Dougal Sutherland: The benefits of 'dreamscrolling'

A new phenomenon has emerged: dreamscrolling.  

The opposite of doomscrolling, dreamscrolling has people looking at dream purchases or things they’d one day like to own – houses being a common choice. 

It even seems to have some benefits when done in the workplace, both to those doing it, and the organisation. 

Dougal Sutherland reveals a couple of the key benefits it can have:

- Dreamscrolling gives us that little psychological “hit” of joy, even if it’s about something imaginary! When we fantasize about the “what-if” it’s like, for a moment, we’re living our best life in that dream house – and it feels good. 

- Overseas research has shown that dream scrolling can help some people with financial planning as it serves to motivate and inspire them to actively save for, or invest in, that thing they’re dreaming about. So it can help motivate us and change our behaviour for the future. 

- At a time when many of us might be feeling a bit down in the dumps, particularly if you live in Wellington or work for the government, it’s probably not surprising that a good chunk of dreamscrolling happens at work. That might not be a bad thing though as the boost in positive mood you get can flow through to how you engage with your work and people around you. And it’s certainly better than doomscrolling! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
You're listening to the Saturday Morning with Jack team podcast
from News Talks, that'd.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Be you've heard of doom scowling, but have you heard
of dream scrolling. It's a new phenomenon and apparently lots
of us are doing it, even if we don't know
about dream scholing or haven't heard that term before. Google.
Sutherland is a clinical psychologist with Umbrella well Being and
is with us now, Kilder Google Sure to.

Speaker 3 (00:30):
Jack, Yes, I've been dreams scrolling away this week without
even realizing I've.

Speaker 1 (00:34):
Been doing it.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
I'm a dream scholar. I'm a dream scholar. I had
never heard of this term until you drew my attention
to it. But I'm a dream scholer. So why don't
you tell us what it is?

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Oh? I know, I hadn't either, But I picked up
this piece of research from trade me and they were
talking about it about and it's that phenomenon of where
you scroll through, and particularly they were talking about it
in terms of looking at houses that are way out
of your budget, like the multi billion dollar houses in
Queenstown or somewhere like that, and that you know, and

(01:05):
it's like, oh, yeah, I do that. I do that too,
and it's really fascinating about some of the stats they
pulled out of it. But yeah, it's that looking at
things that we dream of buying, I guess, and scrolling
through that, particularly around but not limited to property.

Speaker 2 (01:20):
Yeah, and it's not even a social media thing when
you think about it, right, So like property, think about
you know, we've just had New Zealand's best homes with
Phil Spencer, you know, none of which I could come
remotely close to being able to afford, even if I,
you know, work hard for the next three hundred years.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
You know.

Speaker 2 (01:37):
But obviously I think all of us like to suspend.
It's not necessarily about owning it. It's about Yeah, there's
something nice about kind of just suspending reality of owning.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
It, right, I look, I think the bits of both
there is definitely I think we get that hit of
you know, imagine if I live there and just for
a moment you go off into your little dream world
and you are living, you know, living in that place.
But interestingly, some of the stats I saw, they were
about you know, some people actually use it to kind
of set a goal for for finances, you know, they

(02:07):
actually think I want to own it. Maybe not that
particular one. But but something like that, or a step
down from that would be I think about a third
of people said they did it to find inspiration. You know,
they go, oh, well, I could never own that, but
yeah I really like that that idea or that that
particular aesthetic or whatever it is. And it's like, oh, yeah,

(02:28):
I've definitely done that. We you know, we did up
our kitchen a few years ago, and you know there's
lots of dream scrolling going on there. But it's like,
oh yeah, I could could definitely do it.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Give you that. Yeah, it does it because and there
must be like there must be I don't know, physiologically,
it must give you. It gives you a little head
of something, right, whether it's dopamine or whatever else, that
you do get some sort of pleaser or satisfaction from
a day.

Speaker 3 (02:52):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, one assumes that it's a little dopamine
that's that sort of feel good factor in the brain,
which is truck. Dopin is always tricky, right, because it
rewards you even when the things that you're doing aren't particular.
You know, somebody once said to me, doth means a
morally a morally ambiguous substance. It doesn't really care what

(03:15):
you're doing, whether it's good or bad. It just gives
you a hatty anyway. Yeah, and it's interesting for this
dream scoll and the trade me stuff. I think showed
that that about twenty percent of people did it at work, right,
and you know, and that they or some people did
it on the toilets even, but that's probably not quite
so relevant. But yeah, you know, and I definitely have

(03:35):
seen I've done it myself at work. You know, you're
wanting a sort of a brain break for a few
minutes and you just jump on your phone and scroll
through what the latest listings are.

