When opening your phone to check the news or scroll on your favorite social media platform, the doomscrolling spiral is excitedly awaiting its opportunity to burst on the scene. Five minutes of scrolling time turns into 20 and before you know it you’re still in bed and it’s been an hour. The ability to have millions of articles, opinions and apps at our fingertips has taken over our world in a powerful way. 

While these moments are frequently experienced, they can be avoided. Staying informed on what’s happening in our world doesn’t mean falling down the seemingly endless pit of bad news. In fact, breaking the cycle of constant scrolling can provide nourishment to your prefrontal cortex, which has been taken over by the fear processing amygdala, and chemically allow your brain to reset.  

Doomscrolling – a term that came to light in 2020 amidst the COVID pandemic – refers to constant reading of specifically negative news from an online platform. While your mind may jump to solely news outlets as providers of doomscrolling, the group is bigger than that. More recently, apps like Instagram and TikTok have become a source of news for many, especially young people, as well.

Our brains are wired to focus on danger, heavily increasing the stress that we experience on any given internet scroll. After an extended period of time reading articles, this stress can and often does follow us into our lived reality. While this is natural, it doesn’t have to be as constant as it is and escaping into nature is the perfect remedy. 

So the next time you read a bit of news, pair it with putting the phone down and reconnecting with nature and yourself (accessibility to rugged forests or wide beaches not required). Here are some ways to escape the potential of doomscrolling.

Plant Your Newest Passion: A Windowsill Garden Awaits

Getting your hands dirty is one of the most gratifying and easiest ways to connect with nature that can be accomplished from the comfort of your own home. No gardening experience, fancy tools or vast backyard needed to accomplish this goal. A windowsill garden is a phenomenal way to reset your mind and replenish your pantry. Empty jam, pasta sauce or fruit glass jars you haven’t gotten around to cleaning or disposing of? Coincidentally the remedy for both doomscrolling and your jars is one and the same. 

Head down to your local nursery, hardware store or even online and procure: pebbles/decorative rocks, potting mix and starter herbs of your choice. You’re ready to begin. Following online instructions to bring a mini herb garden to life has just created your newest hobby to ring in the spring. 

By physically being away from your phone, doomscrolling will be kept to a minimum here while also reminding you of your power to create something beautiful that helps the ecosystem that lives in your neighborhood (while saving you some money on your next herb or produce purchases). You’re not just helping the neighborhood ecosystem, you’re also helping your internal ecosystem. Gardening – windowsill or other – has shown to reduce stress, increase focus and regain serotonin by being exposed to a natural mood booster, mycobacterium, that lives in soils. 

Books and Libraries are a Brilliant Alternative

If your green thumb is still dormant and 2026 is not your year for it to blossom, not to worry – your doomscrolling can still be solved. In the era of digital media that we live in, it has become habit to do practically everything online, including reading. In doing this, it’s easy to find yourself in the news app when you mean to open your online book app. 

A simple solution to this problem is to hit the books, the physical ones! Research has shown there are several physical and psychological benefits of reading paper books. These range from making the tales come to life in the reader’s head when physically flipping the page to increasing the amount of empathy in one’s heart by reading different experiences. This mental creativity and empathy can reach far beyond what one thinks their mind is capable of and gets us thinking about more than just the information we are fed.

After seeing how affordable and quick it is to access a book online, it could be easy to be dissuaded into producing a physical book. Enter, libraries. Public libraries, of which there are 410,000 internationally, are a blueprint of being an eco-friendly citizen by offering reusable pieces of learning to gain more knowledge and perspective of the world. They share books within the library networks while sharing books in the community, creating a web of learners. They also create an environment of change through workshops and talks that welcome all backgrounds and perspectives. So, consider stopping by your local library (it’s free!), check out a book or check out the vibe in general. You’re bound to learn something.

Take a Hike with a Twist: Absorb the Sounds Around

Often, a hike or walk around the neighborhood is something that is accompanied by a phone, either to track steps or take photos. However, taking a walk without the phone not only removes distractions and the potential for wandering into doomscrolling territory but it also lets you listen to the world around you. 

