How to stop doomscrolling: steps that work without deleting your apps

The short answer: you stop doomscrolling by changing the setup around the habit, not by relying on willpower. Add a pause before the app opens, set a daily limit, make the feed less tempting, and decide in advance what you will do instead. You do not need to delete anything. Below are seven steps, roughly in order of how strong the evidence is, plus what to do when you slip.

If you have not read it yet, our post on alternatives to doomscrolling covers what to put in the gap. This one is about breaking the loop itself.

Why does deleting the app usually not stick?

Deleting an app feels decisive, but it asks you to give up the parts you actually value: friends, group chats, the occasional useful post. Most people reinstall within days.

Researchers have noticed this too. When psychologist Melissa Hunt and her team at the University of Pennsylvania designed an experiment on social media and wellbeing, they deliberately did not ask students to quit, because they considered that goal unrealistic. They asked for limits instead, and the limits worked. More on that below.

The goal, then, is not zero. It is fewer mindless opens and more time on things you chose.

Step 1: Put a pause between you and the app

This is the step with the best evidence, and it takes two minutes to set up.

In a 2023 study in PNAS, researchers tracked 280 people who used one sec, an app that shows a short pause screen when you try to open an app you picked. The pause gives you a moment to breathe and an easy button to close the app. The results over six weeks:

• People closed the app again in 36% of their attempts to open it.
• By week six, they tried to open those apps 37% less than in week one.
• Overall, actual opens of the target apps fell by 57%.

A follow-up experiment in the same paper found that the most useful part was the option to back out, with the delay adding to it. A larger 2024 study of 1,039 one sec users, presented at the CHI conference, confirmed that short frictions reduce opening attempts over about 13 weeks.

One honest caveat: the 2023 field study had no control group, and the people in it chose to install the app, so they were motivated to begin with. Still, the effect is large and consistent.

How to do it: one sec is one option. You can also get a cruder version of the same thing for free by logging out of the app, so every open needs a password.

Step 2: Set a limit, not a ban

The Penn experiment is one of the few that tested cause and effect. Hunt's team randomly assigned 143 students either to carry on as usual or to limit Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat to 10 minutes each per day, about 30 minutes in total. They checked real usage through phone battery screenshots, not self-reports.

After three weeks, the limited group showed significant drops in loneliness and depression compared with the control group. The effect was strongest for students who started out more depressed.

It was a small study of US undergraduates over a short period, and the 30-minute figure was picked to be measurable, not because it is a magic number. But the direction is clear: less time, with no quitting, helped.

How to do it: on Android, go to Settings, then Digital Wellbeing, then App timers, and set a daily timer for your two worst apps. Timers reset at midnight. On iPhone, the equivalent is App Limits in Screen Time.

Step 3: Make the screen boring

Colour is part of what makes a feed feel rewarding. Turning your phone to grayscale takes some of that away.

Two studies point the same way:

• Alex Holte's research with about 220 students found grayscale cut smartphone use by an average of 39 minutes a day.
• A 2024 study of 84 people in Mobile Media and Communication found a smaller drop of about 20 minutes a day. People also reported more control and less stress.

The second study had a telling detail. The number of times people unlocked their phones did not change. Grayscale made each visit shorter, but the urge to check stayed. So use it alongside Step 1, not instead of it.

How to do it: Android's Bedtime mode can switch the screen to grayscale on a schedule. You will find it under Digital Wellbeing, then Bedtime mode, then Screen options at bedtime.

Step 4: Cut the pull of notifications

A lot of doomscrolling starts with a buzz you did not ask for. Turn off notifications for every app that is not a person talking to you. Keep messages, calls and anything work truly needs.

For harder stretches, Android's Focus mode pauses chosen apps entirely, including their notifications, until you turn it off. It is useful for deep work blocks or the hour before bed.

This step stops the app from calling you. It does not stop you from calling the app, which is why it works best with Steps 1 and 2.

Step 5: Write one if-then plan

Psychologists call this an implementation intention: a plan in the form "if this happens, then I will do that." It sounds too simple to matter, but a widely cited 2006 review by Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran found these plans had a medium-to-large effect on reaching goals.

Note that this research is about goals in general, not doomscrolling specifically. But the logic fits well, because doomscrolling happens on autopilot and an if-then plan gives the autopilot a different route.

A few examples:

• "If I open Instagram in bed, then I put the phone on the charger across the room."
• "If I catch myself on my third news app in a row, then I close it and send one message to a friend."
• "If I am waiting in a queue, then I open my podcast app, not my feed."

Pick one. Write it down. One good plan beats five vague ones.

Step 6: Clean up the feed you keep

The feed you do keep should not make you feel worse. Unfollow or mute accounts that leave you angry or anxious, and follow a few that are useful, calm or funny. Most apps also let you mark posts as "not interested," which slowly changes what the algorithm serves.

This one has less direct research behind it than the steps above, so think of it as maintenance rather than a cure.

Step 7: Have something better ready

The urge to scroll is often boredom, stress or a few dead minutes. If nothing is ready to fill them, the feed wins by default. Decide in advance what you reach for instead: a short briefing, a podcast, a book on the nightstand, or short videos on topics you actually care about.

Disclosure: we make Qrio, a free Android app of one-minute videos on business, startups and the world, built to have a clear stopping point.

Our full list of alternatives goes through seven options and who each one suits.

Which steps have the strongest evidence?

If you only do two things today, do the first two.

What should you do when you slip?

You will slip. That is normal, and the research expects it. The 2024 one sec study found that users took breaks from the tool and quickly went back to their old patterns when they did.

That is useful to know, because it tells you the settings are doing the work, not some permanent change in you. So when you notice a bad week, do not start over from scratch. Switch the pause and the timers back on, and carry on.

It also helps to check in once a week. How did you feel at the end of each day? Keep what made a difference and drop what did not.

When is it more than a habit?

For most people, doomscrolling is a habit that responds to the steps above. But if you notice the scrolling comes with low mood, anxiety or poor sleep that last for weeks, the phone may be a symptom rather than the cause. In that case, talking to a doctor or a counsellor will help more than any app setting.

Sources

• Grüning, Riedel and Lorenz-Spreen, "Directing smartphone use through the self-nudge app one sec", PNAS (2023)
• Haliburton et al., "A Longitudinal In-the-Wild Investigation of Design Frictions to Prevent Smartphone Overuse", CHI 2024
• Hunt, Marx, Lipson and Young, "No More FOMO: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression", Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology (2018), summarised by ScienceDaily and TechCrunch
• Dekker and Baumgartner, "Is life brighter when your phone is not?", Mobile Media and Communication (2024)
• University of Cincinnati, report on Alex Holte's grayscale research
• Wang, Wang and Gai, "A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Mental Contrasting With Implementation Intentions on Goal Attainment", Frontiers in Psychology (2021), citing Gollwitzer and Sheeran (2006)
• Google, "Manage how you spend time on your Android phone with Digital Wellbeing"