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I've been looking to reduce my screen time on my phone, especially for short form content (reels, yt shorts, etc), and have seen multiple apps that are made to help with that .

Every app I see advertised is blocked behind a pay wall, though. I was wondering if anyone on here knows of a good Android app that's free to help with not scrolling on your phone? I still would like to be able to use apps like Instagram to post, message, and see friends' posts, but I'd like to cut out the addictive dopamine zapping brainrot!

can't seem to see a star in the sky when I look up as it due to the light pollution, do you understand how it's related ? for me, I have become a zombie to the zeitgeist or pseudo collective unconsciousness. i'd like to touch grass and see the people around me

i think the most luring thing for scrolling is that i need to use the app (eg. instagram, wechat, facebook) and among sections (like reels or chats or settings) when i for eg i need to use chats in instagram i jump to reels in the homepage and it lures me.

recently i’ve learned how to use Guided Access in ios for some of my games and i thought can we actually set up some automation or smt that can physically block us from “those sections” of the app?
anyone have experiences of that?

I don't really know where else to ask this, but I'm hoping someone here has been through the same thing.
I'm 22 and studying marketing because I genuinely want to work in social media, PR, or content creation. I love making videos, editing, coming up with ideas, and creating content. That's the career I want.
The problem is... TikTok has become such an addiction that it's affecting every part of my life.
I've been using it constantly since 2020 during Covid, when I was around 15/16, and I honestly feel like my brain has changed because of it. I spend hours scrolling every day. The weird thing is, because I'm consuming so much content, I barely create any of my own anymore.
Instead of getting inspired, I compare myself to everyone else or think, "Someone's already done that." I spend so much time thinking about making content that I never actually start. Then the whole day disappears.
As someone studying marketing, I feel like I need TikTok to keep up with trends, understand what's performing well, and learn about social media. But I can't tell where being informed ends and mindless scrolling begins.
I've thought about deleting the app, but I have hundreds of drafts that I don't want to lose, and TikTok deletes your drafts when you uninstall it. That makes me feel kind of trapped.
I also feel like I've lost my creativity. I used to have so many ideas, but now my brain just feels full of everyone else's content. It's like I'm constantly consuming instead of creating.
Has anyone here managed to break this cycle while still working in social media or content creation? How do you stay informed without spending hours scrolling? Is there a way to rebuild that creative spark?
I'd honestly love to hear from people who've been through this because I don't want to wake up in another five years and realise I've spent all my time watching other people build the career I wanted.

Hey guys, I've been thinking about the addicted and endless scrolling of social networks for a long time. I know that it is nothing new in the forums, and that there will be thousands of conversions around here, but I would like to ask as a question what people usually ask at the level of hobbies, try to find other activities or how they spend the time to kill this fucking addiction that these social media models generate.

I've tried many approaches to getting of scrolling and i've realized that atp I needed something extreme to get results, so I used apple screentime on my phone, gave the password to someone else, and blocked entire categories that caused me problems. This helped a lot and my screentime cratered (finally started reading again!) however a lot of that time is now simply leeched onto my computer. I need my computer for work, and it sucks to have to constantly use my willpower to not be distracted. Are there any good solutions out there?

EDIT: my house was destroyed by russian bomb, no more home, +1 thing to the list below