Speaker 2 (03:43):
Do you think there's any difference to like, is there
any downside to it apart from not being very productive
at work or very productive toilet?

Speaker 3 (03:51):
The productivity, Yeah, the productivity thing's interesting because yeah, obviously
in that moment you're not being productive. Yeah, but actually,
if you think about it as taking a little five
minute brain break from if you've been doing an intense
musiccentration for an hour or so, which is actually quite
a long time. There was some research in Japan that

(04:12):
they did a few years ago on that they had
that concept of kawaii, which means cute and if you
look at and this was sort of an early version
of dream scrolling. I guess if you looked at scrolled
through pictures of you know, happy animals and fluffy goats
and all that kind of thing, it gave you that
same sort of hat. But interestingly, afterwards, after you'd looked

(04:33):
at that, your concentration and productivity at work increased for
the next hour. So it actually can have I mean,
if you were doing an hour upon hour, it would
obviously be downside of work, but I think actually it
can have a positive spin off if you do it
at work, but it may not please the boss very
much if they catch you doing it.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
No, no, see, I was reflecting on my own dream scrolling,
and I have I think in a way just kind
of subconsciously made it, well, maybe not even subconsciously, maybe
consciously made it part of my routine. So in the evening,
like my wife and I will often watch a little
bit of TV or something together, and then she will

(05:12):
want to watch a show that she's interested in it,
and I'll start to kind of wind down before bed.
And I often find that when I jump into bed,
I read a lot, but I read on my iPad,
and so I turn off the blue light on my iPad.
But I've sort of got to this intermediate thing where
when I get into bed, I like to sit there
for fifteen minutes or so and dream scroll. So I go,
and I mean trade me very cheeky. They've got this

(05:33):
new if you go into the trade meet property app,
they have this new area where they have pool side
the properties we love, and so it's got a category
pool side Paradise, beach front beauties, luxury homes. Yeah, they
views to love. And so of course you're like, oh, well,
I'll just I'll have a look at this eight million
dollar house that I couldn't dream of having. And but

(05:54):
for some reason, I find it just personally, I find
it as like a really it's kind of totally mindless,
and it helps me kind of disconnect from the stresses
of the day by just my brain is almost less
active than it is when I sleep, you know.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Look, I mean I think that trade
me data shows that about forty percent of people did
it did it to unwind when they're in bed. And look,
I think I think there's some real benefit in that.
I'm always you know, somebody once said to me the
mood that you go to sleep in is the mood
that you sleep in. So if you go to beds,
you know, if you go to bed irritable and angry,

(06:31):
then you often have an irritable, angry kind of sleep. Yeah,
so it makes really good sense. I think if you're
using it to relax and to feel good when you
when you get into bed and go to sleep, you're
probably increasing the chances of actually having a reasonably better
night sleep than you might otherwise. So I think it's
probably you know, it's probably one of those really useful

(06:51):
sort of self care techniques which is probably quite good.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
And probably honestly much better than social media, Like if
you do that as opposed to just going on and
getting angry you know, yeah, commenting on things or Yeah.
I suppose some social media has a kind of a
dres scroll element to it, doesn't it, depending on what
you follow, on what platform you're using.

Speaker 3 (07:10):
Yeah, it can do, I mean, and it's interesting too,
you know, going back to that point about dophamine, you'll
get that dopamine hit from the fact that people have
liked your angry comment, which nicely illustrates that sort of
moral ambiguity of dophamine. But you know, yeah, I would say,
if you want a good night's sleep, way better to

(07:30):
be dream scrolling on your phone than sort of scrolling
through sort of nasty, you know, comments on whatever your
social platform is. Yeah, because it would be you know,
it's it's going to give you and put you in
a much mereter place to go to sleep.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, no, fantastic. I totally agree with that. But it's
always good though, if you can get off the internet ultimately,
I usually do that intermediate step TV. Yeah, a bit
of dream scrolling and then a bit of reading and
then good night and.

Speaker 3 (07:58):
Yeah yeah yeah, yeah, no, it's perfect.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
Yeah, very good. Hey, thanks so much. Doogal appreciate it's
always Google suddling. Clinical psychologists from Umbrella Well Being with
us there.

Speaker 1 (08:06):
For more from Saturday Morning with Jack Tame. Listen live
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