A walk with minimal disturbance from the outside world provides an opportunity to appreciate nature once again. Listening to the coo of a bird, the croak of a frog, a trill of an insect or the rustling of leaves reminds us of the beauty of the natural world and can reignite the desire to save and nurture the natural world around us. These phoneless, sound conscious walks can also highlight the importance of taking a step back and slowing down. 

Studies have proven that getting outside to take a daily walk, for example, can regulate sleep cycles and improve the quality of at night, as well as reducing risk of depression and anxiety. An excellent mode of combating doomscrolling then can be a 20 minute walk. After reading an anxiety-inducing article, instead of finding the next terrifying thing to look at, take a reset walk outside to lower stress levels and ground yourself. 

Documentaries Over Doomscrolling

Okay, you’ve tried the other methods and they just aren’t calling you like the screens are. An understandable pull. Instead of the phone screen time however, an opportunity to learn and grow awaits in the form of documentaries. 

Countless stories happen everyday from all corners of the world that are never covered. Though documentaries have the power to capture these untold stories and reveal more along the way.

The genre of documentaries hosts a wide range of topics, all of which are waiting to teach you something and get your brain thinking about the world in a new way. Nature documentaries have especially jumped on the scene, with emphases on the natural world, the built environment and/or the animals that reside within them both. The online information can and should still be absorbed, but in documentary form you’ll be uncovering things you may not even think to look up. 

The End of Doomscrolling Doesn’t Mean Staying Uninformed

Even while understanding the impacts of doomscrolling and introducing some ideas to stop it before it starts, an underlying truth still remains: news of all sorts is important and needs to be read.  However, it doesn’t have to be all-consuming or addictive. 
Putting your phone down to take a break and reconnect with the communities around you is directly keeping you informed and fostering growth.

Pillar two of EARTHDAY.ORG’s 2026 Earth Day theme emphasizes the importance of shared interests and interconnected outcomes. This year holds plenty of opportunity to connect your community through shared environmental goals and interests. Host an event in your area and register it through the EARTHDAY map, or join one in a city near you!

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Gen Z climate activists near and far have been tirelessly working to make their voices and dreams heard. And it’s working. The 2026 EarthDay.org theme of “Our Power, Our Planet” has been a theme engrained in these activists’ mentalities for years and they show us what we can achieve when we truly use our power to invoke climate attention and action. 

Three activists: Vanessa Nakate, Xiye Bastida and Sophia Kianni, come from all corners of the globe and are brought to the environmental crisis for various reasons. Fueled by community, identity and language, they are sparking a global movement to dismantle climate injustice and tackle the climate crisis. While the impacts they are making may seem impossible to match or come close to, their efforts boil down to simple, powerful tactics that use their voice to show change is not just necessary, it is entirely possible. 

Vanessa Nakate: The Climate Fight Starts on Your Block  

Frequently, countries that are facing the most severe impacts of climate change are underrepresented in the international sphere. Vanessa Nakate, a Ugandan native, has discovered community-based initiatives as an excellent method to address this and create intersectional representation in the climate movement.

While Africa faces some of the most harsh and tangible effects of climate change like intense water stress, increased heat-related deaths and crippling impacts on agriculture harvests, they are frequently excluded from the climate change conversation. Nakate has directly experienced this injustice. In 2020, at a Switzerland climate summit, Nakate was photographed alongside a group of white climate activists but was cropped out of the photo when it was published. In identifying a way to have an intersectional dialogue in the climate discussion, she founded Rise Up Climate movement to amplify voices of activists from Africa by giving them an online platform to tell their stories. 

Nakate exemplifies what it means to address challenges in ones own community by turning her attention to classrooms in Uganda. Despite facing the brunt of the climate crisis, rural schools in Uganda, and many other nations, are still heavily dependent on fossil fuels such as charcoal to make their classrooms run. In response, Nakate started the Vash Green Schools Project, an idea rooted in community and climate which ended up implementing solar on 75 rural schools while hoping to expand to homes. 

