The cure for doomscrolling? Why Tom Cruise stopped a woman mid-scroll

Name: Doomscrolling interventions.Age: Very recent.Appearance: Like Tom Cruise saving a woman from herself.I don’t like the sound of this. No, it’s true. A TikTok video of Cruise has gone viral, showing him comforting a woman who was doomscrolling on her phone.Why was he comforting her? Because, judging solely from her posture, he thought she was in distress.Why did she look as if she was in distress? Because, from behind, doomscrolling gives you the appearance of a depressed person in the midst of an unthinkable crisis.I still can’t understand why we’re discussing this. Because it made people fall even more in love with Cruise, that’s why. After the clip was shared on social media, someone commented on X: “I love this because not one person can call it performative. Just a kind man checking on another human.”But she was just quietly looking at her phone. Don’t you know what doomscrolling can do to you? Studies have shown that it can increase anxiety, depression and psychological distress and cause musculoskeletal discomfort.Admittedly, it isn’t great. This is why the UK government is looking into restricting apps with infinite scroll, to reduce the harm caused by doomscrolling.But these haven’t been enforced yet? No. Currently, the best way to pull yourself out of a doomscroll is to appear so upset that a film star comes over to check on you. My thesis stands. Cruise saved that woman.Wait a minute. How do we even know this happened? Because the woman posted footage of it online.Was someone filming her? Her work CCTV was filming her. Presumably she requested it straight after Cruise saved her life, to use as proof of his miraculous ways.Doesn’t Cruise have a movie out soon? He does: Digger, his first foray into non-action, non-franchise work for years. It’s a real risk for him.Interesting that this video happened to come out now. What do you mean? I’m sure Cruise routinely checks in on people he thinks are in distress. I bet he does it all the time.Weird that there’s no footage of any of the other instances. No, but there are testimonies. On Instagram, someone claiming to be a former colleague wrote: “He did the same thing to me on set! … I was working in front of the camera and just thought it was some grip trying to get my attention and then finally after several attempts I turned around and realized oh snap tom was trying to get my attention.”I’m sure that definitely happened. Are you insinuating that this was staged as a piece of movie promo?Maybe. Let me look into it. Go ahead. See what TikTok has to say about it.OK, doing that now. And how is it going?Hang on, still scrolling. I see where this is heading.Scrolling … scrolling … Cruise isn’t going to come to save you, you know, but nice try.Do say: “When you doomscroll, you give off negative body language.”Don’t say: “Tom, save me, I’m looking at cat videos again.”