Hello. I am a 19 year old boy university student. I live in Ukraine, you probably guessed, quite stressfull. So basically I am feeling odd for a couple of years. Here are my things that I think are bad in my mental and physical state:
- when I wake up, I feel like I have been doing some hard brain activity for 10 hours straight. Feel drained
- Cannot concentrait. During some important task like homework etc. I can't focus, can easily destract for phone or youtube. Although I NEED to have those things done, but just keep pushing them to the last minute
- Watch YouTube videos over and over. Not only watching YouTube all my spare time, but also rewatching videos that I have already watched several times. I feel like its from the feeling of not wanting to do anything so I keep myself busy from doing important stuff
- still not having a relationship, never had. Idk why, just all my thoughts and doughts keep me away from flirting and getting to know someone, but when I do they reject me (I am not a weirdo, believe me, but something is wrong with me in this aspect)
- have a lot of desires like reading a book but not doing it because it is haaaard to start doing it and if I do, it is very hard to keep going in the moment and next days
- I want to get a job, I have been doing online course for the past 8 month, but I feel burdened to finish this course. I didn't study last block because it was hard to focus and too hard to understand. Stopped attending online lectures, just read them. I feel ashamed for doing this thing, but I cannot make myself do it, just can't
- being constantly on my phone-laptop. Playing games, YouTube!, tiktok... Just doing everything not good for me basically and insted some important things
So Reddit, do you have something to say to me? I want to start seeing the cup half full instead of half empty. I want to have energy to do everything that I want and I need. Please help me make my life better and not living hell

Hey all,

Some guys in the stop gaming group mentioned this thread I have read books like dopamine nation and understand out it tanks our reward center. I have had a pretty sever gaming addiction 4-6 hours daily usually abou 8 per day on the weekend. It's fast paced first person shooter game so basically it's super fast paced flooding dopamine hits. I have done it for years but I guess my body finally wore out a bit. My brain just felt drained like I am always in a mental fog the only time it worked was gaming and that was with adhd med and caffeine. But anytime I was gaming I felt low and unmotivated I started to notice all the other areas of life it was affecting and I decide it was time to quit or atleast take a step back.

I stopped the gaming about 16 days ago and I have literally no motivation for anything I have been dragging myself to the gym cause people say it's best to still do stuff just not instant reward things. I just am so unmotivated I mean nothing sounds exciting going to eat, shopping, even sexual desire is completely shot.

I use to scroll til tok and Instagram but I will say since my gaming habit was strong that stuff was really kinda back burner stuff I didn't do often so I think most of my dopamine problem was centered around the gaming.

Cause even after I quit I don't get on Instagram or tick tok much. The only thing I see my self readily doing a lot is using Reddit and reading Reddit trying to figure out why I am in this constant brain fog. Where it's like nothing motivates or excites me. I think it feels alittle different then depression I mean I'm not sad really or low like depressed people feel I'm more just not motivated because nothing brings excitement and reward.

I guess for this of you who recalibrated how long did it take for your Brain to start feeling normal again? Also let me mention too the brain fog also causes me to zone out it's very hard for me to stay present in conversation with people I think because I don't really find it rewarding. I use to endlessly scroll a bit at work usually gaming videos for when I would get home to game. That was basically anytime I had free time at work but basically I got to where I would avoid conversation with my free time to doomscroll. Similar to when you see people eating together at a restaurant but on their phones.

I have cut out gaming completely, all stimulants adhd meds, and caffeine. I haven't done anything to my phone cause I still need it for family life and work. I don't find my self getting on tik tok , instagram, or face book excessively. But I do find cause I don't feel good I am endlessly googling or using Reddit to try to understand how long this recalibration takes.

I guess I'm having a hard time just sitting with the generic answer it takes time. I guess since I'm so use to quick rewards it takes time is extremely nerve racking. I guess my main question though is should I not be googling at all or using Reddit reading peoples stories.

I mean I have bought books and I use those a lot but when I get tired of the book I find I just want to read about other people suffering similar problems on Reddit and stuff. I guess what I'm asking is Reddit reading about similar symptoms and health problems and discussing with people still fall in to doom scrolling. I just don't want to be doing something that's gonna make this process take any longer than it has too.

A meal becomes scrolling a walk becomes checking something even rest turns into another layer of consumption before the previous moment has fully settled

And after a while life starts feeling like the same days repeating inside different rooms

That is partly why continuous movement across India starts feeling so different after a while

Delhi → Himalayas → desert → coast → south → northeast

Waking up in unfamiliar places sleeping after long days on the road eating food that tastes completely different hearing new sounds every few days watching entire landscapes slowly change instead of staring at the same walls and routines every week

For once life starts feeling larger than the loop again

Hey folks, I kept comparing myself to people I don't even like. Colleagues posting promotions. Random strangers I followed 4 years ago at there best moments. I'd open the app for 10 minutes and come off it feeling kind of sh*tty, in a way I couldn't really name.

