How to Stop Doomscrolling and Take Control of Your Social Media Feed in 2026

I don't remember what my resolution is, and therefore, I haven't broken it. Hello and welcome to Outside the Fox, where we explore what's happening online and why it matters. I'm Steve Leyden. And I'm Kim Horcher. Oh, that looked bad. Um, and this is our first Stephen. This episode of 2026. Yeah, we're a couple weeks late. It's It's It's not the New Year's, you know, it's not New Year's Eve anymore, but uh we're still festive. We're still in the mood. Sure. I'm never taking this off. This is like fully going to be part of my wardrobe from now on. Yeah, sorry. I'm underdressed because someone took all of the uh New Year's decorations. Do you want mine?

No, no, I'm talking about you. I'm good. We're all good. We all look great. Oh, so we're we're not doing it? I've I'm I'm not going to I mean, you know, I maybe at some point it'll come back. All right. I don't know. The glasses I could pull off the glasses. Yeah, I think you could. If they were like not made of paper, Mhm. you could incorporate it into a look. Okay, very Aunt Gladys coded. Yeah, you know, as long as you don't pull any sticks or hairs out of your bag, we're good. Well, on that note, what are we talking about today? Well, we are talking about curating our online environments better.

I mean, we talk about so much in January, maybe even parts of February, about our resolutions, and that often involves, you know, um maybe what we eat and changing what we eat. But let's think about that in another way. How does what we see online nourish us, if at all? And I would say for a lot of people, including myself, maybe it's it's I'm just having junk food and um things that are bad for me. I We see so many things online that don't make us happy, like maybe hustle culture, or we'll see things that make us feel left out, or maybe uh perpetuates um some negativity in our lives even. Yeah, 100%. Uh well, first

of all, I'm going to call myself out. Uh the last time we had a New Year's episode, uh we talked about our New Year's tech resolutions, and I uh I proclaimed that I did not care about screen time, that was not going to be one of my resolutions. And then uh I took it back. During the year, I actually became conscious about my screen time. So, we're living in a web of lies. I but I feel like it's like a positive like switcheroo, right? Like it's um you know, if you're going to go back on your New Year's resolution, I feel like it was a positive development to care more about how I'm getting sucked into my device.

Yeah. Um so, don't remember what my resolution is, and therefore, I haven't broken it. You know, it's in the past, and we're moving forward, and that's all you can do. So, I have a bad habit, and that is scrolling and scrolling. And then when asking myself, why do I feel sad? And that is doom scrolling in a nutshell, where you keep watching and you get overwhelmed, maybe a little anxious, at least I get a little anxious watching other content and feeling like, uh I'm not in it. I'm being left behind. Why am I not better at anything? And it's just um I think it's blaming yourself when uh maybe you should blame yourself for doom scrolling instead.

Well, I have a couple of recommendations. We actually did an article or we did a whole episode about doom scrolling um in a couple seasons ago. So long ago that I don't even remember what our recommendations were. I imagine it was something, you know, like uh what I'm about to mention, which is um in uh curating my newsfeed. Um so, I get my news from a few different sources, um but my actual feed itself, I try to be um really thoughtful about what keywords that I'll allow or filter out. Um it tends to be for me focus more on entertainment and tech news and things that are um not as political or like, you know, like big world events or things that um you know, I'm not ignorant of those things. There

are definitely moments in the day where I will go and intentionally read about world news or political news, um but I take a deep breath and I dive in. But I leave it out of my actual feed, so when I'm just casually scrolling through, it's less likely that those things are going to seep in. Every once in a while, there are certain, you know, monumental um you know, breaking news stories that find their way into, especially if they're related to entertainment and tech. Um so, you can't completely avoid it. Um but that's been my little life hack of mostly avoiding doom scrolling. But I would say that it's still just the by the nature of having a feed and um you know, something that constantly refreshes during the day, I do find

