Which States Are Doomscrolling the Most?

In an age where news never sleeps and social media serves up an endless stream of crises, many Americans find themselves caught in a digital loop of bad headlines and worse predictions, a habit now famously known as doomscrolling. But while it's become a national pastime in some corners of the internet, which states are doomscrolling the most?

All About Cookies tracked Google Trends data for more than 20 terms related to negative news, social media, mental health, and more to find the states where people are doomscrolling the most and least across the country.

Key findings

• Washington, DC is the state that doomscrolls the most.
• Washington state, Massachusetts, Utah, and Hawaii round out the top 5 states doomscrolling the most.
• “Bad news” was the most “doomsearched” term in the past year.
• West Virginia is the state that doomscrolls the least.
• Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, and Alabama are the other states in the bottom 5 in terms of doomscroll frequency.

What we did

To determine the states that are doomscrolling the most and least, we collected search volume data for 21 terms or phrases related to negative news, social media, and mental health.

We grouped those terms into six overarching categories, then found the average search volume in each state across all qualifying terms in each category. Categories were then assigned a weighted value, which acts as a multiplier for each category's average search volume. Categories with higher weights are seen as more relevant to the topic of doomscrolling, with lower weights seen as more tangential.

Once those weights were applied, we added the newly calculated averages for all six categories together to assign each state an overall doomscroll score, with higher scores correlating to states where people are more prone to doomscrolling and doomsearching.

Categories and search terms used

Category	Terms	Weight
Emotion-based	Bad news, News anxiety	0.5
General Doomscrolling	Doom scrolling, Doomscrolling	1.0
Financial Worries	Inflation, Recession, Stock market crash, Tariffs	1.0
Social Media	Facebook news, Reddit news, TikTok news, Twitter news	1.0
Mental Health	Phone addiction, Social media addiction	1.0
Specific Crises or Events	Climate change, COVID deaths, Deportation, Mass shooting today, Plane crash, Russian spy, Ukraine war	1.5

Which states doomscroll the most?

There are people in all 50 states who are addicted to news and social media, addictions that are easier to feed than ever thanks to smartphones. However, it is also true that certain states have more of those news addicts than others.

When it comes to doomscrolling, nowhere in the country tops the nation’s capital, as residents of Washington, DC search for terms in multiple doomsearch categories at some of the highest rates in the entire country. This isn’t all that surprising given how many people living in the District of Columbia work in government and government-related jobs, which necessitate higher-than-average knowledge of news and current events. The same applies to nearby Maryland, which is the 10th state where people doomscroll the most.

Another notable cluster of frequent doomscrollers and doomsearchers can be found out west, specifically the Pacific Northwest. Washington state is second only to DC when it comes to the doomscroll column, and the neighboring states of Oregon and Idaho also land in the top 10.

On the flip side, nearly all states where people doomscroll the least are clustered together in the South. West Virginia is where people doomscroll at the lowest rate of anywhere in the country, and the western tail of Virginia is all that separates the Mountain State from the states ranked 2-9. Those states — Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Tennessee, Florida, Arkansas, and Oklahoma — are all connected to one another, painting a picture of the most laid-back portion of the country, at least as it relates to searching for bad news online.