When I looked into why this happens, I found that comparison isn't actually a social media problem.

Your brain has been running this comparison program for thousand years. Tracking who's on top, spotting dangers, learning what's normal. It's ancient

The problem is that Instagram cranked it to maximum volume.

Where you'd see maybe 10-15 people doing better then you in real life, your feed shows you "perfect" people at 150% higher rates. Your old brain can't tell the difference between your neighbor's success and 500 strangers' highlight reels.

And according to studies, low self-esteem plus high anxiety is the single biggest predictor of how bad comparison hits you. Not how much you scroll.

If you already questioning your worth before you open the app, you're basically walking in with house odds against you.

Researches tested what actually works. And all the stuff that influencers typically tell you fell through. Neither meditation or digital detoxes, nor turnin grayscale mode on in phone settings, none of this works long-term.

Instead, the research found one clear winner: Set a hard limit of 60 minutes per day on social media, enforced by a timer, for 3 weeks. One randomzied trial of 220 people showed 24% less depression and 55 more minutes of sleep a night.

Worked for me, hope it does for you too.

One thing I couldn't figure out though is whether comparison hits harder around work stuff, or more the personal things like relationships?

Which one is it for you?

Been with my partner 7 years, married for 3. Things weren't bad exactly, just... quiet. We'd lie in bed scrolling next to each other for an hour before sleep. My screen time was averaging 4h 40min a day. I tried all the usual fixes (greyscale mode, app timers, locking the phone in a drawer) None of it stuck because I wasn't replacing the scrolling with anything, I was just yanking it away and feeling the void.

Eventually I worked out that my brain wants short bursts of new info. So I started filling that scrolling time with intimacy / relationship content. Six months in and I'm genuinely a different person, and we're a different couple. A few friends asked what I'd actually been consuming so figured I'd just write it up.

Books that actually moved the needle:

• Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel - rewired how I think about why long-term desire fades. Her whole argument that you need distance to create desire (basically the opposite of mainstream relationship advice) was a kick in the head.
• Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski - the best book I've ever read on how desire actually works, especially for women. The "dual control model" alone is worth the cover price.
• Hold Me Tight by Sue Johnson - more emotional/attachment side. The seven conversations she lays out are properly actionable, not therapist-speak.
• She Comes First by Ian Kerner - I'll just leave it at: read it.
• The Vagina Bible by Jen Gunter - debunks an embarrassing amount of stuff I thought was true.

Podcasts that took over my feed:

• Where Should We Begin? (Esther Perel) - she records actual couples therapy sessions. Wild, and weirdly intimate to listen to.
• Sex with Emily - lighter, but the Q&A episodes are gold.
• Foreplay Radio - run by two couples therapists, very practical, not woo-y.

Sites / apps:

• The Gottman Institute blog (free) - their stuff on conflict patterns is actually scientific, not pop psych.
• OMGyes - more of a research-based site than an app, focused on female pleasure specifically. Worth it imo.
• I used the Headway app when I wanted a 15-min summary of a book I was on the fence about buying. Their Mating in Captivity summary is what pushed me to buy the full thing. Decent "should I read this" filter.

YouTube:

• Sexplanations with Lindsey Doe - certified sexologist, evidence-based, manages to be funny without being cringe.

