You know the feeling. You pick up your phone to check one notification, and the next thing you know, an hour has vanished. Your thumb has been scrolling, your brain has been absorbing, but you could not tell me a single thing you actually did. You feel hollow. Anxious. Maybe a little bit ashamed. That is doomscrolling, and almost everyone has been there.
But there is another loop, darker and less talked about, that runs on the exact same engine. It is called gooning. The name sounds like a joke, a meme, something that belongs in the corners of the internet where people collect obscure slang. But gooning is not a joke. It is the sexual twin of doomscrolling—same architecture, same damage, same invisible cage. Understanding how they mirror each other might finally help you break free from both.
So what is gooning, really? The term refers to prolonged, trance-like masturbation where the explicit goal is not climax. A person in a gooning session stays in a state of high arousal for hours, often rapidly switching between pornographic videos, images, or live streams. The "goon state" is described as a dissociative, almost meditative numbness where rational thought shuts down and only physical sensation remains. Orgasm is not the point. The point is to stay inside the loop as long as possible.
Does that sound familiar? It should. Doomscrolling is the same thing, just dressed in different clothes. When you doomscroll, you do not scroll to reach a satisfying endpoint. There is no "last article" that makes you close the app feeling informed and complete. The algorithm has no finish line. It wants you to keep going forever, because every second you stay is a second they can sell your attention to an advertiser.
Now look at gooning. Same structure, different content. The gooner deliberately avoids orgasm because orgasm would end the session. The loop must continue. The content must keep coming. The trance must not be broken. In both cases, the natural stopping point has been removed. Healthy behaviors have built-in brakes. You eat until you are full. You exercise until you are tired. You have sex, reach climax, and a refractory period follows. But doomscrolling and gooning have been deliberately engineered to bypass those brakes.
Think about infinite scroll. Aza Raskin invented it in 2006, and he later publicly apologized, estimating that his creation "wastes about 200,000 lifetimes per day." That is not hyperbole. That is a designer looking at his own work and realizing the damage. Gooning does the same thing by rejecting climax. The finish line is erased, and in its absence, the participant floats indefinitely in a chemically sustained present tense.
Here is what you need to understand: your brain does not care whether the content is news or pornography. It cares about the pattern. Unpredictable reward. Variable stimulation. No clear endpoint. Both behaviors hijack your dopamine system—the chemical network that drives motivation, craving, and learning. Dopamine is not about pleasure; it is about anticipation of pleasure. And nothing generates anticipation like an algorithm that serves you an endless mix of emotionally charged content, never repeating, always slightly novel, always promising that the next item might be the one that satisfies.
But the satisfaction never comes. That is the cruel genius of it. The gooner never reaches orgasm, so the craving persists. The doomscroller never finds the definitive answer that would allow them to put the phone down, so the anxiety persists. You are trapped in a state of wanting without having, seeking without finding, moving without arriving. This is not a moral failure. This is a design exploit.
Let us talk about what this does to your mental health, because the damage is real and it is mounting.
Doomscrolling floods your amygdala—the brain's fear center—with threat-related information. Your nervous system locks into fight-or-flight mode. Chronic doomscrollers show measurable increases in anxiety, depression, insomnia, and obsessive-compulsive patterns. One study found direct links between doomscrolling and emotional exhaustion, rumination, and lower resilience. You are not staying informed. You are training your brain to expect catastrophe at every refresh.
Gooning does something similar, but through a different door. Hours of intense, novelty-driven sexual content desensitizes your dopamine receptors. Over time, a person needs more extreme material to feel anything at all. Family psychotherapist Fiona Yassin warns that this pattern mirrors other addictions, creating compulsive cycles that interfere with sleep, mood, and real-world relationships. Adolescents are especially vulnerable; their developing brains can get wired for high-intensity stimulation before they have ever experienced a healthy, mutual sexual connection.
And both behaviors produce dissociation. You have felt it during a long scroll: the way time disappears, the way you forget to eat or use the bathroom, the way you feel like you are watching yourself from outside your own body. Doomscrollers report this constantly. Gooners explicitly aim for that state—a trance where rational thinking stops, where the self dissolves, where nothing exists except the loop. That is not relaxation. That is psychic evacuation. You are not resting; you are running away from something, and the running becomes its own trap.
Here is the part that should make you angry: these loops are not accidental. They are engineered.
Court documents from the first major social media addiction trial in the United States revealed that platforms deliberately employed infinite scrolling, algorithmic recommendations, and autoplay videos to cause compulsive engagement. The jury found in favor of the plaintiff. The companies knew exactly what they were doing. The same techniques power the porn algorithms that fuel gooning. Rapid switching between highly stimulating content trains the brain to expect constant novelty, reducing the ability to enjoy slower, real-world rewards. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is public record.
