There is a great habit-breaking app called “One Sec.” You configure it with your addicting apps or websites and it uses iOS shortcuts to interrupt you when you open them, and make you wait for some time — optionally with the selfie camera open — and confirm you really want to open it. It’s extremely effective and I highly recommend it. I don’t have it anymore since it led me to eventually delete Instagram and I never looked back. Although I should reinstall it and apply it to YouTube shorts…
Wow, that is a fantastic idea. Basically interrupting the instant gratification loop by just enough to let the more rational mind get a word in.
Another tool that I've found to be incredibly helpful for breaking app-addition is the colorblind accessibility tool. You can use it to make the entire phone greyscale, which entirely defeats a huge range of techniques that apps and feeds use to draw your attention. Tiktok in greyscale I would estimate is 1/10th as likely to pull me into a 5+ minute video binge vs the full color version. And 1/100th as likely to pull me into a 90+ minute video binge (which unfortunately does happen to me in full color).
> You can use it to make the entire phone greyscale, which entirely defeats a huge range of techniques that apps and feeds use to draw your attention
As a counter-anecdata: I've had my phone in greyscale for a few years now. At first it worked amazingly, made me hate my phone and pickups dropped significantly. But over time I realized "Oh wait, 90% of my phone use is text and this is actually super nice for reading".
Now I use my phone just as much as before, except in greyscale.
+1 for One Sec, a fantastic app, if one has the patience to wire it up using Apple’s first-party Shortcuts app (which is probably the main reason most normies aren’t going to use it). Really helped curb my Instagram usage down from about ~15 minutes per day to around ~5 minutes/day at most, and often now a few days go by without me checking the app at all. It is remarkable how much a 4, 6, or 10 second wait will just cause me to say “nah, forget it, I don’t care anymore”. Like, how much of a dumb ape am I?
I personally prefer ScreenZen. It is a lot less restrictive on the free version and you can just tip once to get full access instead of a subscription. It also has a system where you can “earn back” app unlocks if you don’t use the app for the full allotted time, which encourages using your apps even less rather than feeling like having to make the most of your unlock.
I use https://steplimit.com/ to both cure my Reddit addiction and to walk more. You earn minutes on your tracked app(s) by walking. If you run out of minutes, either stop scrolling or go for a walk. It's so simple and so effective.
Whenever I see something like this, I think wow this is gonna be so effective and change my life and then two weeks later it’s uninstalled and I’m slack jaw standing over the sink browsing Instagram
Scrolling is a bad habit. It's hard to kill habits outright, so you need to replacement.
Step one is figuring out what triggers the habit. Step two is finding a replacement.
Something that worked for me is keeping certain websites to the "big screen" (aka my computer). If I want to browse Reddit I have to get up and go to my PC. I've blocked it on my phone. For me, scrolling on my PC is a little more managable because hey while I'm there and looking at Reddit, I can open up a terminal and update my packages, or check my todos, or put on music...
I've struggled at times with various app blockers and limits. Most of them are just a little too easy to disable — or they prevent usage altogether.
AppBlock on Android has a feature that allows you to continue using an app after your time limit is up — if you're willing to wait 3 minutes without swiping to another app. And then, by default, it'll kick back in 15 minutes later.
I’ve found the most effective tool to be uninstalling the apps, being logged out in the browser, then building up a deep resentment for the manipulative practices these apps/sites employ.
Friends send me links on Instagram all the time and it’s always a multi-step process to see it in the browser without being logged in. It’s half-broken and super annoying. If a search query sends me to Instagram, it just breaks 80% of the time and locks me out. If I click on any of the bait designed to lure people into view more content, it will throw up a wall and require downloading the app or logging in. This all serves to fuel the hate I have for these platforms. If they’re going to make it that hard to use, I don’t want to use it, and there must be very powerful and financially motivated reasons why they are pushing me toward a certain engagement model.
I once took screenshots of all the BS I had to go through when he sent me one of those links, so he could see how bad it was and stop spamming me with every other video in his algorithm. At the time it was a 3-4 step process of dismissing modal windows for every link he sent.
One person who texts me most often primarily sends vapid social media content. I disabled notifications on his texts and check them on my time, skipping most of them. I don't feel the need to cut someone out of my life who I've known for 20+ years over their instagram addiction (which seems to be what you're implying if I read between the lines).
The big AI push has made him more interested in what is happening with all these tech companies and he doesn't like it. I'm trying to use it nudge him off these platforms run by companies he claims to despise.
Interesting comparison, because the behavior in question (doomscrolling, inability to manage compulsion, time mismanagement) is definitely linked to ADHD/depression.
I am the developer of an app in similar genre called Run for Fun which lets you block addictive apps of your choosing until you exercise (run, walk, bike, climb stairs, exercise to burn calories etc). It's very customizable depending upon how aggressive you need it to be:
One sec broke my habit for a month or so but then it got back to “normal”. A friend of mine developed Amba - with that you need a physical nfc chip to unlock your apps. Ofc im biased but for me it works way better.
I use the Minimalist launcher on Android and it's working pretty well. I have a rule that I don't use Facebook on Brave, and I have Chrome behind a wait, as is Reddit. I uninstalled other addictive apps, (e.g. Instagram, Facebook App) because I just don't use them anymore. Working better than I expected.
YouTube also added a shorts timer that does a more in-app version of this that you can set to 0 minutes to have it always on. It's under "time management" in the app settings. Can't do it on the website from what I'm aware.
For me it’s shorts and opening new tabs from the recommended videos on the one I’m currently watching… I usually never get to them though. Luckily I don’t have tab hoarding addiction and aggressively close all tabs whenever I realize I’ve got 20+ of them open.
There is a great habit-breaking app called “One Sec.” You configure it with your addicting apps or websites and it uses iOS shortcuts to interrupt you when you open them
Also effective (in my experience) is to use the Accessibility settings to turn down the screen saturation 90%.
A black-and-white phone is far less tempting to use, and quickly becomes tiresome.
I deleted Instagram a few years ago. Unfortunately too many restaurants and friends want to connect there so I recently re-installed.
I was lucky to never get addicted but, not making excuses, the moment I open the app, I click the logo at the top and pick "Following" and then I see only my friends. Of course it's not sticky (roll-eyes) but at least there's a way to mostly avoid the algo
I definitely miss some aspects of instagram. It was the reels that killed me. Not worth the mental cost. But I have no idea what my friends from college are up to these days because I don’t have that background knowledge informed from the 1% of posts in my feed that were actually personally relevant.
Overall I definitely feel mentally healthier without that app though.
Personally, my recent and surprisingly greatest win was to set up my old phone (samsung S21) with the addictive apps, removing them completely from my iPhone.
Quite literally "cold-turkey'ed" from 4.5-ish hours/day to 2 hours a day in a single day, consistent over the last few weeks.
I set up my second phone with a custom homescreen, and installing the 'bad' apps on there (Instagram, Youtube, NYTimes in particular). I dont use it for other apps.
Now if I want to scroll, which I still do sometimes, I have to walk to a specific chair next to which my 'addiction phone' is, I'll scroll for 10-15 minutes, and get back to the real world. I used to have particular issues with scrolling during vibe-coding sessions, and I'm genuinely surprised how well this approach worked for me.
cold-turkey doesn't seem to be the right phrase here, but i do agree with your overall point. i really do treat my scroll sessions as like a cigarette break, which, in a funny way, helps me feel better about wasting the time. it's an indulgement of a vice :p
I've combined my scrolling with my smoking to get two birds stoned at once. I'm currently trying to combine working out, scrolling, and smoking, for ultimate productivity.
Doing curls while curls of smoke rise skywards from the glowing ash, no-hands smoking, cigarette specifically yet casually balanced between two lips. Breathe in, breathe out.
