Doomscrolling is the biggest nightmare for our generation. From teenagers to elderly people, they won’t stop scrolling short-range videos — think Instagram Reels, TikToks, and YouTube Shorts — on social media applications like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and also YouTube Shorts.
For students, it’s affecting their studies; for workers, it is affecting their concentration on work, it is taking our time and it’s killing our concentration for a long period of time without us knowing. To prevent this, people are looking into options to go less digital and using various features on their phone to reduce the screen time of their phone or the particular application. We have to agree we cannot live without our phone but we can live without the application.
One of the famous things people use on Android phones is Digital Wellbeing. For example, they can choose an application like Instagram, they can choose 10 minutes, 15 minutes, or 30 minutes per day they can spend, after that, it will automatically close. It will help people a little to overcome doomscrolling, but if you want, you can override it — but self control is the most important thing.
Now, some people might say — “I can just override it anyway, so what’s the point?” And honestly, that’s fair. But here’s the thing — even that 10-second pause is proven to reduce impulsive behavior. It breaks the automatic reflex of opening the app without thinking. That small friction point is sometimes all it takes.
But Digital Wellbeing isn’t the only tool available. And now we have another option to restrict distracting apps on our phone. Recently, at the Android show, they introduced Pause Point, which allows users to cut down on distracting applications at the moment of opening.
First, you need to choose the distracting apps inside Digital Wellbeing — for example, Instagram — then when you try to open the application, it will intercept with a 10-second pause screen. The screen lets you go into the app anyway, or ask you to do a breathing exercise, or watch a small photo slideshow from your memories, and also it will suggest you to use another application which helps with our focus. And if you need to override it, it will involve restarting your phone, so we feel compelled to either go away from the app or choose to use it on our own terms.
Yes, some might argue this is just another tech solution to a tech problem. And maybe they are right. But the goal here was never to replace your willpower — it is to support it. Think of it like a speed bump. It does not stop you, but it does make you slow down and think for a second.
The feature is coming by the end of this year, but it all depends on our self control.
