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.
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?
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 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.
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.
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 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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?"
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.
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.
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!
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!
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...
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.
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.
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?
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 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.
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.
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.
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 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.)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This might say more about the quality of modern apps than the power of the iPhone lol.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 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!
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...
brilliant. can someone build this for android apps next?
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 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.
thats a cool technique
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.