scroll fatigue

This is not just weariness caused by constant scrolling but the depression, ennui and anxiety that the scroller is left with as a result of what has become a kind of addiction.  The novelty of each short-form item presented to you gives you a dopamine hit, while the number of small decisions made — when to stay, when to go — tires your brain.  And it is endless unless you make the decision to stop.

Scroll fatigue became common enough to be recognised as a mental state in COVID where being isolated at home with nothing much to do combined with anxiety about the state of the world encouraged the compulsion to scroll.  This searching-for-bad-news scrolling was given the name doom scrolling.  But scroll fatigue is not necessarily associated with negative news.  The addiction  lies in the dopamine hits.