And a community extends well beyond the people who exist in it: it includes the world that we call home. With this in mind, she used her social media presence to promote the tagline “Save Congo’s Rainforest” in hopes of getting attention on the issue and protecting Congo’s rainforest from deforestation. In just two weeks, it was an internationally successful movement when it was given online recognition by Greta Thunberg.

Nakate shows us that a community-based approach has the power to bring local issues to the international stage. Since her efforts began, she has become a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador and made powerful strides across the globe, bringing the attention back to those who need it most. 

Xiye Bastida: Loud, Proud, and Proven

Hailing from San Pedro Topiltepec, a town of less than 500 in Oaxaca, Mexico, Xiye Bastida shows us that no matter if one comes from a big city or a small town, everyone has a voice and deserves to be heard. 

In her hometown, she observed the direct effects of climate change through water contamination and increasing floods. And when her family moved to New York in 2015, she decided to take action. Starting at the young age of 13, she found power in her voice as a way to bridge the gaps between indigenous communities and international organizations of power. Bastida has been able to develop this relationship via climate strikes and speaking on the large, public stage. She has captivated audiences through her TedTalk, “Your inner fire is your greatest strength” which has nearly half a million plays. 

These efforts to speak up and speak loud have not gone unnoticed, especially on an international scale. In 2021, she spoke at the UN Leadership Summit on Climate, at the White House for the Biden administration, and has won international awards, like TIME 100 Next honoree, Forbes Changemaker, and UN Spirit Award, in recognition for her efforts. 
She is also no stranger to climate action and protest. Partnering with Greta Thunberg in 2019, she has gathered hundreds of thousands of high school students and led massive protests down the streets of New York to show the importance of the fight against climate change and the importance of indigenous voices. Bastida understands that this issue is a time-sensitive one and is hoping the world is listening.

Sophia Kianni: Climate Action as a Universal Tongue

90 percent of internationally recognized climate journals are published in the United States or the United Kingdom but at least 6.5 billion people in the world cannot speak the English language. As a result, the number of people who have access to climate science is incredibly limited. Bridging the gap between language barriers is a huge aspect of environmental activism and Sophia Kianni cracked the code.

Similar to the local experiences of Vanessa Nakate, Kianni observed the language barrier of scientific journals when visiting family in Iran and on a school trip to the country. What she struggled to understand was how her relatives there didn’t realize the scope of the climate crisis happening in their backyard due to the lack of translation of climate science. She took matters into her own hands, translating for her relatives before they started to realize the degree to which climate change was impacting their direct world.

By taking her love for family into the application of language, Kianni has grown this into an international movement with her company, Climate Cardinals. What started as a simple care for her community and the environment they live in transpired into a worldwide movement. Climate Cardinals now has 19,000 volunteers in 185 countries and she’s given a TedTalk with 2.5 million plays. Speaking up about the social injustices that result from climate change has led her to be a recipient of Forbes 30 Under 30, the Muhammid Ali Humanitarian Award, TIME’s 100 Next, National Geographic Young Explorer and many more. 

From Bystander to Builder of Change

What a privilege it is to live at the same time as such impactful and inspirational climate activists who have harnessed their passions to achieve monumental results. But if you’re like me, you’re probably overwhelmed by their achievements and wondering how on Earth you could come close to them. 

The good news is that you don’t have to amount to the same level. Use these stories as inspiration and sign up to be a volunteer with EARTHDAY.ORG. From local community action to individual action, we have a plethora of toolkits to help get you started. In line with the 2026 Earth Day theme, you truly have the power to change our planet. Earth Day falls on April 22nd and there are volunteer events around the country with opportunities to activate your power and take the fight against the climate crisis into your own hands. 

This article is available for republishing on your website, newsletter, magazine, newspaper, or blog. The accompanying imagery is cleared for use with attribution. Please ensure that the author’s name and their affiliation with EARTHDAY.ORG are credited. Kindly inform us if you republish so we can acknowledge, tag, or repost your content. You may notify us via email at woods@earthday.org. Want more articles? Follow us on substack.

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