myself mindlessly going back to that newsfeed um periodically during the day. It's like we can't allow ourselves to be bored anymore. Anytime you're standing in line, anytime you have a moment where, you know, your brain goes off, the instinct is to reach for your device. I think, you know, tech sometimes or social media sometimes gets a bad blanket wrap, where it's like everything is bad. It's all bad, and not one part of it is good. Mhm. But there are ways to connect with people online. There are people who are not actively terrible, and let's let's focus on the good, if we can. Uh for different feel-good accounts that we can follow in 2026, which we are now in, and it's not New Year's. Yeah, absolutely. Um well, I mean, let's dive

in. I'm curious, who are you following these days? So, a little bit of this is self-promotion. I follow the Grant Imahara Steam Foundation. So, this is a foundation that I work with, and I do contribute to it, which is I do their social videos. And this was made uh Grant Imahara was one of the MythBusters build team. He passed away sadly in 2020. He was a good friend of mine. So, um me and some other much more talented and scientifically mind people uh made this nonprofit to help get Steam education into the hands of all children for free, regardless of their family's income level. So, there's this thing now where you can build uh a robot that fights like in you know, maybe a famous bot-battling

show that Grant participated in. And it's really it's just LEGO and um different Arduinos and tech basic technology that you can program. And um an Xbox controller. And it's a lot of fun. It incites creativity. It's very Well, I mean, it's it's low-cost, but for the kids, it's free. So, that's something that I've really appreciated, and we have different um people who have jobs in Steam, which is science, technology, engineering, arts, and math, uh doing different videos. I think you know a few of them. Yeah. Um who are helping kids show how accessible it could be to have a career in robotics, in uh you know, if things that were related to uh rockets even.

Yeah, that's so cool. I actually used to produce kids content in the Steam arena. So, that this speaks It was a whole other life ago. It was really cool and inspiring to see them um especially we also did like a bot-building like YouTube show, and um it's uh yeah, that's that's really cool to hear. Yeah. Um I mean, I have a few others. Uh I know someone named Well, her name is Dorina, but she goes by DJ Bruha. Okay. Where she creates newsletters and music that are both free and on Patreon, uh that are empowering in dark times, which I know nothing about. And um she's also a weird goth person who I mean that in a very positive way, and she is a big fan of horror, like you are. I think you might enjoy her. Well, I should check her out for sure. Yeah.

Um another one I like is primarily a YouTube channel called Good Times Society, and this is a tabletop RPG actual play channel that is genuinely good fun and not toxic, and I feel like I do need to say that in the tabletop space sometimes. But um they are genuinely good people at the Good Times Society. That's amazing. Yeah. Um well, I could talk a little bit about uh people that I follow. Um this is also a shameless plug. So, uh I One of my first projects for Mozilla was um a YouTube series called Firefox Presents. Um still very proud of it. Um it's it's on our YouTube channel, so check it out. Um there's seven episodes. We followed um different creators and um people who are doing really interesting stuff and uh

basically finding their own um or building their own communities online um around their various causes. Um and some of my favorites include um Xyla Foxlin, who um I understand is a mutual acquaintance. She is my friend, and I did meet her through the Steam Foundation. That's so cool. Because they did There's a whole special on her. I actually interviewed a child who was so inspired by her, she launched a rocket. That's so cool. I mean, she does the craziest stuff. She's like launching Christmas trees into space. She's, you know, doing all She's building canoes out of, you know, like she's a very interesting engineer, and um uh just like all around um you know, interesting, insightful person. Um she's also a pilot. Um and is advocating for mental health in

aviation, and um has a lot of really interesting content around that. Um so, check her out. Um we also did an episode on uh Rachel Maxey, who's a legendary cosplayer, and um she does amazingly complex makeup designs including a lot of horror films that I love and most recently she did a version of Jacob Elordi's Frankenstein and she look like it's like chef's kiss like 10 out of 10 absolutely spot on and every year she does what she calls Maxoween where she does looks throughout the month of October that are extremely elaborate. I think she did Beetlejuice this year and a couple of others those are just off the top of my head but um brings my heart joy for sure. And then the third that I'll mention I

