Science Vs - How To Stop Scrolling

Episode Date: April 2, 2026

The apps on our phones do an amazing job of sucking us in. In fact, a big court case just found that some of these companies should be held responsible for basically designing products to be addictive. And that might not be shocking for lots of us, who feel the pull of these algorithms every day. So, is there anything we can do to help us put down our phones?? Tons of solutions are bandied about: Buy this special device to stay off your phone! What we really need to do is up the friction! Or go hardcore — just get a flip phone! But what actually works to stop scrolling? We dive into the science to find out, with help from computer science and engineering researcher Dr. Jaejeung Kim and psychologist Dr. Lea-Christin Wickord. Find our transcript here: https://tinyurl.com/ScienceVsStopScrolling  In this episode, we cover: (00:00) The Apps Got Us Trapped (04:21) Yes, it’s the scrolling that’s to blame (06:18) The Hardcore Approach (11:45) The Gentle Nudge (14:09) What if we up the friction? (19:59) Is greyscale the solution? (28:50) If we stop scrolling, do we feel better? (30:37) Final tips to stop scrolling This episode was produced by Meryl Horn, with help from Wendy Zukerman, Rose Rimler, Michelle Dang, and Ekedi Fausther-Keeys. Wendy Zukerman is our executive producer. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Erica Akiko-Howard. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Bobby Lord, Bumi Hidaka, So Wylie, Emma Munger and Peter Leonard. Thanks so much to the researchers we spoke to, including Dr. Kai Lukoff, Hyunsung Cho, Dr. Alex Holte, Dr. Jan Ole Rixen, Dr. Jay Olson, and Dr. Noah Castelo. A big thanks to Joseph Lavelle Wilson and the Zukerman family. Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Fersers. This is the show that pits facts against phones. Today on the show, how do we stop scrolling? Just last week in a landmark case, Meta, which owns Instagram and Google, owner of YouTube, were found negligent for basically creating addictive products that harmed a young woman's mental health. A huge slap to big tech today. A landmark verdict that could change the face of social media. Deliberately and negligently designed their products to get young users hooked on the apps.

They kept her endless scrolling, constant notifications, algorithms that learn exactly what keeps you watching. The tech giants have been ordered to pay her $6 million. They're appealing. But this case has reignited a huge conversation over how these apps can just... suck us in. The young woman's lawyer said during closing arguments that these apps are, quote, Trojan horses. They look wonderful and great, but you invite them in and they take over. Which, away from this case, is exactly the way that a lot of our listeners have been feeling about these apps. I want to use my phoneless, obviously, like everyone else.

I've been trying to quit for the last two years. It has gotten worse. want to stop do scrolling. It just feels like I'm constantly consuming something off of a screen. Surveys find that over half of adults in the US want to spend less time on their phones. My mental health is better when I'm off social media, and it's hard to get out for scrolling. So the question we have for this episode is this. Given that so many of us feel hooked, is there any way to unhook ourselves, to stop scrolling? Rather ironically, online, you can find tons of people claiming that they've found the answer.

These are five really simple brain tricks that can help you break social media addiction and stop doom scrolling. The first tip is friction stacking. We need to create as many layers between us and that damn phone. If you can slay that dragon, if you can resist temptation, well, you can do anything. So how do you slay that dragon? Is there anything that can actually get us off our phones that's science approved? When it comes to scrolling, a lot of us have been endless scrolling, constant notifications, and then there's science.

Science versus scrolling, we'll be right back just after the break. Don't look at your phone. When Westcham first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere. and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board.

Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at Westjet.com slash 30 years. After 19 years, they're back. Frankie Munes, Brian Cranston, and the rest of the family reunite and Malcolm in the middle, life's still unfair. After 10 years avoiding them,

how and lowest demand Malcolm be at their anniversary party, pulling him straight back into their chaos. Malcolm in the middle, life's still unfair. A special four-part event, streaming April 10th on Hulu on Disney Plus. Welcome back. There's a lot of chat right now about how these tech giants

have created social media apps designed to suck us in. Now we're going to talk about how to get unsucked. Time for the science with Beryl Horde, senior producer. Hello. Hi, Wendy. It's been a while since we've been chatting about science. Yeah, yeah, it has. So, have you been spending all that time on your phone? Sometimes it feels like that. Seriously, do you have a problem with scrolling, do you think?

Yeah, the reason I wanted to do this episode was because I'd find myself, like, just staring at my phone for way longer than I kind of meant to, especially at the end of the day. And it wouldn't, it wouldn't even feel like good. Like, I would often feel like worse about my life or just crappy in general. And yet I'd spend all this time, you know, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling. Yeah. And, you know, this is a feeling that many of us have had. And it is, it's kind of crazy to think about how pervasive this feeling is. So, Meryl, when it comes to that. to this question of how do we stop scrolling? I mean, where do we begin?