At work I curbed most of my internet wandering by turning off all the autocomplete and history of the browser. When I close the browser, everything is wiped. This way I have to explicitly type in the site url instead of an autocomplete in the url bar or history suggestion. I don't do anything personal on a work computer anyway so I don't need to log into anything.
On my phones it's even easier: no apps save for absolutely necessary. If I need an app while traveling or whatever, I install it only for the necessary duration then uninstall it when done.
I edit my /etc/hosts file and send domains that I've realized I'm addicted to (ahem, lichess) to 0.0.0.1
This gives enough friction to the point, when I muscle-memory type the URL in a browser, and get an unreachable error... after a while I learn to just... break the habit.
I think more people should set up their iPhone using Apple Configurator, a Mac app used to control apples mdm solution.
You do have to factory reset your phone for this once, but after that you have extremely granular control over what you can and can’t do.
It’s much more powerful than the parental controls system and much harder to circumvent.
I use it to straight up disallow a bunch of apps and websites (tiktok, Reddit, YouTube, etc.)
For a while I even uninstalled safari which you can just do with this. Not having a browser at all on your phone is a neat experiment and really changed how I interact with tech on the go.
I did eventually install safari back, but overall I prefer the Apple Configurator setup a lot over any of these kinds of apps.
I'm occasionally offline outside planes and the amount of times I pull out my phone to "google something really quick" is high.
You can already disallow apps without an MDM, but I'm curious what else you can do with it. I generally uninstall apps like Instagram so it takes a minute to even download it again, but it gives me a way to download it, post something and delete it once a week or so.
I found an incredibly simple solution for this. Screen time in iOS can block specific websites and apps installed on your device.
Set harmless time limits - 5 min for instagram. 2 mins for Reddit.com etc.
Ask your spouse or a friend you trust to set screen time passcode. You can’t bypass it and you’re not going cold turkey either or losing an important utility like Safari.
Doom scroll all you want in 2 mins then it’s locked for the day.
I thought so too, but I went in with the mentality that most things I just quickly look up are probably not all that important and nothing of value would be lost if I couldn’t do that anymore. The few things for which that isn’t true can probably wait until I am sitting in front of a computer.
That part honestly worked out pretty great. The first few days were excruciatingly boring, but I quickly adjusted and learned to spend more time with my thoughts.
I ended up reinstalling a browser because there were too many establishments that expected me to have a phone with a browser.
With mdm you can really control the phone top to bottom. Whitelist domains, global http proxy, allowed Wi-Fi connections, fully disable cameras, airdrop, the list goes on.
Most of it isn’t super interesting to manage doomscrolling habits.
What drew me to it is that you can’t change the setup without connecting to the Mac, a solution I find much more comfortable than having a friend type in a pin, as well as easily restricting domains and apps including system apps.
For example something I still do is disabling all mail clients including the system one. I don’t need email on my phone. It’s an inherently asynchronous communication medium and it can definitely wait until I’m home.
As someone who used to have actually slow phones before: this will not help your doom-scrolling. You will still doom-scroll, but you'll just be frustrated and miserable due to the lags. You're welcome.
My solution to doom scrolling on the desktop was to edit my /etc/hosts file to disallow me from going to the offending sites. After a few weeks, the habit was broken and I didn't even miss them anymore.
I did have something similar, but in my case it was an involuntary favor from Meta, as they presented a blocking screen asking whether I agree to use my personal information for targeted ads. The options were I agree or I pay. So I just wouldn't click either and hence I just couldn't access their sites anymore lol. (yeah well, I didn't give up that easily originally, as funnily enough you could find methods to bypass the screens and the APIs in apps would still fully work and let you use it, but it was more trouble than worth it eventually)
There was also Twitter, which had also solved the problem by itself. After the take-over, the quality of content rapidly plummeted so hard, at certain point I just didn't feel like ever visiting the site again.
So I'm almost thankful to these companies for actively pushing people out like that, y'know? I'm just sorry for people still stuck in there, it must be even more miserable presently...
For those who don't use it already, the following is a great compilation of curated block lists you can put into your etc/hosts file to block traffic :)
Maybe it can work to some degree for some people. But there are other methods that should help much more effectively, without being self-destructive and miserable. I view this solution in similar categories as, say, suggesting someone should drunk themselves off to the point of passing out, because you know... at least they won't scroll at that point probably? And yet there are some very obvious downsides of such approach.
I mean if someone wants to try something in this direction, but without the misery, I'd suggest things like making the screen monochromatic, which will make the content seem less appealing to the brain, but without that being a nuisance.
I have recently fully switched to a flip phone running AOSP.
After years of fiddling with OneSec and others this really has been the only solution that has worked for kicking my screen addition.
Best thing - with AI I can quickly build APKs for whatever I actually need! I build an app to give me turn by turn directions and (ironically) an app to talk to Claude w/ web search. I feel like I'm living in a world of truly personalized software.
I find the interface itself (number pad with t9, tiny screen) to be the most important part of dissuading compulsive use. Would highly recommend!
This is a really cool idea.. I've used the app limiters (screenZen, Opal) and honestly they really helped limit my screen time and I've been able to transition away from having to use them. I wonder what the psychological difference between limiting access to apps and making the overall experience less smooth, whether friction at the network level can feel like a more natural nudge, where I found app blockers could at times feel like your fighting yourself. Would be interested to see retention data and the sustainability comparing the two approaches.
Something that's been working for me the last few weeks is turning off all cookies on the safari browser. That, plus no addictive apps seems a solid combo. I've been pleasantly surprised by how few sites break, and how effectively all social medias lose their flavor.
I can still view the occasional instagram post or tiktok vid I get sent via instant msg but since it has to be opened on desktop mode in a browser I don't risk spending more than a few seconds on it.
Brilliant. Too bad there's apparently no built in way to do it.
I was reminded of when Apple started slowing down the CPUs on older phones. Would be nice if you could just configure that on first run. "How addictive would you like your phone to be, sir?"
It definitely downclocks the chip, but it also does some other stuff like capping the frame rate on the display, which (to me, ymmv) goes a long way towards making the phone "feel slower".
My (teenaged) kids frequently let their phones go into low battery and then run in power saving mode for hours, when one of them hands me their phones it's super jarring and feels awful to use coming from my 120hz phone haha.
It's funny, I'm on a Delta flight right now with bad wifi and a few minutes ago I was thinking about how slow internet access completely changes my browsing habits to be more deliberate.
Example from a few seconds ago: I frequently click into HN user's profile pages when I read an interesting comment from them as I scroll past. At home, it loads ~instantly even on 5G. But when it takes 5-7 seconds to load one, you get a lot more thoughtful about navigating your browser.
There's definitely something interesting about intentionally downgrading your own experience in targeted ways.
On android you can do so from developer mode, but it's a blanket throttle for the whole device. I've been using mine with a 5mbps cap for a few years now.
The truth is that none of these apps can really make your distracting phone into a smart dumb phone because of Apple's limitations on their power. And yet, Apple's own tool, screentime, also can be easily bypassed.
The solution is Mobile device management (MDM) using Apple Configurator. All you need is a Mac and your iPhone and you can make it impossible to install distracting apps, create un-bypassable limits, and disable Safari. It's all very customizable and is the only solution that worked for me.
One sec is the second best to this in my opinion, but would be greatly improved if you could make it un-bypassable.
Something really rubs me the wrong way about apps that are supposed to make you healthier like One sec or meditation apps that are filled with trackers or ads.
That's another win for one sec as they only collect a bit of telemetry, no insane tracking.
There's also a way to do this on Android if someone is curious I can link my explanation of it.
That is a very neat solution. Can still get a little and then you get less than a little.
