When my high school closed in March and was in the midst of figuring out how to conduct online classes, I had a lot of free time to research the terminology behind the novel coronavirus. I distinctly remember reading the Imperial College London Covid-19 report on March 16, just five days after the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic.

The now-famous report published by a team of British epidemiologists at ICL laid out the worst-case scenario for the coronavirus, predicting that as many as 510 thousand Britons and 2.2 million U.S. Americans could die from the disease if it was left to spread uncontrolled.

It’s an objectively terrifying document — scary enough that it pushed the U.S. and British governments into taking bolder action to stop the virus’s spread. I could not focus on my schoolwork for hours after reading it, trying to repress visions of mass death as terms like “fatality ratio” and “an unmitigated pandemic” buzzed around in my head. I have been doing a lot of this kind of activity over the past year — falling down deep, morbid rabbit holes filled with Covid-19 headlines and dystopian scenarios, my eyes hurting from excessive screen time. Maybe you have too.

This “feeling when you can’t stop scrolling down Twitter, or reading news that you know will make you sad, anxious or angry” now has a name — “doomscrolling” — which among other pandemic-related words like “community spread” and “contact tracing,” has figured its way into our vocabulary this year. This should not come as a surprise because people develop languages in accordance with social context. Not only do new words help with better communication and understanding, but they also reflect the historical moment in which they were coined. This word is no exception.

Doomscrolling is a portmanteau created this year, during the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is currently on Merriam-Webster’s “Words We’re Watching” list — rightfully so, as the usage of this word will only increase with time. What’s worth noting, though, is the etymology of the word “doom.” Originally, the word had connotations that related it to Judgement Day and the end of the world, but now it’s just as likely to be associated with destruction or ruin. It seems that the contemporary reaction to the word doom is to obsessively search for negative information to stay prepared for any unwanted event and to create visual scenarios of an apocalyptic world.

The human mind is incredibly averse to uncertainty and ambiguity; we respond to uncertainty or lack of clarity by spontaneously generating plausible explanations. When we can’t immediately gratify our desire to know, we become highly motivated to come up with a concrete explanation in any way possible because we want to eliminate the distress of the unknown. So are we all doomed to make uncomfortable errors when analyzing new information at high stakes? Not necessarily. The more salient the possibility of uncertain or negative information affecting us, the more circumspect our thinking. Now, with the genuine threat of Covid-19 chronically present, our system for wariness can be switched on much too easily causing hypervigilant behavior that becomes compulsive.

Doomscrolling is a compulsion that has only gotten worse in recent months, and one that points to humanity’s quest to find coping mechanisms when many of them have been stripped away. During times of uncertainty and uncontrollability, people crave any sense of control. When one scrolls endlessly through the news, even when it is bad news, it makes them feel like they are gaining necessary information or that they are creating a plan. Binge watching Netflix shows is now replaced with binge watching the world collapse into a crisis. And while it seems that the glimmer of hope for good news is a click away, it is really not. Right now, people are living at a time with no easy solutions, a moment with a lot of conflicting “facts” in a rapidly changing landscape. There is no overarching narrative that helps people, and a lot of processing is necessary to make sense of the situation. While prolonged time spent on social media may cause depression and anxiety — and that is just by looking at pictures of parties or celebrity gossip — the problem intensifies when put in the context of a global pandemic.

Just like any bad habit, there are ways to stop doomscrolling: turning off notifications, deleting social media apps from your phone, trying various meditation practices, limiting caffeine intake to early morning hours and so on. But you do not have to. Doomscrolling will never actually stop the doom itself; it will only momentarily occupy you with something else other than your own worries. Feeling informed can be soothing, but being overwhelmed by tragedy serves no purpose. 2020 is nothing if not a marathon; trying to sprint to the end of one’s feed will only cause burnout and a decline in mental health over time. Amid all of the pain, and isolation of the past year, it is not worth it to compound your strain with two more hours of Twitter scrolling every night.