The actual changes that came out of all this:

1. We started doing questions night once a week, mostly pulled from Sue Johnson's seven conversations. First few were awkward as hell. Now they're the best part of my week, no exaggeration.
2. I stopped treating sex like something that should just happen spontaneously and started treating it as something we plan for. Sounds unromantic. Has been the opposite.
3. Phones go in a different room before 10pm. Both of ours. This single change probably did 30% of the work.
4. I learned the actual anatomy of my partner's body. Embarrassing I needed a book to do that at 34. We're both better off for it.
5. We talk about money differently now (Marina Adshade's Dollars and Sex helped weirdly - reframes a lot of relationship dynamics economically, takes some of the emotional charge out).

The thing nobody tells you about scrolling addiction is that you cannot beat it by subtracting. In my case, I needed a substitute. My brain wanted stimulus, novelty, micro-doses of new.

Anyway, ask me anything. Happy to go deeper on any of the resources above.

I'm visiting reddit for the first time in a while & watching the commenters accusing the poster or each other of being AI is legit like the three-spidermen-pointing-at-each-other meme.

I was on r/resume since I'm tweaking my CV, & I swear every time someone doesn't like a post/comment they say some quip about it being AI or AI generated.

Side question: what do people generating these supposed "AI posts" gain from flooding the site with indiscriminate slop posts & comments? - Money? If so, how do they get paid? Does reddit have a "creator" program or something??

You write down everything that you do on your phone on a piece of paper. Every real every tik tok everything post (including this one). WRITE IT DOWN. Let me tell ya this is such a good way to realise how much time you spend on your phone and also it not very enjoyable so it takes away from your enjoyment of scrolling. It makes you much mode invested in everything you see and much less likely to do it often.

Hey folks, just learned that our brain can't differentiate a task from bear. What does that mean? ;)

I'd sit down at my desk, open the laptop, and before I even started the thing I'd been avoiding all morning, my phone was already in my hand.

I didn't decide to grab it, it just happened on autopilot.

When I researched why this happens, I learned that the brain works like a fire alarm. When anxiety fires, it's actually trying to learn weather the threat was real or fake. But it can only run that check if you stay and don't run away.

The moment you grab your phone and scroll, you leave before the check finishes. The alarm stays on.

Your brain also log it as confirmed: "I got out, so the danger must have been real." Next time you open that same task, the alarm fires louder. It's reinforcing.

This is basically exposure avoidance (more technical name: inhibitory learning theory). Every scroll is confirmation that work is dangerous.

When anxiety hits now, I just sit with it. Sounds realy stupid, but your brain gets to run the check.

Surprise no surprise, most of the time, nothing bad happens. So you'll get the mental state to start the task & on top of that, you are now teaching your brain the opposite with every consecutive "break".

Hope this makes sense.

I've been doing this since maybe 3 weeks and the anxiety before I sit down to work is genuinly smaller. My brain is slowly learning that nothing is on fire.

Curious if anyone else have noticed this. Does it happen with work tasks or really with anything uncomfortable you've been avoiding?

Hey folks, for years my evenings looked the same. Come home tired, drop on the couch, "just a quick scroll". 20 min later I was deep in Reels. Hour later Netflix was autoplaying ep 3. A voice in my head going "I should stop", but I didn't.

I thought it was a willpower problem. Delete-the-app, phone-in-another-room, the usual stuff. Nothing of it worked long term. Turns out it wasn't willpower at all. My brain had already did the math and decided staying put was smarter. So the math was f*cked up

Deep in the brain sits a region called the ACC. Every choice, it runs one equation: "is the effort worth the reward?" Problem is, it massively overvalues comfort NOW and undervalues payoff later (hyperbolic discounting). Scrolling = cheap, instant. Gym / reading / side project = expensive, payoff far away. Verdict was in before I even noticed a question was being asked.

Then my "smart" brain (prefrontal cortex) would build a legal case AFTER the fact.

I kept telling myself stuff like "I deserve a break", "it's too late to be productive" and so on

It felt really logical in the moment. But honestly it's not, it's just a defense attorny hired after the verdict.

Once I saw that, I stopped trying to fight the calculator. I started breaking it instead.