Personally I just deleted the accounts and apps but that doesn't work for everyone.
Also my phone is a 7 year old Oppo something that had a low end Mediatek CPU that sucked from day one. I fear how it would handle any doomscrolling app, it would probably physically eject the media decoder out of the phone after a minute.
I did something similar. I like to keep my phone limited (the only real useful/joyful things on it for me are family pictures, music and maps). So I used an iphone SE until it fell apart, now I use an iphone mini that doesn't have enough storage so it offloads all but the top ten apps I use.
I didn't make it slow and buggy on purpose though. Apple did that for me with Liquid glass. Which I guess works!
This is a method, but it's the underlying issue that needs to be resolved.
People doomscroll primarily to avoid certain thoughts/feelings/situations.
The way out of it is to:
1. Note that you're avoiding something.
2. Identify what it is.
3. Face it.
This is an addiction and reaching for the phone is just what gives relief to whatever pain one might be experiencing. Just removing that is laying ground for a substitute.
> This is an addiction and reaching for the phone is just what gives relief to whatever pain one might be experiencing. Just removing that is laying ground for a substitute.
This model would not suggest the results seen in studies like this:
While a popular refrain, this is not the only reason one might engage in avoidance. Furthermore, even if it is rooted in a pain, not everyone will be motivated optimally by thinking of it as something that must be analyzed and extracted. One can simply be bored without it being a pathology.
If one is so constantly bored that doomscrolling turns into an addiction, then that person most certainly is suffering from some kind of psychological imbalance. Occasional boredom is normal, constant boredom is not.
>One can simply be bored without it being a pathology.
yes but the point is that the people who doom-scroll cannot be bored, boredom is exactly what they want to avoid.
People who constantly have their phone in their hands often want to avoid boredom because when you're bored your mind wanders and you have to encounter in silence, your own thoughts. Which now a lot of people are uncomfortable with.
Just like people who overeat sure you can brute force yourself to stop doing it, but you're going to have much more success if you understand why you're engaging in an unhealthy habit, what you're trying to suppress, and then what you want to do instead. People struggle to break bad habits, and sustain changes when all they have is a reactive attitude of "I don't want to do it".
This should be at the top. It pisses people off because we reflexively think “I’m not a weak-willed procrastinator” or “I’m no addict” or “it’s not that simple”, but it is the truth, and the way to fix it, and harder than it sounds. We get frustrated looking for a dopamine hit elsewhere so we get it from a source we know. Running away from that source isn’t enough to end up running towards the behavior we want, there are a million different undesirable ways to get the hit.
"don't change anything unless you can completely solve the root cause [assuming you have accurately identified it]" is really not backed up by research.
everyone around me who has been starting it is on roughly a ten month waiting list. so they should try nothing until then + several sessions until hopefully figuring something out? some are on their third such cycle because the earlier ones were downright hostile therapists (they're people, just like every profession, they're not all good or effective).
Years ago, during a company design committee review for a major product launch, I was the only one who raised concerns about the iOS flat design trend. Icons were getting more and more abstract. The newer versions literally required users to be familiar with the previous icon version (the waves, the microphone, etc.) just to understand what they meant. To be fair, I am totally okay with moving away from the floppy disk for the "save" action, but we went too far in other icons.
That trend reminded me of a friend who volunteered at the SF Central Library. They told me how seniors would come up asking how to use their Kindles, and they would simply write down instructions in physical notebooks: how many icons from the top and which sequence in order to bookmark a page or swap a book.
I see this with my own parents during overseas troubleshooting calls. It is an unpleasant, overwhelming experience for both sides. I used to get frustrated whenever my dad asked whether he should press "Next" on a screen, even though it was the only button available in the setup flow.
For him, that pause wasn't a lack of technology background. It was complete paralysis. He was nervous that one wrong click would break everything. Different mental models don't help, and our industry keeps making it worse.
The rate of technology is just too fast. AI is making things even faster and not necessarily easier, there will just be more apps to try, more buttons to click, and more content to swipe. More is not always good for my parents' age.
But I wouldn’t make the phone slow for them either. The one good thing about technology now is that systems can finally understand context better than 10 years ago when I was debating teams on interfaces for video calls. We have better tools now to meet users where they actually are.
The meaning of design is different than the meaning of technology. It is less about how we can show users this, and more about why we need to show users this.
I am taking a technology break myself right now (getting away from reels and tweets) and just reading Hacker News. This is where my head is at. I want to stop designing for the endless cycle of engagement, and start designing for: “presence”.
> I used to get frustrated whenever my dad asked whether he should press "Next" on a screen, even though it was the only button available in the setup flow. For him, that pause wasn't a lack of technology background. It was complete paralysis. He was nervous that one wrong click would break everything.
To be fair, your fathers caution is not unwarranted.
As a toy example, a few years back Amazon updated their checkout flow so that clicking 'next' defaulted to the paid shipping; you really have to pay attention to find the free shipping option.
clicking next in a world of dark patterns is a bad idea.
Frontend developers must do this to their browsers too. Sure, your M5 Max or i7 on a 1gbit connection runs things well... but does it run well on a mobile cpu with flaky 4g?
I simply didn't get a smart phone. I had to get a new vertical flip phone last year — $80 plus tax to own it outright (and I think they gave me some credit on my pay-as-you-go balance too) — in order to migrate to 4G, but I was definitely not about to take the opportunity to get anything fancy. I do my computing, and my "app" usage, at home on my desktop (and play games on a dedicated handheld), thank you.
The one thing that's kept me from this path is tickets to events. Getting into a concert or MLB game without a smartphone is nearly impossible these days.
Imagining a version of this that scales by how long I've been using the phone since the screen's been off. If I need to check something quickly, I want the internet and processing to be fast, because checking my phone a lot is fine with me – just not zoning out for long periods of time. First 60s or so unpenalized. Then beyond that, if I'm getting close to my daily target, it starts throttling. A little longer than 60s? Maybe only a bit slowed down. 5min? I want it to get cronchy. Not sure network's the right axis though. Maybe actual screen responsiveness?
>Luke (thinking): I shouldn't be looking at Reddit. Why can't I stop?
>After years of trying various methods, I broke this habit by pitting my impatience against my laziness. I decoupled the action and the neurological reward by setting up a simple 30-second delay I had to wait through, in which I couldn't do anything else, before any new page or chat client would load (and only allowed one to run at once). The urge to check all those sites magically vanished--and my 'productive' computer use was unaffected.
I have a much simpler solution. I read before my son (5) one to two books, and he is allowed to watch a short movie (Lego technics, marble run, that kind of stuff). Sound is OK, if it is relaxed (so not music with 120 BPM, but lo-fi OK). Then he watches something of about 10 minutes. If he has to go to school tomorrow, he knows that's it, but in vacations and weekends he may watch another one. After he is done, he likes to pick the next movie for tomorrow (very important for him).
Having grown up with an unreliable sluggish gsm dial up connection when the web was already getting heavier payloads, and forced to have developed the virtue of patience and love of progress bars, I think this might work with latency intransigent people, but I know I will blank stare into the load spinner to get my doom ration.
Hard blocks (gotta re enable noprocrast here asap) and behavioral nudges like keeping an ebook with page open positioned inconveniently close and my phone out of reach work better for me.
"It was a bit ironic to spend that much on a phone just to build the thing that would slow it down."
That doesn't seem ironic to me, it seems economically foolish. Why not simply buy an older phone?
Okay, reading further down. Really this is just an advertisement for an app they made targeted to people without self control who watch videos on their phone too often.
