How I Stopped Scrolling on my Phone (Again)

Intro #

A while back, I wrote up a post about doom-scrolling and phone addiction. Since then, my habits have changed and I wanted to make an update because I’ve made even more progress.

If you haven’t read the old post, check it out. Or just read the following summary to see what I had tried earlier:

How I tried to stop doom-scrolling: #

  1. Talk to a Therapist about your issues first.
  2. Use a minimalist launcher to break the addictive psychology built into your phone’s UX.
  3. Use different objects for different functions. Play music on an iPod, Read books on a Kindle, wear a watch for the time, etc. The idea is to reduce the habit of picking up your phone for everything.
  4. Delete apps that suck your time away.
  5. Use App Usage restrictions for apps you have to keep (ex: Chrome).
  6. New behaviors (reading RSS feed instead of Reddit All)

Okay, so that’s what I tried… but what went wrong?

Where my plan fell short #

After a while, I fell into the same hour-long YouTube binge sessions that I had originally limited… which shouldn’t have been possible, right? I removed the YouTube app, and set app timers on Chrome. What gives?

Well, at one point, I discovered Android lets you limit specific websites in Chrome too. To me that sounded even better than limiting the whole Chrome app, since I could just limit my YouTubing specifically.

One of my biggest fears was running out of Chrome time early in the day and not being able to use it for something like ordering from an online menu. So this seemed like a perfect alternative.

In fact, it was exactly what I had been looking for. Fine-grained control over my viewing habits! For a few weeks it was great!

The Gotcha Moment #

For a while, the site timers worked brilliantly. I could watch F1, CS2, and Primeagen content without spending ungodly amounts of time doom-scrolling for the perfect video.

But guess what? I found a bug that defeats the whole “site time limit” thing. Just open an Incognito tab, and the site timers won’t work at all.

Seriously. That’s it. A fifth-grader could figure that out.

That exploit makes defeating the site timer setting waaaayyyyy too easy. At least the old way forced me to:

  • Go back into the settings app
  • Find the digital well-being section
  • Find the app timer
  • Disable the timer

After the Genie was out of the bottle, it only took a few weeks before I was back up to my old doom-scrolling numbers, and knew I needed to make a change. Again.

The Nuclear Option #

At this point, I decided to do something drastic. I thought to myself:

Y’know, if I never saw another YouTube video in my life, I think I would be okay with that.

So I downloaded this PersonalDNSFilter app, which lets you setup a custom DNS filter on your phone. Using it, I completely blocked YouTube and Reddit, no matter what browser I’m using.

This has worked like a dream so far. In the last week, I haven’t had a single day where I said to myself “Yup, chalk that up as another 6 hours wasted on YouTube.”

Blocked website using DNS

And when I’ve tried to open YouTube as a reflex, I’ve chuckled to myself looking at the timeout screen.

The lies I told myself #

After committing to the switch, (which I’ve tried to do unsuccessfully in the past), I realized that I have been lying to myself ALOT about why I use certain apps.

Before, I used to think my phone always had to have SOME access to YouTube. For example:

  • What if I need to watch a recipe video?
  • What if I need to watch a coding tutorial video?
  • What if somebody tries to share a funny video with me?
  • What if there’s a work training thing I need to watch on my phone?
  • What if I’m trying to use some new service in real life and all I have is my phone and their only tutorial is on YouTube?

But here’s the thing: none of that is ever gonna happen.

Fixing the Roku TV Problem #

On a whim, my wife asked if we could try replacing our living room’s 55-inch TV with a pitifully small 19-inch spare monitor instead… and on a whim I agreed.

And guess what? Now we’re both wasting less time watching awful garbage on Tubi and YouTube. And we’re both happier with the change!

The only problem is she wants to put a fish tank on that entertainment stand now instead… I don’t know how I feel about that yet.

Fixing Desktop Youtube #

Now, just because I’ve blocked YouTube entirely on my phone, doesn’t mean I’ve got it blocked on my desktop. Maybe someday I will. But in the meantime, I made the app more user-friendly, by blocking all the images:

Youtube without thumbnails is much calmer

Now, I’m far less distracted when I watch a tutorial video!