Well, first off, the research does find that scrolling itself is especially bad compared to other things we do on our phones. Okay. So, like, one study asked people, like, how they felt after doing different things on their phones and the researchers could spy on them to see, like, exactly what they were using their phones for. And they found that, yeah, it was, like, the scrolling that people said they regretted the most compared to stuff, like, communicating with their friends or like getting information. Yeah. You could also see this in how much they regretted going on certain apps.

Like after they went on Instagram, they would say that I regretted that like 42% of the time where when they went on a messaging app, they only regretted it 18% of the time. Uh-huh. And another study back this up, finding something really similar, but this one looked at meaninglessness instead, which, you know, again found that people, People said their experience was more meaningless if they had just spent that time scrolling compared to this other stuff, which help me understand why it feels so bad. But then why do we keep doing it, do you think?

Because it's like, it does give us some kind of like short-term happiness a lot of the time to scroll. The whole reason we do it is because we're probably getting some kind of, you know, dopamine hits or, you know, the parts of our brain that light up when we're doing something rewarding or do light up when we like see social media. Okay, okay. So that, I mean, that is why, yeah, we keep going back for more. So then, you know, what happens next? How do we stop? And, you know, I don't want to completely put the onus on us to work out how to unsuck ourselves from social media. The big tech companies clearly have a role to play here. But while we're waiting for them to sort it out, Beryl, do you have anything? that we can do for ourselves. I do, yes.

So let's dive in and find out what actually works here to stop scrolling. So to start, let's meet Chejong Kim. He's an assistant professor at Chungnam National University in Korea. He's also had a problem with scrolling for him. YouTube is the thing that would get him. I kept on watching, watching, and I end up watching something that I never intended. You just get sucked down these rabbit holes. Yeah, yeah.

Scientists are people too. Yeah, but he has done a lot of work trying to figure out exactly what strategies work to stop. Like, how can people break these habits? Interesting, yeah. And so I wanted to start with the most hardcore intervention that he's come up with. Do you want to guess what they did

to help people stop scrolling? Delete the apps. Put your phone in the bin. Buy a Nokia from the early 2000s. Nice guess. I guess it wasn't that extreme in a way. None of these are crazy. Well, not too many people would sign up for a study, I don't think, where they had to, like, get rid of their phones.

I would, Chejang, if you want to go even more extreme, I'll sign up. Okay, so what did they do? So his approach was to just make an app that would kick you off your phone if you go past certain time limit, then you couldn't use your phone for anything except to make phone calls. Okay. So, yeah, first, you know, there's about 40 people, and first you had to put in your goals for how long you want to spend on your phone. So, like, maybe you're using it for five hours a day and you want to get down to four

hours a day. Then you got this special app. It's called Goalkeeper, and it had three different levels. So sometimes people would just get the easy levels, basically a control where you just get a warning message when you go past your time limit. And another one, you just get kicked off your phone for a little bit of time. But then the third level is the intense one. So Chejong called this condition strong lockout.

And the strong lockout is what I was very interested. I was, I'm eager to lock people out. Just because you want to make people suffer? Yeah, I want to see the greatest effect. So we locked them out until the midnight after the time exceeded. It's interesting that he said it'll come back on at midnight, like Cinderella, because that would be the worst time to then get access to your phone. It's going to interrupt with your sleep, at least just keep it off until 8 a.m. or something.

That's true, but then people will be eating up their time for the next day. So, yeah, people were very aware of how much time they had left. their phone. Okay. And so everyone tried out these like hundred different levels of the app for one week. And I first wanted to know, yeah, what happened when people were in this, the week when they had the really hardcore approach, the strong lockout. First, let's just look at, did it work to get people to use their phones less? Yes, it did. Yes, it did. It's quite effective. So yeah, people did use their phones for roughly 75 minutes less every day. So in that sense, it worked. Yeah.

But then the caveat was that people really didn't like it, at least a lot of the time, like they said they felt more frustrated and coerced compared to the control condition where they were just getting a little warning, but they didn't actually get locked out of their phone. And then they got really stressed out when they saw that the time was getting close to when they would have to get cut off. Yes, that's the point. Yeah, but I think the thing that was frustrating was that we use our phones for a lot of different things. Yes, of course, yes. So when we get locked out of everything altogether, it can be really annoying.

Yes, it's a big stick. It's a big stick, that's right. And there can be days where you're off Instagram, but you've got a lot of work stuff to do, blah, blah, blah. You're traveling. You want to listen to a bunch of podcasts. And then you've... You just want to pay for the subway. Like, I do all the sorts of things with my phone.