Your comment carries disdain for people who lack "self control" from engaging with algorithms that are proficiently designed to keep you engaged with the content, as if checking little boxes in the user's grey matter. Does your grey matter have foolproof methods to avert manipulation from processes that have billions of dollars and thousands of man hours poured into figuring out how to keep you engaged? Are you immune to tricks being developed in the future right now? Who's to say you haven't been manipulated through multiple degrees of separation?
The most effective rule for me is no addictive apps on my phone or laptop - browser apps only. The browser apps are _far_ less addictive and just enough friction to keep me off them for extended periods of time. As well, infinite scroll just isn't as effective in a browser and there's a real feeling of limited content running out.
If you use the broswer verison of apps you can also inject custom scripts. I have one for Instagram that completely removes the recommendation feed. Works great.
I switch mine to monochrome mode, it’s quite effective… everything just looks less attractive. I use the Accessibility Shortcut (triple-press side button) with “Colour Filters”, no extra app required.
I think this is a great idea. Wouldn't have guessed this would be possible so I looked into how it'd actually be implemented.
I guess this is done on the device as a VPN via Apple's NetworkExtension config. But instead of a normal VPN where traffic goes through a server, the app just locally applies rules based on the app the packet came from and then routes them normally to their destination.
That is correct! There is no annotation of which apps a packet comes from, so VineWall also runs locally a DNS proxy and uses the domain to infer the app
HN hug so I can't read it right now, but this approach doesn't really work for most people. The problem with these types of approaches is that anything done can be undone. And if you have the willpower to not undo it, then you have the willpower to not need to have done it in the first place. Now, buying a slow phone on purpose may work, but that's a different approach.
By that logic, buying a slow phone can also just be undone.
A perfect solution that works 100% is not the goal. Small influences that can help you change behavior can still be beneficial. Maybe they doom scroll 5% less because of this tweak? Still a positive change.
I love the concept - blocking apps are often too restrictive which makes me disable them. Slowing could be a nice alternative.
This probably uses a vpn? It’s important to think about how to stop me disabling it casually. I use Opal which blocks my settings page too. Which works great but frustratingly it blocks my legitimate needs very often too!
Actually seems like a good idea. It's like when I use a 2012 laptop. I can't last more than 30 minutes on it. Probably a LAN proxy that throttles the network for some devices...
>For a long time I struggled with doomscrolling. I tried the usual stuff (cold turkey, app blockers) but they didn’t address the craving, and they were easy enough to bypass on top of that, none of it worked.
Cold turkey is for desktop not phones, not sure why that's relevant.
This guy is crippling a top notch device he paid good money for. This is crazy.
This isn't a personal problem. It is a social one, and there lies the solution. These apps are engineered for addiction, to Dubai our attention and lives. The companies behind them should br punished and their employees ashamed.
Society must curb socially and environmental nocive organizations.
Here’s something else you can try: take off your phone case. My phone screen is scratched to hell and I think it runs slower from dropping it without a case so many times.
Someone should run a randomized trial with screen time against phone case usage. I wonder what would show up. Imagine the human connection and true critical thinking that would happen with just a 1% decrease in screen time!
I found the easiest way to give up social media, is to just stop using it cold turkey. With all these other systems you just end up slowly weaning yourself back on over time.
it would be a good conspiracy if all these apps were made by facebook/twitter/etc because they know that's the case.
I hate typing on a smartphone. Thick fingers, I guess. So I turned off word completion, and it works perfectly to stay off messenger apps while real life passes by around me. Avoids becoming a phone zombie. I love to chat with others online, but do it on a keyboard on my laptop at home.
another good technique is to use boomer mode- make the fonts as large as possible, which has the side effect of making instagram (for instance) practically unusable and all of it just generally unpleasant. you're welcome.
Here are things that I’ve found helpful to substitute time spent doomscrolling.
* periodic feed tidying to unfollow as much content as possible. It will be obvious which content is low quality. Right click and “not interested” on apps that support that.
* fill the time with edifying activities: creative pursuits, social activities, helping out, gaming , fitness, bible study .
* turn the phone off (up , down + power button – it’s deliberately onerous) . Stash it in the glovebox or backpack. Even half an hour is a relief. moving my car key to the watch allowed me to leave the phone behind when doing fitness. Try to identify the specific “hook” to your phone.
* turn off push notifs & background app refresh. try moving your important contacts over to a single messaging app if you can so you can minimize the ones with notifications . Otherwise use pull over push if possible (i get that work often isn’t practical) . iOS focus modes let you automate this.
* replace doomscrolling with AI dialogs on any topic. You can go much deeper this way by asking “why” questions like a toddler. Let’s say you’re watching motorcycle crash videos, do a dialog on the history of motorcycle racing. Or any topic
There is a great habit-breaking app called “One Sec.” You configure it with your addicting apps or websites and it uses iOS shortcuts to interrupt you when you open them, and make you wait for some time — optionally with the selfie camera open — and confirm you really want to open it. It’s extremely effective and I highly recommend it. I don’t have it anymore since it led me to eventually delete Instagram and I never looked back. Although I should reinstall it and apply it to YouTube shorts…
App Store link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/one-sec-screen-time-focus/id15...
Wow, that is a fantastic idea. Basically interrupting the instant gratification loop by just enough to let the more rational mind get a word in.
Another tool that I've found to be incredibly helpful for breaking app-addition is the colorblind accessibility tool. You can use it to make the entire phone greyscale, which entirely defeats a huge range of techniques that apps and feeds use to draw your attention. Tiktok in greyscale I would estimate is 1/10th as likely to pull me into a 5+ minute video binge vs the full color version. And 1/100th as likely to pull me into a 90+ minute video binge (which unfortunately does happen to me in full color).
> You can use it to make the entire phone greyscale, which entirely defeats a huge range of techniques that apps and feeds use to draw your attention
As a counter-anecdata: I've had my phone in greyscale for a few years now. At first it worked amazingly, made me hate my phone and pickups dropped significantly. But over time I realized "Oh wait, 90% of my phone use is text and this is actually super nice for reading".
Now I use my phone just as much as before, except in greyscale.
Do you still have problems with doomscrolling addiction?
> Do you still have problems with doomscrolling addiction?
The new twitter algorithm fixed that for me. They made the feed so fundamentally uninteresting and full of slop* that the issue resolved itself.
I now doomscroll slack and discord
* by slop I mean content written for the sake of being content.
+1 for One Sec, a fantastic app, if one has the patience to wire it up using Apple’s first-party Shortcuts app (which is probably the main reason most normies aren’t going to use it). Really helped curb my Instagram usage down from about ~15 minutes per day to around ~5 minutes/day at most, and often now a few days go by without me checking the app at all. It is remarkable how much a 4, 6, or 10 second wait will just cause me to say “nah, forget it, I don’t care anymore”. Like, how much of a dumb ape am I?
I personally prefer ScreenZen. It is a lot less restrictive on the free version and you can just tip once to get full access instead of a subscription. It also has a system where you can “earn back” app unlocks if you don’t use the app for the full allotted time, which encourages using your apps even less rather than feeling like having to make the most of your unlock.
App Store Link: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/screenzen-screen-time-control/...
I used it a bit but it’s buggy: failing to unlock, or just tapping the button once for unlimited use. Eventually it completely stopped working.
I use https://steplimit.com/ to both cure my Reddit addiction and to walk more. You earn minutes on your tracked app(s) by walking. If you run out of minutes, either stop scrolling or go for a walk. It's so simple and so effective.
Whenever I see something like this, I think wow this is gonna be so effective and change my life and then two weeks later it’s uninstalled and I’m slack jaw standing over the sink browsing Instagram
Scrolling is a bad habit. It's hard to kill habits outright, so you need to replacement.
Step one is figuring out what triggers the habit. Step two is finding a replacement.
