Are You ‘Doomscrolling?’

If you’ve been staying up late each night reading the sad news about the novel coronavirus, there’s now a term for that, droomscrolling. The Los Angeles Times included the name in a recent article about how coronavirus has introduced a new lexicon of words into our daily lives. The Times describes doomscrolling as “an excessive amount of screen time devoted to the absorption of dystopian news.” But the term isn’t new, a Twitter post from October 2018 used it, and its use could’ve very well happened before then.

Other slang words the pandemic has brought to the internet include

“The rona,” a shortened term for coronavirus
“Zoombombing,” the act of trolls infiltrating video calls to spam them with disruptive and hateful messages
“Covidiot,” an individual who isn’t taking lockdown and social distancing orders seriously, and
“Quarantini” an alcoholic drink for virtual happy hours.