Is doom scrolling rotting our brains?

In my opinion, yes. I think it desensitizes us to new information, content, and experiences. Humans didn’t evolve side by side with the current way of life. However I don’t know how these researchers could prove it. You can’t feasibly conduct a decades long A/B test of people who use and don’t use smartphones or social media, right? At best you could rely on self reported habits maybe? But that doesn’t seem like enough.