Something that worked for me is keeping certain websites to the "big screen" (aka my computer). If I want to browse Reddit I have to get up and go to my PC. I've blocked it on my phone. For me, scrolling on my PC is a little more managable because hey while I'm there and looking at Reddit, I can open up a terminal and update my packages, or check my todos, or put on music...
I live alone, so it’s really hard to fully kick it because it feels like socializing a little bit…
I've struggled at times with various app blockers and limits. Most of them are just a little too easy to disable — or they prevent usage altogether.
AppBlock on Android has a feature that allows you to continue using an app after your time limit is up — if you're willing to wait 3 minutes without swiping to another app. And then, by default, it'll kick back in 15 minutes later.
Works really well for me.
This hits close to home. I really need to stop bringing my phone to brush my teeth…
Yikes.
These are tools for people interested in making a change.
You’re not, yet.
I’ve been interested for a decade+, but appreciate the condescension
I’ve found the most effective tool to be uninstalling the apps, being logged out in the browser, then building up a deep resentment for the manipulative practices these apps/sites employ.
Friends send me links on Instagram all the time and it’s always a multi-step process to see it in the browser without being logged in. It’s half-broken and super annoying. If a search query sends me to Instagram, it just breaks 80% of the time and locks me out. If I click on any of the bait designed to lure people into view more content, it will throw up a wall and require downloading the app or logging in. This all serves to fuel the hate I have for these platforms. If they’re going to make it that hard to use, I don’t want to use it, and there must be very powerful and financially motivated reasons why they are pushing me toward a certain engagement model.
I once took screenshots of all the BS I had to go through when he sent me one of those links, so he could see how bad it was and stop spamming me with every other video in his algorithm. At the time it was a 3-4 step process of dismissing modal windows for every link he sent.
You are an average of the 5 people you spend the most time around.
Do those people send you any blog links?
or solely vapid social media shite?
Note that. There’s overlap in other parts of life.
One person who texts me most often primarily sends vapid social media content. I disabled notifications on his texts and check them on my time, skipping most of them. I don't feel the need to cut someone out of my life who I've known for 20+ years over their instagram addiction (which seems to be what you're implying if I read between the lines).
The big AI push has made him more interested in what is happening with all these tech companies and he doesn't like it. I'm trying to use it nudge him off these platforms run by companies he claims to despise.
Glad you’re not one of them ;)
You can’t fix human problems with technology.
You can only accelerate the human behavior,
unless you involve another person in taking your freedom away.
No condescension - and if you’ve been trying for ten years, there’s clearly a misunderstanding.
> You can’t fix human problems with technology.
Yes you can.
Screen time limiters, nicotine patches, putting the cookies out of sight, all of these things empirically work better than willpower alone.
> No condescension - and if you’ve been trying for ten years, there’s clearly a misunderstanding.
Oh please. “Why are you depressed? Just be happy or you must not be ready for a change. No condescension btw.”
Interesting comparison, because the behavior in question (doomscrolling, inability to manage compulsion, time mismanagement) is definitely linked to ADHD/depression.
I am the developer of an app in similar genre called Run for Fun which lets you block addictive apps of your choosing until you exercise (run, walk, bike, climb stairs, exercise to burn calories etc). It's very customizable depending upon how aggressive you need it to be:
https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/run-for-fun-screen-time-focus/...
One sec broke my habit for a month or so but then it got back to “normal”. A friend of mine developed Amba - with that you need a physical nfc chip to unlock your apps. Ofc im biased but for me it works way better.
https://openamba.app/
Huge fan of One Sec - I think I've tried every screen time reducing app out there and it is my favorite. ScreenZen is another good one
I use the Minimalist launcher on Android and it's working pretty well. I have a rule that I don't use Facebook on Brave, and I have Chrome behind a wait, as is Reddit. I uninstalled other addictive apps, (e.g. Instagram, Facebook App) because I just don't use them anymore. Working better than I expected.
I use Unhook on firefox and disabled the YouTube app.
https://unhook.app/
YouTube also added a shorts timer that does a more in-app version of this that you can set to 0 minutes to have it always on. It's under "time management" in the app settings. Can't do it on the website from what I'm aware.
Only thing that worked for me long term. My problem is mostly with shorts, so I didn’t want to have a global timer for the whole app.
For me it’s shorts and opening new tabs from the recommended videos on the one I’m currently watching… I usually never get to them though. Luckily I don’t have tab hoarding addiction and aggressively close all tabs whenever I realize I’ve got 20+ of them open.
I use YouTube in browser, partially because that already makes it worse… but still doesn’t stop the doom scrolling :)
There is a great habit-breaking app called “One Sec.” You configure it with your addicting apps or websites and it uses iOS shortcuts to interrupt you when you open them
Also effective (in my experience) is to use the Accessibility settings to turn down the screen saturation 90%.
A black-and-white phone is far less tempting to use, and quickly becomes tiresome.
I deleted Instagram a few years ago. Unfortunately too many restaurants and friends want to connect there so I recently re-installed.
I was lucky to never get addicted but, not making excuses, the moment I open the app, I click the logo at the top and pick "Following" and then I see only my friends. Of course it's not sticky (roll-eyes) but at least there's a way to mostly avoid the algo
I definitely miss some aspects of instagram. It was the reels that killed me. Not worth the mental cost. But I have no idea what my friends from college are up to these days because I don’t have that background knowledge informed from the 1% of posts in my feed that were actually personally relevant.
Overall I definitely feel mentally healthier without that app though.
What do restaurants have to do with instagram?
Personally, my recent and surprisingly greatest win was to set up my old phone (samsung S21) with the addictive apps, removing them completely from my iPhone.
Quite literally "cold-turkey'ed" from 4.5-ish hours/day to 2 hours a day in a single day, consistent over the last few weeks.
I set up my second phone with a custom homescreen, and installing the 'bad' apps on there (Instagram, Youtube, NYTimes in particular). I dont use it for other apps.
Now if I want to scroll, which I still do sometimes, I have to walk to a specific chair next to which my 'addiction phone' is, I'll scroll for 10-15 minutes, and get back to the real world. I used to have particular issues with scrolling during vibe-coding sessions, and I'm genuinely surprised how well this approach worked for me.
cold-turkey doesn't seem to be the right phrase here, but i do agree with your overall point. i really do treat my scroll sessions as like a cigarette break, which, in a funny way, helps me feel better about wasting the time. it's an indulgement of a vice :p
I've combined my scrolling with my smoking to get two birds stoned at once. I'm currently trying to combine working out, scrolling, and smoking, for ultimate productivity.
Doing curls while curls of smoke rise skywards from the glowing ash, no-hands smoking, cigarette specifically yet casually balanced between two lips. Breathe in, breathe out.
A phone/tablet hooked up to your brainrot feed of choice and a treadmill that only works when you're walking/running seems like a great idea.
Lukewarm turkey.
I log out of every social media website/app because the act of logging in is just enough friction for me to be mindful: do I really want to do this?
The sense of slowness creates the conditions for pausing and being mindful of what you're doing.
In spirit, this reminds me of the return to slow/analog: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48084980
Consider it the no- or low-alcohol alternative to full speed. https://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html
At work I curbed most of my internet wandering by turning off all the autocomplete and history of the browser. When I close the browser, everything is wiped. This way I have to explicitly type in the site url instead of an autocomplete in the url bar or history suggestion. I don't do anything personal on a work computer anyway so I don't need to log into anything.
On my phones it's even easier: no apps save for absolutely necessary. If I need an app while traveling or whatever, I install it only for the necessary duration then uninstall it when done.
I edit my /etc/hosts file and send domains that I've realized I'm addicted to (ahem, lichess) to 0.0.0.1
This gives enough friction to the point, when I muscle-memory type the URL in a browser, and get an unreachable error... after a while I learn to just... break the habit.
