The shutdown hit a lot of government workers --- hard. But, ultimately, who is responsible for their unfortunate circumstances?
• 12/12/18: The West is abusing its legal power to punish people or institutions that do things it doesn't like. It better stop
• 10/23/18: The US needs Saudi Arabia, and vice versa
• 10/19/18: The right finds the perfect weapon against the left
• 07/24/18: The drive for the perfect child gets a little scary
• 06/04/18: Side effects of the decline of men in labor market
• 05/14/18: Proving Marx's theories right
• 05/08/18: Holding up a mirror to intellectuals of the left
• 05/01/18: Virtual reality will make lives better ... mostly
• 04/16/18: It's hard to burst your political filter bubbleIt's hard to burst your political filter bubble
• 04/09/18: The missing key to grasping why American politics seems to have become more polarized, with no apparent end in sight
• 04/05/18: Two American power centers are about to clash
• 03/22/18: We fear what we can't control about Uber and Facebook
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• 01/10/18: Polarized Congress needs to bring back earmarks
• 12/27/17: The year when the Internet collides with reality
• 11/07/17: Would you blame the phone for Russian interference?
• 10/23/17: North Korea is playing a longer game than the US
• 10/12/17: Why conservatives should celebrate Thaler's Nobel
• 08/02/17: Too many of today's innovations are focused on solving problems rather than creating something new