I don't want to be locked out altogether. Yeah. And then there's one other super kind of hardcore study I wanted to tell you about, since you're interested in, you know, signing up for a study yourself where you just have to, like, get rid of your phone. So I talked to this researcher who set up this study where they wanted to cut the internet off people's phones for two weeks. But then when it was actually time to start the experiments and download this app that cut off the internet, a ton of people didn't actually go through with it. So more than 40% of them just didn't even get the app,

even though they signed up for the study. And then, even a bunch of people who got the app kept cheating. They'd reenable the internet again and again and again during the study. So even though you think you might want something super extreme, it seems like for a lot of people, they don't actually want to do this. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I could see.

I could see myself falling on my own patard or whatever that phrase is. Petard? Batard? Batard. I don't know. I'm just saying. I guess that's a loaf of bread. So maybe we should go in the opposite direction.

Like what if all we need to do to stop scrolling is a little like reminder, like a gentle nudge, you know, something that that just asks us like, are you sure you want to be doing this right now? Uh-huh. So Chejang has also tried this approach. Like in a different study, he created an app where people would just get a little pop-up window when they tried to open up certain apps and they could just get rid of this little pop-up with a little click of the button.

Yes. Quite a few people have apps similar to this. Yeah. Yeah. I've tried this out before because the iPhone comes with like a screen time app that works similar to this. Oh yeah. I have always wondered, does it actually work?

Because the pop-up comes on and it's quite a low hurdle to just say, yeah, this is what I want to do. Yeah, it's easy to hit ignore, but it does give you that little notch, right? Yeah, yeah, that's right. And so, yeah, he, um, Jay Jong set up the study where first people had to put in a list of apps that they wanted to, like, stop themselves from going on to so much. Mm-hmm. So we call it like the blacklist app. So it could be like, you know, Facebook, Instagram or YouTube.

Got it. And then he looked at what happened when people got this little pop-up window. Did, did they decide not to go onto those blacklisted apps? It has reduced the use about 10 to 15%. Just from getting that little box that just says, do you want to continue? Yes or no? Yes, yes.

And that little stop have made you think and reconsider your use. So what have similar studies found? Does this gentle nudging work generally? We've got Chejiang's study. Yeah, other studies do you find that it can work a little bit like Chejang's, but then a bunch of other studies didn't find any effects. So, yeah, I found a review that kind of looked at all these studies together. And bottom line, it called this type of strategy, quote, barely effective.

Okay. Okay. It's just too easy to swat that fly away. You sure? You sure? Yeah, I'm sure. I want to stay on the app. I just automatically ignore it every single time.

So for me, it wasn't surprising that it doesn't work great. Okay. So I think, yeah, we probably need to turn up the dial back up a little bit now, right? Because, you know, maybe the problem with these kind of approaches, the gentle nudge, is that there's not enough, like, friction. So I don't know if you've heard of this, there's like a buzzword online right now. Influencers are like, you know, to stop scrolling, you need to up the friction. Right. So the friction is too hot and the friction is too cold.

we need the Galdilux amount of friction to stop us from scrolling. And, you know, some of our listeners mentioned this sort of approach, like making it harder to use their apps, as like having worked for some of them. Now what I've tried and two pretty good success is hide all the social media apps on your phone. That has really helped. And I haven't found like a bullet solution,

but the BRIC app has really helped me. The BRIC is something I've been getting ads for it, a ton. And it's like this little device that like you physically have to like go to to unlock your apps. That's sort of expensive. There's also cheaper ways to do the same thing. There's one called touch grass where you have to like go outside and like take a picture of yourself touching grass before you can use your apps. So this is, it's a really common strategy. But let's find out if it actually like what actually happens when people try this.

So in that study that Che Jong did where, you know, people put in these blacklisted apps. In other cases, he made it harder for them to get to those apps. They couldn't just, you know, click it away. Okay. People would get a pop-up window where you had to enter in a string of numbers before you could go onto the app. Got it. So sometimes it was only 10 digits long.

Other times there was a 30-digit long number that they had to, like, manually put in before they got to use their app. I asked Che Jong what this was like. Very frustrating. And our participant mentioned that. Oh, there's one little thing. Once you failed to input 30-digit number at once, you have to re-type it. You start to start all over again. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so it's very frustrating. Yeah, I was imagining that's what would happen. It's very frustrating, very frustrating. Okay, so surely that stops you going on the app, right? That feels like enough. Yeah, yeah. So in the study, again, around 40 people, a few weeks long, he looked at like what happened when they got these different kind of levels. And yeah, when they, especially when they got the 30 digit number, a lot of the time they decided, I'm not even going to bother.

Yeah. Almost half the time, they decided like, yeah, F this. It's not worth it to go on this app. And the other, the 10 digit number, like, worked okay too. So overall, it did work to get people to stop going on their apps as much. But there is a pretty big caveat to this, which is that once people were in the app, they then spent more time in it than they would have done otherwise. You know what this is like, Meryl? It's like when people are waiting in line at an ice cream shop, and then when they get to the front, they have to get all the friggin' tasters.