I like the idea of increasing friction, but I also found https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-control to be useful.
If we are talking about increase friction to avoid something, unfortunately self control is way past us.
I think more people should set up their iPhone using Apple Configurator, a Mac app used to control apples mdm solution. You do have to factory reset your phone for this once, but after that you have extremely granular control over what you can and can’t do. It’s much more powerful than the parental controls system and much harder to circumvent.
I use it to straight up disallow a bunch of apps and websites (tiktok, Reddit, YouTube, etc.)
For a while I even uninstalled safari which you can just do with this. Not having a browser at all on your phone is a neat experiment and really changed how I interact with tech on the go.
I did eventually install safari back, but overall I prefer the Apple Configurator setup a lot over any of these kinds of apps.
> Not having a browser at all on your phone
I would not last 5 minutes.
I'm occasionally offline outside planes and the amount of times I pull out my phone to "google something really quick" is high.
You can already disallow apps without an MDM, but I'm curious what else you can do with it. I generally uninstall apps like Instagram so it takes a minute to even download it again, but it gives me a way to download it, post something and delete it once a week or so.
I found an incredibly simple solution for this. Screen time in iOS can block specific websites and apps installed on your device. Set harmless time limits - 5 min for instagram. 2 mins for Reddit.com etc.
Ask your spouse or a friend you trust to set screen time passcode. You can’t bypass it and you’re not going cold turkey either or losing an important utility like Safari.
Doom scroll all you want in 2 mins then it’s locked for the day.
I have succeeded and it’s been 3+ months.
I thought so too, but I went in with the mentality that most things I just quickly look up are probably not all that important and nothing of value would be lost if I couldn’t do that anymore. The few things for which that isn’t true can probably wait until I am sitting in front of a computer.
That part honestly worked out pretty great. The first few days were excruciatingly boring, but I quickly adjusted and learned to spend more time with my thoughts.
I ended up reinstalling a browser because there were too many establishments that expected me to have a phone with a browser.
With mdm you can really control the phone top to bottom. Whitelist domains, global http proxy, allowed Wi-Fi connections, fully disable cameras, airdrop, the list goes on. Most of it isn’t super interesting to manage doomscrolling habits.
What drew me to it is that you can’t change the setup without connecting to the Mac, a solution I find much more comfortable than having a friend type in a pin, as well as easily restricting domains and apps including system apps.
For example something I still do is disabling all mail clients including the system one. I don’t need email on my phone. It’s an inherently asynchronous communication medium and it can definitely wait until I’m home.
Does that website blocking work for browsers other than Safari?
Yes
I love you
> I think more people should set up their iPhone using Apple Configurator
I tried that app briefly to organise my pages, and not only was it stiff and awkward to use, it decided to screw everything up and reset positions.
As someone who used to have actually slow phones before: this will not help your doom-scrolling. You will still doom-scroll, but you'll just be frustrated and miserable due to the lags. You're welcome.
My solution to doom scrolling on the desktop was to edit my /etc/hosts file to disallow me from going to the offending sites. After a few weeks, the habit was broken and I didn't even miss them anymore.
I did have something similar, but in my case it was an involuntary favor from Meta, as they presented a blocking screen asking whether I agree to use my personal information for targeted ads. The options were I agree or I pay. So I just wouldn't click either and hence I just couldn't access their sites anymore lol. (yeah well, I didn't give up that easily originally, as funnily enough you could find methods to bypass the screens and the APIs in apps would still fully work and let you use it, but it was more trouble than worth it eventually)
There was also Twitter, which had also solved the problem by itself. After the take-over, the quality of content rapidly plummeted so hard, at certain point I just didn't feel like ever visiting the site again.
So I'm almost thankful to these companies for actively pushing people out like that, y'know? I'm just sorry for people still stuck in there, it must be even more miserable presently...
For those who don't use it already, the following is a great compilation of curated block lists you can put into your etc/hosts file to block traffic :)
https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts
Ha, I did the same about 15 years ago. Nowadays don’t need the file anymore but it was a good way to get rid of that initial automated behaviour.
Doesn’t work for Safari on macOS, as it does not respect /etc/hosts nor your DNS settings, it uses its own.
I think it’s a valiant effort. Sometimes having multiple influences can make it easier to change behavior.
Maybe it can work to some degree for some people. But there are other methods that should help much more effectively, without being self-destructive and miserable. I view this solution in similar categories as, say, suggesting someone should drunk themselves off to the point of passing out, because you know... at least they won't scroll at that point probably? And yet there are some very obvious downsides of such approach.
I mean if someone wants to try something in this direction, but without the misery, I'd suggest things like making the screen monochromatic, which will make the content seem less appealing to the brain, but without that being a nuisance.
Have you tried using NoScript? Works for me (except HN).
I have recently fully switched to a flip phone running AOSP.
After years of fiddling with OneSec and others this really has been the only solution that has worked for kicking my screen addition.
Best thing - with AI I can quickly build APKs for whatever I actually need! I build an app to give me turn by turn directions and (ironically) an app to talk to Claude w/ web search. I feel like I'm living in a world of truly personalized software.
I find the interface itself (number pad with t9, tiny screen) to be the most important part of dissuading compulsive use. Would highly recommend!
Which phone, as someone looking at a similar move?
This is a really cool idea.. I've used the app limiters (screenZen, Opal) and honestly they really helped limit my screen time and I've been able to transition away from having to use them. I wonder what the psychological difference between limiting access to apps and making the overall experience less smooth, whether friction at the network level can feel like a more natural nudge, where I found app blockers could at times feel like your fighting yourself. Would be interested to see retention data and the sustainability comparing the two approaches.
Something that's been working for me the last few weeks is turning off all cookies on the safari browser. That, plus no addictive apps seems a solid combo. I've been pleasantly surprised by how few sites break, and how effectively all social medias lose their flavor.
I find deleting accounts to be more effective.
I can still view the occasional instagram post or tiktok vid I get sent via instant msg but since it has to be opened on desktop mode in a browser I don't risk spending more than a few seconds on it.
Brilliant. Too bad there's apparently no built in way to do it.
I was reminded of when Apple started slowing down the CPUs on older phones. Would be nice if you could just configure that on first run. "How addictive would you like your phone to be, sir?"
I feel like my phone is so sluggish when in low power mode (even a 17 Pro), that it could work for this.
It definitely downclocks the chip, but it also does some other stuff like capping the frame rate on the display, which (to me, ymmv) goes a long way towards making the phone "feel slower".
My (teenaged) kids frequently let their phones go into low battery and then run in power saving mode for hours, when one of them hands me their phones it's super jarring and feels awful to use coming from my 120hz phone haha.
This might say more about the quality of modern apps than the power of the iPhone lol.
Absolutely does. But it would definitely keep you away from switching between 13 Slack groups!
It's funny, I'm on a Delta flight right now with bad wifi and a few minutes ago I was thinking about how slow internet access completely changes my browsing habits to be more deliberate.
Example from a few seconds ago: I frequently click into HN user's profile pages when I read an interesting comment from them as I scroll past. At home, it loads ~instantly even on 5G. But when it takes 5-7 seconds to load one, you get a lot more thoughtful about navigating your browser.
There's definitely something interesting about intentionally downgrading your own experience in targeted ways.
On android you can do so from developer mode, but it's a blanket throttle for the whole device. I've been using mine with a 5mbps cap for a few years now.
The truth is that none of these apps can really make your distracting phone into a smart dumb phone because of Apple's limitations on their power. And yet, Apple's own tool, screentime, also can be easily bypassed.
