I Created an App that Makes Scrolling Annoying on Purpose

I had tried it all before.

Screentime. Focus lock. The apps that gamify *not* using social media. Leaving my phone outside of my room. Some of these tactics worked. For a bit. And then I found myself mindlessly scrolling on social media yet again, wondering how long I would spend fighting this endless loop that was quietly stealing my life away from me.

I'm not the only one. A YoungMinds study found that a third of the young people surveyed felt 'trapped' by social media to a certain degree. Of course, this should come as no surprise, given that social media platforms are addictive by design. The more time you spend swiping away on your phone, the more time could potentially spend interacting with ads and other monetisable content. What this ultimately means is that these companies spend billions of dollars figuring out how to flood our brains with more dopamine than we can handle so we keep coming back for more.

One evening, thinking about my social media dilemma, I came to the conclusion that the only way for me to truly 'defeat' this vicious cycle was to retrain my brain. Previous tactics would successfully block it all out for a while, but ultimately I wasn't training my brain to use social media responsibly, and it would always leave me defenseless to it when I inevitably came back to Instagram or TikTok.

This is where the idea for YourScroll was born.

How I Broke my Phone Addiction for Good

The idea for YourScroll was born from my desire to both take back the time I waste on social media, and a separate goal which was to write and create more.

I wanted to be able to use social media less, and to not fall into the same old doom scrolling habits as before. But I still needed to be able to access it to message friends, and generally keep in contact with people from home. So, instead of blocking social media completely, I thought about interrupting it.

The concept was simple: after a predetermined amount of time on social media, the app would ask you to pause and write a short reflection. In my case, I set the timer to fifteen minutes. I would open Instagram, use it for 15 minutes and then write a short reflection. Initially I was writing about social media use itself:

Why did you open social media just now?

Did those fifteen minutes feel worthwhile?

How are you feeling right now?

It was eye opening how few times I was able to come up with a justification that I was happy with.

Over time, I added different types of prompts. Questions about my goals, what I wanted my future to look like, how I saw myself as a person. What I found, as the weeks went on, was that I got much more comfortable and willing to answer questions. In fact, I ended up reducing the scroll time to 10 minutes and then to 5 minutes over a matter of a month, and my overall screen time also . I was finally getting a hold on my phone addiction, AND exercising my brain and flexing my creative muscles in one foul swoop. It was at this stage that I felt that I had a product that I could share with the world.

I know I've made the process sound very simple, and, of course, it's not as simple as downloading YourScroll. It's not an easy fix. There's no such thing. Social media has been made so appealing to our brains, that there is nothing that can replace that kind of stimulation. The first few days are hard. But stick with it. A good tool, along with a little bit of discipline can change your life.

Your move!