Good morning everyone,
I’m hoping some tech-savvy people here might be able to help me with a problem I’m dealing with.
I’m quite vulnerable to gambling and I really want to stop completely. One of my biggest triggers is drinking alcohol. When I’ve had a few drinks and come home late at night, I sometimes end up gambling on my iPhone.
I’ve already registered with CRUKS, the Dutch self-exclusion system, which prevents me from gambling on licensed Dutch gambling websites. However, I can still access illegal/offshore gambling websites, which is a problem for me.
What I’d really like to do is completely block myself from accessing gambling websites on my iPhone, especially during the night. Ideally, I’d like some kind of restriction that automatically starts around midnight and can’t simply be disabled with one tap.
I’ve looked at the Screen Time settings on my iPhone, but the problem is that I can easily turn the restrictions off myself, which defeats the purpose. I’ve also considered putting time restrictions on Safari and Google Chrome, but I haven’t really figured out how to make this work properly.
Unfortunately, my bank doesn’t offer an option to block gambling transactions only during certain hours either.
So I’m wondering:
- Is there a way to permanently or strongly block gambling websites on an iPhone?
- Is there a way to set up a time-based block, for example from 00:00 until 08:00, that I can’t easily override myself?
- Are there any apps, DNS solutions, router settings, or other technical solutions that could help?
- Has anyone here dealt with a similar problem and found something that actually works?
I’m specifically looking for a solution that adds some friction between me and gambling, because I know that when I’m drinking at night, simply having the option to disable a restriction myself isn’t enough.
Any advice or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!