How to Stop Doomscrolling: What the Studies Say Works

You stop doomscrolling the way you stop any habit that runs on autopilot: put a pause between the urge and the feed, make the feed less rewarding, and set a limit that still holds when you're tired. Each has been tested in studies, some more rigorously than others.

The short answer:

• Add friction before feed apps open. Given a pause and a way out, people backed out about a third of the time.
• Keep a daily limit in place. Screen time crept back once limits ended.
• Cut down rather than quit. An hour less a day held up better than a week off.
• Go grayscale. Students who tried it cut about 38 minutes a day.
• Batch notifications, keep the phone out of reach, and plan what you'll do instead.

What doomscrolling means

Doomscrolling is scrolling through bad news, or any endless feed, long after it has stopped informing you or making you feel good. The word is simply "doom" plus "scrolling." It circulated online for a few years before going mainstream in 2020, when a pandemic, mass protests and a US election gave people reasons to keep refreshing.

Strictly, it means compulsively checking for bad news. Most people now use it more loosely: the political feed at midnight, a disaster you can't stop reading about, an hour of short videos you won't remember tomorrow. What they share is the aftertaste: tired, a little worse, unsure where the time went.

Why it's so hard to stop scrolling

It isn't a character flaw; several forces work against you.

The feed has no last page. A book has chapters, an episode ends, a newspaper runs out. Each ending is a natural moment to ask whether you want more.

An infinite feed removes that moment, so stopping is entirely up to you, usually when you least feel like deciding.

The rewards are unpredictable. Most posts are dull, then one is hilarious, infuriating or exactly what you needed. Researchers who study notifications compare them to a slot machine that plays on our bias for variable rewards ^[1], and a feed works the same way: the next swipe might be the good one.

Bad news grabs attention. We're wired to notice threats, and feeds learn what we click. Across more than 22,000 headline experiments run on the news site Upworthy, each extra negative word in an average-length headline raised the click rate by 2.3% ^[2]. Feeds tuned for clicks amplify that pull.

Habit does the rest. Boredom, a lull or a buzz is the cue, opening the app is the routine, and something new is the reward. Repeat that enough and your thumb moves before you decide, which is why many fixes that work target the moment before the app opens.

How to stop scrolling: what the research supports

1. Put a pause between the urge and the app

In a 2023 study in PNAS, 280 people used one sec, an app that interrupts the opening of a chosen app with a few seconds of waiting and an option to back out ^[3]. When the pause appeared, they closed the app 36% of the time. Over six weeks, attempts to open those apps fell 37%, and actual openings fell 57%. In a follow-up experiment with 500 people, the option to back out mattered most, the wait helped, and a reflective message alone did nothing ^[3].

Read those numbers with care: people chose to install the app, the six-week data had no comparison group, and one of the authors created the app. Still, friction is cheap to add. Move your feed apps off the home screen so opening one takes a search instead of a reflex, or let an app add the pause for you (we compared the best app blockers for iPhone).

2. Set a time limit, and keep it in place

In a 2018 trial, 143 University of Pennsylvania students were randomly assigned either to keep Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat to 10 minutes each a day for three weeks or to use them as usual ^[4]. Loneliness and depressive symptoms fell in the limited group compared with the others. Anxiety and fear of missing out dropped in both groups, a hint that simply tracking your use helps too.

A 2025 trial capped students' total smartphone screen time at two hours a day for three weeks. Compared with a control group, they reported less stress, fewer depressive symptoms, better sleep and higher well-being: small to medium improvements ^[5]. Once the limit ended, their screen time climbed back toward where it started within weeks ^[5].

A limit is something you keep using, not a course you finish.

Apple's App Limits are a fine start, with one weakness: an "Ignore Limit" button, exactly what a tired thumb taps at 11 p.m. Unrotten sets the same kind of daily limit without that button.

3. Cut down instead of quitting

Going cold turkey feels decisive, and it can work as a reset (here's our take on the dopamine detox). But the evidence leans toward cutting back. In a German experiment with 619 smartphone users, one group gave up the phone for a week, another used it an hour less each day, and a third carried on as usual ^[6]. Both changes raised life satisfaction and eased depressive and anxiety symptoms, but most effects were stronger, and more stable over four months, in the group that cut back ^[6].