The solution is Mobile device management (MDM) using Apple Configurator. All you need is a Mac and your iPhone and you can make it impossible to install distracting apps, create un-bypassable limits, and disable Safari. It's all very customizable and is the only solution that worked for me.
One sec is the second best to this in my opinion, but would be greatly improved if you could make it un-bypassable.
Something really rubs me the wrong way about apps that are supposed to make you healthier like One sec or meditation apps that are filled with trackers or ads.
That's another win for one sec as they only collect a bit of telemetry, no insane tracking.
There's also a way to do this on Android if someone is curious I can link my explanation of it.
I'm curious about your Android method, just to see if it's something I want to explore as a solution.
Here I talked about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48275963
I bet you could use an MDM method on a regular Android, but I'm waiting for one that supports GrapheneOS. It's still a WIP https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/13587-mdm-on-grapheneos/38
What's your Android method? I use Apple Configurator too.
Here I talked about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48275963
It's sad that it's come to this..
That is a very neat solution. Can still get a little and then you get less than a little.
Personally I just deleted the accounts and apps but that doesn't work for everyone.
Also my phone is a 7 year old Oppo something that had a low end Mediatek CPU that sucked from day one. I fear how it would handle any doomscrolling app, it would probably physically eject the media decoder out of the phone after a minute.
I did something similar. I like to keep my phone limited (the only real useful/joyful things on it for me are family pictures, music and maps). So I used an iphone SE until it fell apart, now I use an iphone mini that doesn't have enough storage so it offloads all but the top ten apps I use.
I didn't make it slow and buggy on purpose though. Apple did that for me with Liquid glass. Which I guess works!
This is a method, but it's the underlying issue that needs to be resolved.
People doomscroll primarily to avoid certain thoughts/feelings/situations.
The way out of it is to:
1. Note that you're avoiding something.
2. Identify what it is.
3. Face it.
This is an addiction and reaching for the phone is just what gives relief to whatever pain one might be experiencing. Just removing that is laying ground for a substitute.
> This is an addiction and reaching for the phone is just what gives relief to whatever pain one might be experiencing. Just removing that is laying ground for a substitute.
This model would not suggest the results seen in studies like this:
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11846175/
(The intervention was not "face the roots of your problems", it was "stop using your phone so much", and it produced positive impact.)
While a popular refrain, this is not the only reason one might engage in avoidance. Furthermore, even if it is rooted in a pain, not everyone will be motivated optimally by thinking of it as something that must be analyzed and extracted. One can simply be bored without it being a pathology.
If one is so constantly bored that doomscrolling turns into an addiction, then that person most certainly is suffering from some kind of psychological imbalance. Occasional boredom is normal, constant boredom is not.
My understanding is that when someone uses the term "doomscrolling", they mean something negative.
>One can simply be bored without it being a pathology.
yes but the point is that the people who doom-scroll cannot be bored, boredom is exactly what they want to avoid.
People who constantly have their phone in their hands often want to avoid boredom because when you're bored your mind wanders and you have to encounter in silence, your own thoughts. Which now a lot of people are uncomfortable with.
Just like people who overeat sure you can brute force yourself to stop doing it, but you're going to have much more success if you understand why you're engaging in an unhealthy habit, what you're trying to suppress, and then what you want to do instead. People struggle to break bad habits, and sustain changes when all they have is a reactive attitude of "I don't want to do it".
This should be at the top. It pisses people off because we reflexively think “I’m not a weak-willed procrastinator” or “I’m no addict” or “it’s not that simple”, but it is the truth, and the way to fix it, and harder than it sounds. We get frustrated looking for a dopamine hit elsewhere so we get it from a source we know. Running away from that source isn’t enough to end up running towards the behavior we want, there are a million different undesirable ways to get the hit.
That is something I want to eventually incorporate into VineWall.
My goal is to have VineWall to detect user patterns and use this information to help the user cope with the situations in a more healthy way
"don't change anything unless you can completely solve the root cause [assuming you have accurately identified it]" is really not backed up by research.
Plese refer to point 3. of my list. That is change.
which is implied to be only after step 2, which is essentially "find the cause", yeah.
there's plenty of benefit to be had from reducing harm while searching (or when wrong about the cause).
"find the cause" is exactly what e.g. therapy is for. It's not some insurmountable challenge to do that.
everyone around me who has been starting it is on roughly a ten month waiting list. so they should try nothing until then + several sessions until hopefully figuring something out? some are on their third such cycle because the earlier ones were downright hostile therapists (they're people, just like every profession, they're not all good or effective).
Years ago, during a company design committee review for a major product launch, I was the only one who raised concerns about the iOS flat design trend. Icons were getting more and more abstract. The newer versions literally required users to be familiar with the previous icon version (the waves, the microphone, etc.) just to understand what they meant. To be fair, I am totally okay with moving away from the floppy disk for the "save" action, but we went too far in other icons. That trend reminded me of a friend who volunteered at the SF Central Library. They told me how seniors would come up asking how to use their Kindles, and they would simply write down instructions in physical notebooks: how many icons from the top and which sequence in order to bookmark a page or swap a book.
I see this with my own parents during overseas troubleshooting calls. It is an unpleasant, overwhelming experience for both sides. I used to get frustrated whenever my dad asked whether he should press "Next" on a screen, even though it was the only button available in the setup flow. For him, that pause wasn't a lack of technology background. It was complete paralysis. He was nervous that one wrong click would break everything. Different mental models don't help, and our industry keeps making it worse.
The rate of technology is just too fast. AI is making things even faster and not necessarily easier, there will just be more apps to try, more buttons to click, and more content to swipe. More is not always good for my parents' age.
But I wouldn’t make the phone slow for them either. The one good thing about technology now is that systems can finally understand context better than 10 years ago when I was debating teams on interfaces for video calls. We have better tools now to meet users where they actually are.
The meaning of design is different than the meaning of technology. It is less about how we can show users this, and more about why we need to show users this. I am taking a technology break myself right now (getting away from reels and tweets) and just reading Hacker News. This is where my head is at. I want to stop designing for the endless cycle of engagement, and start designing for: “presence”.
> I used to get frustrated whenever my dad asked whether he should press "Next" on a screen, even though it was the only button available in the setup flow. For him, that pause wasn't a lack of technology background. It was complete paralysis. He was nervous that one wrong click would break everything.
To be fair, your fathers caution is not unwarranted.
As a toy example, a few years back Amazon updated their checkout flow so that clicking 'next' defaulted to the paid shipping; you really have to pay attention to find the free shipping option.
clicking next in a world of dark patterns is a bad idea.
Frontend developers must do this to their browsers too. Sure, your M5 Max or i7 on a 1gbit connection runs things well... but does it run well on a mobile cpu with flaky 4g?
I simply didn't get a smart phone. I had to get a new vertical flip phone last year — $80 plus tax to own it outright (and I think they gave me some credit on my pay-as-you-go balance too) — in order to migrate to 4G, but I was definitely not about to take the opportunity to get anything fancy. I do my computing, and my "app" usage, at home on my desktop (and play games on a dedicated handheld), thank you.
The one thing that's kept me from this path is tickets to events. Getting into a concert or MLB game without a smartphone is nearly impossible these days.
It’s usually a QR code right? You should be able to print it off.
Imagining a version of this that scales by how long I've been using the phone since the screen's been off. If I need to check something quickly, I want the internet and processing to be fast, because checking my phone a lot is fine with me – just not zoning out for long periods of time. First 60s or so unpenalized. Then beyond that, if I'm getting close to my daily target, it starts throttling. A little longer than 60s? Maybe only a bit slowed down. 5min? I want it to get cronchy. Not sure network's the right axis though. Maybe actual screen responsiveness?
https://xkcd.com/862/
>[Reddit page.]