mean there's there's a ton you know you should check out the whole series but I'm very partial to Lex the Lexicon artist who's a nerdcore rap artist and to need to explain that to me. It's like nerd rap and she's assembled a whole community around it and or has tapped into the community I would say. Is it like chip tune or is it just straight up rapping? It's straight up rapping but it's about nerdy subjects and so you know this like near and dear to my heart as a self-professed nerd so but she's also just hilarious her lyrics like Yeah those are some examples we also did a series on the Mozilla channel called Rise 25 that's about people working in tech who are doing

really cool inspiring things and I would check out any of those creators um Yeah that's the I what's funny is that in the making of those series I ended up following a lot of them on social media and their still their stuff still pops up in my feed and it just sparks joy just to see the cool stuff that they're working on but also they're just like genuinely great people that I've I've really enjoyed working with. So that's a great list from both of us not to pat myself on the back but I think maybe people don't necessarily vibe with the things that we love so I wanted to think of what are some essential components that might inspire other people to come up with feeds that are more gentle and kind on themselves

and don't make them want to doomscroll and feel bad and I think something to consider would be someone who genuinely inspires you not necessarily you know an inspirational account where it's full of text adages but something that genuinely makes you feel inspired curious energized and that you vibe with it could be corny sure. Humor is a big one for me someone who makes you laugh um I'm always looking for accounts that can expand my worldview a little bit marginalized voices that I wouldn't necessarily you know immediately consider and kind of reframe things for me and in a cool way. Brands that aren't exploitative I try to be thoughtful about the brands that I allow into my feed and the content that they're making

it's a little bit tricky because I work in marketing so I follow a lot of accounts for research um necessarily like personally. necessarily like them personally but I want to know what they're doing so it does you know I guess maybe in an earlier episode we talked about like the finsta and rinsta accounts like the fake Instagram real Instagram like maybe I need a like have an offline Instagram account that's just like just the besties. Accounts that spark curiosity um I think you know you mentioned steam I'm not necessarily a science person but I do follow a couple of nature accounts that are really interesting and it's just kind of fun to see like little factoids every once in a while or

you know just like cute animal videos. Like genuinely learning something that's in your line of thought so those are things to consider I mean you're going to have to tailor your own feed or you can just copy mine word for word but I don't think that's going to make you as happy as it makes me happy. Yeah. And you know of course there's always the consideration as you're pruning your accounts and your people that you follow I try to be mindful of this every few months unfollowing is with love you know not everybody is necessarily worth your energy there are and it becomes tricky I think when um when you are following people who you're friends with um I just mute them. Yeah I mean that's that's what I would recommend in

in most of those cases because in a lot of cases I still want to stay in touch with them I just might not like their content. I just I'm just want to say there's some people that I feel obligated to follow for um they're going to bully me if I don't. Something else I would recommend which is only something that I discovered recently this isn't a new feature by any stretch of the imagination but there is there's an option in Instagram where you can follow or you can it'll show you a feed of exactly who you follow as opposed to the algorithmic feed of you know I don't want to assign a percentage to it because I'd have to fact-check myself but I would say a vast a chunk of the content that shows up in my feed

tends to be either sponsored content or it's it's being recommended to me because it's similar to other content that I've interacted with before and it's kind of frustrating it's it's very draining. Fully for me it's buy this stuff buy that stuff and if I accidentally click on an ad oh boy will I be inundated with similar stuff to that ad. Yeah and it was such a breath of fresh air when I discovered oh you can actually filter it by just the people that you follow it made me realize oh I do have good taste like these are exactly this is exactly what I want to see in my feed. I can be happy it is possible. Indeed. I'm half joking.

Yeah well I mean as always I like to tie it back to Firefox and to Mozilla and you know really just emphasizing that it's our belief that we have a choice over our digital environments it's worth remembering that it's your feed it's not the platform. Um The sense of relief I just felt in hearing that. 100% you're in the driver's seat it's your feed also a good reminder that we can step away from our feeds once in a while we don't have to be glued to the internet 24/7. Big if true. But what we really want to know is who are you following in 2026 and what makes you feel good online let us know in the comments. Yes and subscribe to the channel if you haven't already and be sure to download Firefox because you

know it's the best thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time and happy new year.