Total abstinence is also hard to keep. In a 2025 trial that blocked all mobile internet on volunteers' phones for two weeks, only about a quarter of those who signed up kept the block on for at least 10 of the 14 days ^[7].

4. Turn your screen gray

Color is part of the pull: red badges, bright thumbnails, saturated photos. In a study by Holte and Ferraro, 161 college students tracked their phone use, and 73 of them switched their screens to grayscale for 8 to 10 days ^[8]. That group cut its total screen time by an average of about 38 minutes a day, with less time on social media and web browsing. Video time didn't drop, and anxiety and depression improved in both groups, so grayscale didn't explain that.

On an iPhone: Settings, Accessibility, Display & Text Size, Color Filters, then Grayscale. Set the Accessibility Shortcut to Color Filters, and a triple click brings color back when you need it.

5. Get notifications in batches

Every buzz is an invitation back into the feed. In a randomized trial with 237 adults in India, people whose notifications arrived in three batches a day (9 a.m., 3 p.m. and 9 p.m.) unlocked their phones less often, felt more in control of them and concentrated better than people who got them as usual: medium-sized differences ^[1]. Hourly batches barely changed anything. Switching notifications off entirely backfired, leaving people more anxious and more afraid of missing out ^[1].

On an iPhone, Scheduled Summary (Settings, then Notifications) delivers non-urgent notifications at times you pick.

6. Keep the phone in another room

Distance is friction you don't have to think about: a phone in the kitchen can't be grabbed from the couch on a whim. A nearby phone may also cost you some attention. In a small experiment with 42 students, those whose switched-off phone lay face down on the desk scored lower on a concentration test than those who had left it outside the room ^[9]. But a careful, preregistered repeat of the best-known study of this "brain drain" effect found no difference at all ^[10], so treat the attention benefit as possible, not proven. The friction works either way.

A charger in another room does the job, or one of these phone lock boxes.

7. Plan what you'll do instead

Scrolling fills a gap: boredom, a tired brain, a few minutes in line. Take it away without filling the gap and the urge comes right back. In that 2025 trial, part of the improvement in mental health, well-being and attention seemed to come from how people used the freed time: more time with people face to face, more exercise, more time outdoors ^[7].

So decide ahead of time: when you sit on the couch after dinner, you pick up the book on the armrest. Keep the replacement as close at hand as the app was. And if you want a nudge in the moment, Unrotten's Coach messages you when your scrolling runs fast.

When the scrolling happens at night

Night scrolling often has its own engine: claiming time for yourself after a day that left none. That pattern and its fixes are in our guide to revenge bedtime procrastination. The simplest fix: charge the phone outside the bedroom, so one more scroll means getting out of bed.

How Unrotten makes the limits hold

Everything above works without an app. If you want limits that hold on the nights you'd rather they didn't, that's what we built Unrotten, an iPhone app, to do. You choose the apps that eat your time (your rot apps: Apple's Screen Time hands them over as private tokens, so Unrotten never learns their names) and pick your goals:

• Less scrolling sets a daily limit. When it's used up, Apple's Screen Time shield locks those apps until the day resets. There's no "Ignore Limit" button on the shield, and a raised limit only counts from the next day. You can still turn a goal off in the app, so it's a commitment device, not a lock nobody can open.
• Shorter scroll sessions gives the feed the stopping point it lacks: past the session length you set, the apps take a break before they open again.
• The Coach, a chat that knows your goals and your day, nudges you when your scrolling runs fast.
• The MindBattery makes the cost visible: a score from 0 to 100 that drains while you use your rot apps and recharges with sleep, movement, mindful minutes and time away, right on your Lock Screen.

Start with one change today

You don't need all seven. Pick the one that matches the moment you lose most often: a pause if it's the reflexive tap, grayscale if it's the bright pull of the screen, a charger in the kitchen if it's 1 a.m. Give it two weeks, then add another.

And if the scrolling comes with low mood or anxiety that doesn't lift, a doctor or therapist can help.