>Luke (thinking): I shouldn't be looking at Reddit. Why can't I stop?
>After years of trying various methods, I broke this habit by pitting my impatience against my laziness. I decoupled the action and the neurological reward by setting up a simple 30-second delay I had to wait through, in which I couldn't do anything else, before any new page or chat client would load (and only allowed one to run at once). The urge to check all those sites magically vanished--and my 'productive' computer use was unaffected.
https://blog.xkcd.com/2011/02/18/distraction-affliction-corr...
I have that too where I live. It’s called “Verizon”
I have a much simpler solution. I read before my son (5) one to two books, and he is allowed to watch a short movie (Lego technics, marble run, that kind of stuff). Sound is OK, if it is relaxed (so not music with 120 BPM, but lo-fi OK). Then he watches something of about 10 minutes. If he has to go to school tomorrow, he knows that's it, but in vacations and weekends he may watch another one. After he is done, he likes to pick the next movie for tomorrow (very important for him).
Having grown up with an unreliable sluggish gsm dial up connection when the web was already getting heavier payloads, and forced to have developed the virtue of patience and love of progress bars, I think this might work with latency intransigent people, but I know I will blank stare into the load spinner to get my doom ration.
Hard blocks (gotta re enable noprocrast here asap) and behavioral nudges like keeping an ebook with page open positioned inconveniently close and my phone out of reach work better for me.
"It was a bit ironic to spend that much on a phone just to build the thing that would slow it down."
That doesn't seem ironic to me, it seems economically foolish. Why not simply buy an older phone?
Okay, reading further down. Really this is just an advertisement for an app they made targeted to people without self control who watch videos on their phone too often.
Your comment carries disdain for people who lack "self control" from engaging with algorithms that are proficiently designed to keep you engaged with the content, as if checking little boxes in the user's grey matter. Does your grey matter have foolproof methods to avert manipulation from processes that have billions of dollars and thousands of man hours poured into figuring out how to keep you engaged? Are you immune to tricks being developed in the future right now? Who's to say you haven't been manipulated through multiple degrees of separation?
The most effective rule for me is no addictive apps on my phone or laptop - browser apps only. The browser apps are _far_ less addictive and just enough friction to keep me off them for extended periods of time. As well, infinite scroll just isn't as effective in a browser and there's a real feeling of limited content running out.
If you use the broswer verison of apps you can also inject custom scripts. I have one for Instagram that completely removes the recommendation feed. Works great.
Turning my phone to grayscale solved the doomscrolling issue for me. Now I only browse HN all day long.
I switch mine to monochrome mode, it’s quite effective… everything just looks less attractive. I use the Accessibility Shortcut (triple-press side button) with “Colour Filters”, no extra app required.
I think this is a great idea. Wouldn't have guessed this would be possible so I looked into how it'd actually be implemented.
I guess this is done on the device as a VPN via Apple's NetworkExtension config. But instead of a normal VPN where traffic goes through a server, the app just locally applies rules based on the app the packet came from and then routes them normally to their destination.
That is correct! There is no annotation of which apps a packet comes from, so VineWall also runs locally a DNS proxy and uses the domain to infer the app
HN hug so I can't read it right now, but this approach doesn't really work for most people. The problem with these types of approaches is that anything done can be undone. And if you have the willpower to not undo it, then you have the willpower to not need to have done it in the first place. Now, buying a slow phone on purpose may work, but that's a different approach.
By that logic, buying a slow phone can also just be undone.
A perfect solution that works 100% is not the goal. Small influences that can help you change behavior can still be beneficial. Maybe they doom scroll 5% less because of this tweak? Still a positive change.
> By that logic, buying a slow phone can also just be undone.
That is such a first-world comment it should be coloured red, blue and white. Wow.
Just get an eink phone? They're $300 and come with slowness built in.
No amount of deleting or blocking applications will substitute for a genuine interest in what's in front of you.
I love the concept - blocking apps are often too restrictive which makes me disable them. Slowing could be a nice alternative.
This probably uses a vpn? It’s important to think about how to stop me disabling it casually. I use Opal which blocks my settings page too. Which works great but frustratingly it blocks my legitimate needs very often too!
Actually seems like a good idea. It's like when I use a 2012 laptop. I can't last more than 30 minutes on it. Probably a LAN proxy that throttles the network for some devices...
>For a long time I struggled with doomscrolling. I tried the usual stuff (cold turkey, app blockers) but they didn’t address the craving, and they were easy enough to bypass on top of that, none of it worked.
Cold turkey is for desktop not phones, not sure why that's relevant.
I'm pretty sure "cold turkey" here refers to the original English idiom (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_turkey) and not any particular software.
Ah you're right mb.
My phone is in black and white for similar reasons
Not a bad idea.
This guy is crippling a top notch device he paid good money for. This is crazy.
This isn't a personal problem. It is a social one, and there lies the solution. These apps are engineered for addiction, to Dubai our attention and lives. The companies behind them should br punished and their employees ashamed.
Society must curb socially and environmental nocive organizations.
I love this.
Here’s something else you can try: take off your phone case. My phone screen is scratched to hell and I think it runs slower from dropping it without a case so many times.
Someone should run a randomized trial with screen time against phone case usage. I wonder what would show up. Imagine the human connection and true critical thinking that would happen with just a 1% decrease in screen time!
That’s a great idea. Waiting for a video to load for a few dozen seconds makes me lose all interest in scrolling further.
I have a few hacks that work for me, documented here: https://open.substack.com/pub/theperfectlycromulent/p/how-to...
tl;dr Don’t keep your charger handy. Don’t have a good charger. Lose your phone (at home). Don’t have a phone case. Have a phone case.
> Don’t have a phone case. Have a phone case.
…
I found the easiest way to give up social media, is to just stop using it cold turkey. With all these other systems you just end up slowly weaning yourself back on over time.
it would be a good conspiracy if all these apps were made by facebook/twitter/etc because they know that's the case.
brilliant. can someone build this for android apps next?
That is on my TODO list :)
I hate typing on a smartphone. Thick fingers, I guess. So I turned off word completion, and it works perfectly to stay off messenger apps while real life passes by around me. Avoids becoming a phone zombie. I love to chat with others online, but do it on a keyboard on my laptop at home.
another good technique is to use boomer mode- make the fonts as large as possible, which has the side effect of making instagram (for instance) practically unusable and all of it just generally unpleasant. you're welcome.
I like this one.
I want that for my whole house
I have good news for you! I'm also working on a plugin device to apply VineWall protections to the whole home network.
thats a cool technique
Here are things that I’ve found helpful to substitute time spent doomscrolling.
* periodic feed tidying to unfollow as much content as possible. It will be obvious which content is low quality. Right click and “not interested” on apps that support that.
* fill the time with edifying activities: creative pursuits, social activities, helping out, gaming , fitness, bible study .
* turn the phone off (up , down + power button – it’s deliberately onerous) . Stash it in the glovebox or backpack. Even half an hour is a relief. moving my car key to the watch allowed me to leave the phone behind when doing fitness. Try to identify the specific “hook” to your phone.
* turn off push notifs & background app refresh. try moving your important contacts over to a single messaging app if you can so you can minimize the ones with notifications . Otherwise use pull over push if possible (i get that work often isn’t practical) . iOS focus modes let you automate this.
* replace doomscrolling with AI dialogs on any topic. You can go much deeper this way by asking “why” questions like a toddler. Let’s say you’re watching motorcycle crash videos, do a dialog on the history of motorcycle racing. Or any topic
Wikipedia blue-link surfing can be a good substitute for conversing with LLMs (and could be significantly cheaper too, the way things are going).
Good tip. I found a nice wiki Apple Watch app for wikoomscrolling