Social media apps use algorithms that try to feed us more of the type of content that we’ve previously consumed, to keep us on them for as long as possible. Unfortunately, this means that if you read one depressing news story or post, you’re likely to see another pop up.
Before you know it, you’ve wasted hours scrolling through the most depressing posts, causing yourself anxiety and stress in a phenomenon known as doomscrolling. If you’re stuck in a cycle of doomscrolling, there are some things you can try to help you to stop.
10
Set Screen Time Limits
Apple has some built-in tools that you can use to help you stop doomscrolling. One of the most useful is the Screen Time feature, which allows you to limit how long you spend on different apps or categories of apps. For example, you can set a screen time limit of 30 minutes for all social networking apps.
Once you hit the limit, the app is obscured by a full-screen notification. You can then close the app or opt to ignore the limit for 15 minutes or for the rest of the day. Resisting the temptation to do so can be challenging, but the repeated reminders if you extend your limit can guilt you into stopping.
9
Use Dedicated Apps
As well as Apple’s tools, there are third-party apps that you can use to help curb your doomscrolling habit. These apps are intended to keep you from opening your social media apps for just one more hit of doom, and they can be very effective.
Forest is an app in which you plant virtual trees. If you leave the app before your time is up, your tree will die. Causing the death of a virtual tree can surprisingly be an effective motivator to stop doomscrolling.
Stay Focused is another useful app that can block specific apps and websites and help you to stop scrolling. It even includes a Strict Mode that requires you to scan a QR code or enter some random text before you can unlock your social media apps, making it a great choice if your willpower is weak.
8
Turn Off App Notifications
A simple but effective way to reduce your doomscrolling is to turn off notifications for the offending apps. All it takes is one notification to pop up from a social media app, and before you know it, you’ve lost another two hours of your life.
Try turning off notifications from all the apps that you use for doomscrolling. The notifications are rarely important, and you may find that you start to use those apps far less once you’re not constantly reminded that they exist.
7
Create a Focus Mode to Block or Hide Specific Apps
Focus modes on your iPhone can be really useful for fighting the urge to doomscroll. You can create a custom home screen to display when a Focus mode is active, which allows you to hide all of the apps that are causing the problem. For example, I have a Work Focus that only displays my calendar along with four other apps, so that I’m not tempted to quickly open Reddit to see what’s going on in the world.
You can even set your Focus modes to activate on a schedule, so you can hide all your social media apps at the times when you’re most likely to get distracted by them. You can also replace social media apps on your home screen with a healthier option, such as a meditation or journaling app.
6
Use Grayscale as a Visual Reminder
Your iPhone has an accessibility feature that can change your iPhone from color to grayscale. You can create a shortcut that turns the color filter on whenever you activate a specific Focus mode. I have a custom Focus called Family Time which removes most of the apps from my home screen, and when I turn it on, the shortcut turns on the grayscale filter, too.
The black and white screen makes picking up your phone far less appealing, and seeing the gray colors is a clear reminder that you should be spending time with your family, not wasting it on your phone.
5
Berate Yourself Using a Shortcut
This is a really useful trick if you’re struggling to stop doomscrolling. You can create a shortcut that will audibly call you out for your pathetic behavior every time that you open a social media app. If you manage to get through the embarrassment of being called out when you open an app, you can set it up to continue to call you out every five minutes until you quit the offending app.
I’ve found it works really well. I might normally be tempted to pick up my phone and scroll through it while watching a TV show with my wife in the evening, causing me to miss the finer points of the plot. Now, I can no longer do so without an embarrassing message booming out of my phone at full volume. It’s just enough to make me stop doing it.
4
Delete Apps You Can’t Leave Alone
If you’ve tried all of the above, and you still can’t stop doomscrolling, then you might want to take more drastic action. One obvious solution is to delete social media apps from your phone.
You can still access the sites through your phone’s browser, but there’s more effort involved in doing so than simply tapping the app icon and launching straight into a doomscrolling session. Adding a little more friction to how you access social media can be enough to keep you from doing it all the time.
If you find that even though you’ve deleted the apps, you’re still spending time scrolling through X in your browser, then you might want to consider the nuclear option. X is one of several social media apps that gives you severely limited access without an account. Other apps such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and more all have significant limitations until you sign in.
If you delete these accounts, you can’t access the content in the first place, allowing you to quit social media completely. You miss out on other benefits, such as Facebook reminding you that it’s someone’s birthday, but you need to weigh up whether the benefits you’re getting from social media are worth the stress and misery that doomscrolling can bring.
I often start doomscrolling out of boredom, and before I know it, the algorithms have me hooked. The trouble is, the more I do it, the more I want to do it, using even the smallest opportunities to quickly look at my phone.
You’re far less likely to do so if you have something more interesting to do instead. Finding alternative habits, such as reading a book, gaming, or doing a crossword, can help stop you from continually picking up your phone. Anything that distracts you enough to make you forget your phone can be all it takes to stop the doomscrolling cycle.
1
Put Your Phone Away
Almost all of the above are solutions to doomscrolling that still require the use of a phone. However, your phone is the source of the problem. You can’t doomscroll if you don’t have your phone with you.
Try simply putting your phone away, ideally somewhere that requires some effort to get to. If you’re binge-watching TV in the evening, for example, put your phone in the bedroom so that if you want to doomscroll you’re going to have to go and get it.
It’s hard to get over the feeling of FOMO, but you’ll usually find that nothing disastrous has happened because you haven’t picked up your phone for a couple of hours.
Doomscrolling can be addictive and while it seems incredibly important while you’re doing it, at the end of a long session of doomscrolling you’ll usually feel like you’ve wasted some precious hours of your life. There are plenty of other things you could be doing with your time that won’t have such a negative impact on your mental health. It can take some effort to break the cycle, but once you manage it, you might discover that you feel a lot better for it.
