Scrolling Towards Stoicism

It’s 11 PM. You should be asleep, but instead, you’re bathed in the ghostly blue light of your phone. Your thumb moves in a hypnotic, repetitive motion. Swipe. Scroll. Swipe. You’re not looking for anything in particular, but you can’t stop. With each flick of your finger, a fresh wave of information washes over you: a political scandal, a looming environmental catastrophe, a distant war, a celebrity controversy, a stock market dip, an outrageous opinion from someone you’ve never met.

Your heart rate quickens slightly. A familiar knot of anxiety tightens in your stomach. You feel a cocktail of emotions: anger, helplessness, fear, disgust, and a strange, weary sense of obligation to keep looking. This is "doomscrolling." It’s the compulsive, endless consumption of negative news, a uniquely 21st-century ritual of self-flagellation. We do it to feel informed, but it leaves us feeling powerless, anxious, and emotionally exhausted.

We feel as though the weight of the world’s problems is being piped directly into our nervous system, yet we are utterly incapable of doing anything about them. If this feeling is familiar to you, take comfort in the fact that you are not alone. And more importantly, take comfort that one of the most powerful men who ever lived felt it too, and he developed a powerful philosophical operating system to deal with it. Our guide out of the digital abyss is not a tech guru or a wellness influencer, but a Roman Emperor: Marcus Aurelius.

Meet Marcus Aurelius. He was the ruler of the Roman Empire at the height of its power, from 161 to 180 AD. Think of the immense pressure he was under. He wasn't just scrolling through bad news; he was living it. He dealt with constant warfare on the frontiers of the empire, a devastating plague that killed millions, economic instability, personal betrayals, and the crushing responsibility of holding a vast and complex society together. He also had to deal with the loss of his own children and his fragile health.

During these tumultuous years, often while on military campaigns, he would write to himself in a private journal. He wasn't writing for publication; he was writing to remind himself how to be a better, stronger, and more tranquil human being. These personal notes were later collected and published as the book we now know as Meditations. It is one of the foundational texts of Stoicism, and it is, quite simply, the most effective antidote to the anxiety of the modern newsfeed ever written.

The Iron Law of the Universe: The Dichotomy of Control

The entire practical philosophy of Stoicism, and the core lesson of Meditations, can be boiled down to a single, powerful idea, most clearly articulated by another Stoic philosopher, Epictetus: The Dichotomy of Control.

The principle is this: Some things in the universe are up to us, and some things are not.

That’s it. That’s the whole game. The secret to a good life—to a life of tranquility (apatheia) and virtue—is to relentlessly, ruthlessly, and constantly distinguish between these two categories, and to act accordingly.

So what is up to us? According to the Stoics, only our own minds. Specifically: our judgments, our impulses, our desires, our aversions. In short, our choices and our character.

And what is not up to us? Everything else. Literally, everything. Your body (it can get sick), your property (it can be stolen), your reputation (it depends on others’ opinions), and the actions of other people. This category also includes, crucially, every single event that happens in the external world: wars, plagues, politics, the weather, the economy, and, yes, every single headline on your phone.

The Stoic argument is that all human misery stems from a fundamental error: trying to control what we cannot, and failing to exercise control over what we can. We become anxious, angry, and frustrated when we attach our well-being to external events, which are, by their very nature, unpredictable and outside our command.

Applying the Stoic Filter to Your Feed

Now, think about your newsfeed. It is a firehose of things that are emphatically not up to you. A civil war in another hemisphere, a debate in the halls of government, a natural disaster thousands of miles away—these events are the very definition of external. You have no direct control over them.

Doomscrolling, therefore, is a masochistic exercise in focusing 100% of your attention on the category of things you cannot control. It is, by the Stoic definition, a recipe for guaranteed misery. You are willingly chaining your peace of mind to the chaotic and often terrible unfolding of world events.

Marcus Aurelius offers a way out. He would not tell you to bury your head in the sand and be ignorant. He would tell you to apply the Dichotomy of Control as a filter to every piece of information you consume. Before you allow yourself to become emotionally invested in a headline, ask the fundamental Stoic question: "Is this up to me?"

If the answer is no, your task is not to despair, but to practice acceptance. Acknowledge the information, see it for what it is—an external event—and refuse to let it disturb your inner calm. Marcus constantly reminded himself to see events plainly, without adding the second layer of a panicked, emotional judgment. "If you are pained by any external thing," he wrote, "it is not this thing that disturbs you, but your own judgment about it. And it is in your power to wipe out this judgment now." The outrage, the fear, the anxiety—those are your judgments. They are the only things you actually have control over.

From Passive Anxiety to Virtuous Action

This is not a call to apathy. The Stoic is not passive. But their action is directed only toward what is within their control.

The doomscroller feels helpless because they are trying to fix the world with their feelings. They hope that by absorbing enough information and feeling enough anxiety, they are somehow participating. The Stoic knows this is a waste of their most precious resources: their attention and their will.

Instead of despairing about a political situation in a country you will never visit, the Stoic would focus their energy on their own sphere of influence. Are you being a good citizen in your own community? Are you treating your family with kindness and respect? Are you fulfilling your duties at your job with integrity? Are you mastering your own temper? This is the work that is "up to you." The Stoic believes that a better world is built not by everyone worrying about everything, but by everyone focusing on perfecting their own character and fulfilling their own responsibilities.

Instead of being angered by the actions of a politician, Marcus would remind himself, "The people I deal with today will be meddling, ungrateful, arrogant, dishonest, jealous, and surly." He accepted the flawed nature of others as an external fact, like bad weather, and focused only on not letting them corrupt his own character. His duty was not to fix them, but to ensure he himself acted with virtue.

Reclaiming Your Mind

The wisdom of Marcus Aurelius is not about ignoring the world’s problems. It is a practical toolkit for surviving them with your sanity and integrity intact. It is about performing a ruthless triage on your attention, directing it away from the uncontrollable noise and toward the controllable signal of your own life.

The newsfeed wants to convince you that your primary duty is to watch, to know, to feel the anxiety of everything, everywhere, all at once. The Stoics teach the opposite. They teach that your primary duty is to yourself—to the cultivation of your own character and the careful management of your own mind.

So the next time you find yourself falling into the hypnotic scroll of despair, summon your inner Roman emperor. Look at the headline that is making your blood boil or your stomach clench, and ask the simple, liberating question: "Is this up to me?" If it is not, let it go. Close the app. Put the phone down. Your peace of mind is one of the few things in this universe you can actually control. Don’t give it away for free.