Complete state-by-state doomscroll rankings

	Category Weights:	1.00	0.50	1.00	1.00	1.50	1.00
State	Overall Doomscroll Score (Higher means they doomscroll more)	General Doomscrolling Terms	Emotion-Based Terms	Financial Worries	Social-Media Related Terms	Terms for Specific Crises or Events	Mental Health Terms
District of Columbia	451.5	85.5	72.5	89.0	79.0	79.1	43.0
Washington	394.3	75.5	64.5	73.8	67.3	63.0	51.0
Massachusetts	385.8	69.5	66.0	68.0	67.3	66.7	48.0
Utah	371.6	77.5	65.0	65.5	47.3	54.6	67.0
Hawaii	369.9	98.5	66.0	62.0	51.5	49.3	51.0
Oregon	366.9	70.5	81.5	62.0	63.0	58.4	43.0
Minnesota	364.5	58.5	66.5	67.0	60.3	63.0	51.0
Connecticut	362.3	63.5	74.5	66.8	53.8	62.0	48.0
Idaho	361.5	63.0	83.0	62.0	62.5	47.0	62.0
Maryland	359.8	57.5	57.0	60.3	59.0	71.0	48.0
Delaware	359.6	71.5	76.0	58.8	52.8	62.4	45.0
Wisconsin	354.3	61.0	66.5	66.8	58.5	59.9	45.0
New Mexico	352.6	65.5	75.5	62.5	53.8	56.7	48.0
Wyoming	349.8	37.5	42.5	68.3	64.3	39.0	100.0
Pennsylvania	349.1	53.5	71.5	63.0	64.5	59.6	43.0
Maine	345.8	35.5	74.5	68.8	73.8	65.7	32.0
Vermont	345.6	38.5	47.0	76.3	68.5	60.6	48.0
California	345.3	63.5	65.0	67.3	55.0	56.0	43.0
Virginia	345.0	61.0	66.0	62.0	57.5	59.0	43.0
New Jersey	343.6	61.0	67.0	64.0	58.0	54.7	45.0
Colorado	340.7	62.0	63.0	67.8	50.5	59.3	40.0
Michigan	337.5	56.0	63.0	64.8	53.5	55.9	48.0
Rhode Island	336.1	33.5	76.0	67.8	58.5	49.6	64.0
New Hampshire	333.9	39.0	68.0	72.5	63.0	53.6	45.0
Illinois	332.4	56.0	67.5	62.0	54.8	55.3	43.0
Arizona	330.1	61.0	66.0	65.8	48.5	56.6	37.0
Nevada	329.1	59.5	70.5	61.5	53.0	56.6	35.0
New York	327.0	55.0	62.5	64.8	59.5	53.0	37.0
Kansas	326.6	63.0	64.0	60.8	52.3	52.4	40.0
North Dakota	324.4	17.5	99.0	60.5	57.0	39.3	81.0
North Carolina	323.8	49.5	61.5	62.8	51.0	57.9	43.0
Indiana	322.6	59.5	69.0	61.8	52.5	49.6	40.0
Alaska	321.6	35.0	47.5	65.0	59.0	62.6	45.0
Iowa	318.4	56.0	55.5	60.8	53.8	51.4	43.0
Missouri	315.8	58.5	68.5	58.8	48.3	48.7	43.0
Kentucky	309.5	40.0	66.5	55.5	54.8	48.0	54.0
Ohio	309.2	48.5	64.0	58.3	53.8	53.1	37.0
South Dakota	307.8	26.0	46.0	62.3	59.5	50.0	62.0
Montana	305.9	28.5	71.0	61.5	58.3	49.4	48.0
South Carolina	304.6	44.5	65.0	56.5	52.0	52.7	40.0
Georgia	300.8	55.0	57.0	58.8	45.5	50.7	37.0
Nebraska	299.5	26.5	70.0	61.0	57.8	52.9	40.0
Oklahoma	299.4	47.0	72.5	53.5	50.3	50.3	37.0
Arkansas	289.5	40.0	61.5	56.0	43.5	56.1	35.0
Florida	288.3	46.0	56.5	57.3	45.3	53.0	32.0
Tennessee	286.4	45.0	56.0	54.0	51.8	50.4	32.0
Alabama	284.1	47.0	66.0	50.8	50.3	47.4	32.0
Texas	283.3	53.5	58.5	60.8	39.0	45.9	32.0
Louisiana	278.1	51.0	60.0	49.3	41.5	47.6	35.0
Mississippi	245.5	22.5	59.5	48.8	43.3	44.1	35.0
West Virginia	239.0	17.5	43.5	54.0	50.5	38.9	37.0
National Average	330.0	52.3	65.2	62.5	55.5	54.5	45.4

What kind of doom is every state scrolling?

Having grouped these doom and gloom terms into larger categories, our team wanted to find which variety of doomscrolling is most common in every state.

Searches falling under the “emotion-based” umbrella, such as “bad news” and “news anxiety,” have the highest average search volume (unweighted) in more than half the country (28 different states). Search terms related to financial worries, like “inflation” and “tariffs,” come with the highest average search volume in 17 states.

Four states search for terms related to “general doomscrolling” at the highest rate, while Maryland is the only state where searches related to “specific crises or events” are most common. Finally, Wyoming is the only place where terms related to “mental health” have a higher average search volume than any other category.

The most doomsearched terms

While different states emphasize different kinds of doomscrolling, certain doomsearches carried high search volume all across the country.

Overall, the average search volume across all 50 states and Washington, DC for “bad news” was the highest in the country last year, with an average volume of 85/100. Second was “stock market crash” at 80/100, while the bronze medal of doom went to “plane crash,” which had an average search volume of 70.3/100.

Average search volume for all doomscroll terms

Search term	Average search volume
Bad news	85
Stock market crash	80
Plane crash	70.3
TikTok news	63.7
COVID deaths	63.5
Recession	63.2
Doomscrolling	62.8
Twitter news	62.2
Deportation	60.7
Inflation	55.2
Ukraine war	53.2
Tarriffs	51.7
Reddit news	49.5
Mass shooting today	47.4
Facebook news	46.5
News anxiety	45.4
Phone addiction	45.4
Russian spy	44.8
Doomscrolling	41.8
Climate change	41.6
Social media addiction	38.7

Bottom line

• Find a VPN: Doomscrolling can expose your data — stay private and protected with one of the best VPNs on the market.
• Remove your information from the internet: If doomscrolling has you worried about what’s out there about you, here’s how to remove your personal info from the web.
• Scrub your data: Too much doomscrolling and now feeling exposed? These trusted data removal services can help clean up your digital trail.

Methodology

All About Cookies collected search volume data on 21 terms related to negative news, social media, and anxiety. Terms were grouped into the following overarching categories:

• General Doomscrolling
• Emotion-Based
• Financial Stress
• Social Media
• Specific Crises or Events
• Mental Health

We found the average search volume for terms falling under each category and then added weighted multipliers to each category. Those weighted averages were then added together to find the states that are doomscrolling the most and least, with higher scores correlating to greater doomscrolling behavior.

Searches were conducted in June of 2025, with the time range for the collected data set to the last 12 months.