Definition: The brutal, cumulative toll extracted on your attention span, mental well-being, and basic life functionality by endless short-form video apps like TikTok. It’s the brain fog, forgotten responsibilities, and evaporated hours spent watching 15-second clips of dancing pets, life hacks that don’t work, and strangers reacting to other strangers reacting. Paying the Doomscroll Tax means your focus is now fragmented beyond repair, making reading a cereal box feel like tackling War and Peace, all while your laundry molds and your plants wither from neglect.
Example: “Meant to do my taxes hours ago, but I got slapped with a heavy Doomscroll Tax after falling into a TikTok rabbit hole of people restoring rusty knives. Now it’s midnight, and I’m wondering where my ability to concentrate went.” “She paid the ultimate Doomscroll Tax – missed her own birthday dinner because she was too engrossed in back-to-back videos of ASMR carpet cleaning. Her attention span is officially shorter than the average goldfish’s.”