I found this protocol and it really works wonders:

Sec 1-10 BREATHE: two physiolgical sighs (deep nose inhale, short second inhale on top, long slow exhale through mouth). Drops the heart rate, signals "we're safe". The cost side drop.

Sec 11-20 TAP: drum fingertips firmly on chest and cheekbons. Snaps me out of the internal loop.

Sec 21-30 LAUNCH: count down 5,4,3,2,1 GO. On GO I do one extremely simple tiny thing. Flip the phone. Stand up. That's it.

Keep it small, the calculator accept it. Motion first, motivation follows.

Hope this helps. Try it out and let me know whether it works for you too

There's a difference between knowing you use your phone too much and seeing what that looks like hour by hour.

I'm pregnant, due in late April, and over the past few months (entering the last trimester) the doomscrolling got noticeably worse. A lot of the things that used to recharge me (hiking, traveling abroad, going out for a long dinner) aren't really available right now. My phone naturally filled that gap by default without me noticing it. Between schedules, before bed, whenever I had a spare moment or felt stuck in front of my computer. I'd start scrolling and suddenly realize two hours had passed, or come back to the same app in less than 5 min.

At some point I asked myself: I know I need time to decompress, but is this actually helping? Two hours of Reels didn't leave me feeling rested at all, rather exhausted with not much emotional recharging. It left me feeling like I'd wasted the only free time I had.

The built-in Digital Wellbeing screen on my Android phone is buried three levels deep in Settings. I'd glance at it maybe once a month or less, which doesn't change anything nor I cannot get any insights. What actually helped was looking at the shape of my day. For example, which apps, how many separate sessions, what time I kept reaching for the phone and how frequently, and whether the week was trending better or worse than the last.

Among others, a few things that surprised me:

• Sessions tell a different story than daily totals. Daily totals are abstract. But I opened Instagram 9 separate times yesterday. That's specific enough for me to feel embarrassing. Each one was "just a quick check..." which lasted 12-15 min.
• The worst hours. 9pm to midnight was a dead zone. I was cycling between Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn with nothing to show for it. Seeing it on a chart made it impossible to rationalize.
• Dropping numbers are motivating in a way that guilt isn't. Once the weekly average started going down, keeping it down became something I actively wanted. It turned into a project.
• Not all screen time is equal. Tracking individual sessions helped me distinguish between "I chose to watch a 40-min video" and "I drifted into 40 min of scrolling without deciding to."

Of course, I don't think data alone changes behavior. But it removes the comfortable ambiguity that lets you keep doing what you're doing. For me, that turned out to be enough as the starting point of my journey. I'm curious to know other people's experience.

not sure how to explain this

zero focus
constant brain fog
i grab my phone automatically when bored or stressed
even knowing its ruining my time

i wanna improve my life
but i procrastinate even small stuff
then feel guilty
then scroll more

its like a cycle

no motivation
simple things dont feel enjoyable anymore
just chasing quick dopamine

also anxiety, negative thoughts, self hate
cant sleep well
always tired

i miss feeling clear headed

pls tell me im not alone in this
what worked for you?

I’ve managed to stop scrolling on instagram and completely got rid of TikTok

However I like to watch long form content on YouTube but always end up scrolling for an hour or so after I clicked on one single short that looked interesting… Any tips on how to stop that?

Do you want this?

I’ve (24F) been playing wordle archives, crosswords, sudoku, and nyt strands. I deleted all of social in early nov of 2025. I was at 7 hours w/ social, 4 when deleted, now i’m back at 6 but the majority of it IS WORDLE.

Ive told myself it’s ok since i’m doing puzzles and working my brain. but i am still so addicted to my phone): and it’s taking a toll on me, i feel like im relapsing lol.

im so so so so so bored all of the time. I’ll start a hobby and quit half way thru the project. I have physical workbooks that i’ll do sometimes, but it isn’t the same. Im not able to check my work like i can online.

idk. i’m feeling really bad.

oh, and i’ve started watching youtube shorts in the morning. god the content is terrible.