So what do you actually do about it?
First, stop blaming yourself. Seriously. You are not weak. You are up against systems designed by thousands of engineers whose only metric is time-on-platform. Shame is the enemy of change. Guilt just makes you scroll more to escape the guilt. Drop the self-judgment. It is not helping.
Second, reintroduce endings. Delete the apps that have infinite scroll. Use browser extensions that bring back pagination. Set a timer and obey it. When the timer goes off, close the device and move your body—stand up, stretch, walk to another room. The physical break interrupts the trance. For gooning, the same principle applies: set a hard boundary on session length and stick to it, or use content blockers that interrupt access after a certain time.
Third, find activities that have natural conclusions. A walk that ends when you get home. A book with a final page. A meal you cook from scratch. A conversation that reaches a natural pause. A creative project you can hold in your hands. These are not lesser forms of engagement. They are the only forms that leave you more than you started. Your brain needs to relearn what completion feels like.
Fourth, if you recognize the shape of the gooning loop in your own life—or in the life of someone you care about—do not panic. Compulsive sexual behavior is treatable, and the shame surrounding it is far more damaging than the behavior itself. A good therapist will not judge you. They will help you understand what the loop is numbing, and help you find other ways to meet that need. The same goes for doomscrolling. Cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness practices, and simple environmental changes have all been shown to reduce compulsive scrolling.
Let me be clear: this is not about puritanism. This is not about shaming anyone for their private habits. This is about recognizing when a behavior has stopped serving you and started controlling you. The loop is seductive because it promises to solve a problem it actually deepens. The more you scroll, the more anxious you become; the more anxious you become, the more you scroll. The more you goon, the more desensitized you become; the more desensitized you become, the more extreme the content you need to feel anything at all.
You can break the loop. Not with shame. With intention.
Choose one small change today. Delete one app. Set one timer. Call one friend. Cook one meal. Read one chapter. The loop ends when you decide it ends—not because you are suddenly strong, but because you have finally seen the architecture. And once you have seen it, you cannot unsee it. That is the beginning of freedom.
Find me at:
YouTube : Gaming for Mental Health
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Sources
1. Dazed Digital (2025). Gooning: What happens when a fetish goes mainstream? Explains gooning as a trance-like state involving prolonged masturbation without climax, often with multiple screens, and notes the term's evolution from niche fetish to mainstream slang.
2. Mashable (2024). What is gooning? Breaking down the hypnotic 'goon state'. Defines gooning as "an extreme form of edging" where users stimulate for hours to reach a meditative trance state, with searches for "gooning" up 435 percent.
3. Huffington Post UK (2025). From TikTok to Therapists: Why 'Gooning' Culture Is Worrying Child Experts. Cites family psychotherapist Fiona Yassin warning of neurodevelopmental risks, dopamine spikes, and compulsive cycles, noting that 27% of children have seen porn by age 11.
4. Essence (2025). Let's Talk About Sex: What Exactly Is Gooning? Defines gooning as "hours-long or days-long" sessions focused on the trance state, not orgasm.
5. Psychotherapy Berlin (n.d.). Gooning: Masturbation, sex trend or trance state? Describes dissociation, prefrontal cortex shutdown, reward center activation, and the journey-as-destination philosophy.
6. Ubie Doctor's Note (2026). The Dopamine Warning: How Compulsive Digital Habits Desensitize Sexual Response. Explains dopamine overstimulation, desensitization, and gooning's dopamine-heavy reward loops.
7. Ubie Doctor's Note (2026). The 'Gooning' Secret: What Parents and Partners Need to Know. Lists potential risks: desensitization, compulsive patterns, sleep problems, mood changes, shame, and relationship strain.
8. Henderson Chambers (2026). First social media addiction trial concludes in US. Reports jury verdict that Meta and YouTube used infinite scrolling, algorithmic recommendations, and auto-play to cause compulsive engagement leading to anxiety, body dysmorphia, and depression.
9. Sage Journals (2026). Lost in the Scroll: Investigating Mindless Smartphone Usage Among Adolescents. Defines "mindless usage" as repetitive automatic engagement without goal-oriented intent, enabled by infinite scroll and autoplay.
10. ScienceDirect (2024). Unveiling the dynamics of binge-scrolling. Finds that infinite scrolling contributes to loss of self-control, leading to regret and diminished cognitive engagement.
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