To take their time, yeah. Exactly, exactly. But we're still waiting in the line, Heather. Yeah, it's exactly like that. Is this what happened? Yeah, okay. Yeah, he was Cheong. So, once they got in, so, hey, once I got in, I want to use this for 30 minutes instead of like 10 minute, 10 minute, 10 minutes, 3 times of 10 minutes sessions.

Oh. So the frequency decreased, but the total time remained the same. So overall, people didn't actually spend less time on their blacklisted apps. So, like, I mean, maybe this is still helpful. If your goal is to go on to your apps less often to, like, kind of do that checking, checking, like habitual checking less. Yes. But if your goal is to spend less time on your phone, it might not work to do this kind of friction approach.

And then one final thing from the study I thought was interesting. They looked at what people did when they did decide to not go on. to that naughty listed app. It turns out about half the time people just went to some other app instead. So they were still on their phones often just doing something else that maybe they thought was better for them because they didn't put it on their blacklist.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that feels right. I mean, if you're sitting on the toilet, you've got to look at something. You've got to do something. All right, so here is what we have learned thus far. If you want to stop scrolling, adding some friction is a good idea, but if the hurdle is too low, like a little pop-up, it's not going to work.

If the hurdle is too high, once you jump it, watch out, because then you might be spending more time scrolling because you're so proud of yourself for putting in those 30 digits. Yeah. Right. Yeah, it might sort of backfire once you get in. So is there any Goldilocks amount of friction then? Well, there is actually an approach that nothing to do with friction at all that I found

that it seems to be the best way to stop scrolling, according to the science, that I found. So I'll tell you what that is after the break. This episode is brought to you by FedEx. These days, the power move isn't having a big metallic credit card to drop on the check at a corporate line. The real power move is leveling up your business with FedEx intelligence and accessing one of the biggest data networks powered by one of the biggest delivery networks. Level up your business with FedEx, the new power move. Welcome back. Today we are talking about how we can stop scrolling.

Merrill Horn, senior producer at Science Versus has been looking into this and I think you've promised us a solution. to our scrolling dilemmas. Is that, am I overselling? I mean, I think, no, I think it's a solution. That's definitely worth trying. Yeah. And it is something that is even easier than a lot of the things we've been talking about to try. Let's jump in.

So next we're going to meet Dr. Leah Kristen Vickard. She did a study on this. She's a researcher at the University of Copeland's in Germany. And like basically all the researchers that I talked to about this, Leah also got into this for personal reasons. She's a psychologist. In psychology, we don't do research. We do a me search. Oh, yes. Me research. As you can imagine, I have a problem with my phone on my own. So I realized, especially during COVID, that this is a research topic that could really help me with my usage pattern, using my phone, using social media in a healthy

and beneficial way, and not only do you scroll the whole day. What has she uncovered? Well, so the idea for her came up in a meeting she was having one day with some students where they were basically brainstorming ways to stop scrolling. One of the students talked about, okay, but have a look at our old phones. like the first phones we ever had, it was like in Europe we had this old Nokia phones. It was a black and white phone. We used it to text somebody.

We used it to call somebody, maybe play a game, but that's it. And then we discuss, okay, like, how can we arrange that nowadays? Can we make our phones crappier like they used to be? Not to make it more crappy, but to make it less attractive. And we realized all those saturated. colors, your blinking red push or notification button, all of those colors keep you distracted and keep you on your phone. So yeah, the colors, we know from studies that people generally prefer bright colors.

It's probably why our apps are all rainbow colored. And so the idea was maybe if we get rid of these bright colors, make our phones black and white or put it in gray scale, we'll use our phones less. Have you heard of this approach, Wendy? I guess I know some people, obviously, who have their phone on grayscale, but I didn't know that this was a tactic to get them to stop using their phones so much. Yeah. So do you want to try it, Wendy? Sure, sure, sure, sure. All right.

And if listeners want to try this too. So on both iPhones and Android is under accessibility. So, Wendy, you have an iPhone? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so go to settings. Accessibility. Accessibility. And then scroll down to display.

text size. Got it. And now color filters. Yes. And toggle that button on. And there you go. Okay. Gray scale, here we go.

Oh, okay. It's subtle. It's noir. It's classy. Well, for me, it was more of a like, whoa. It's like a completely different thing. Like, I felt like it was super dramatic. Did you really?

I did. Yeah, no one I first did it. I was like, what? But tell me about the science. So does it actually work? I would be really surprised if this made a difference. Well, yeah, let's see what happened in her studies. So she got about 100 people to do this, switch their phones to grayscale.

And, yeah, right away, they got a pretty big response. We asked our participants, okay, how do you feel? How are you? And what they did say was, it sucks. It's boring. We don't want it. Yeah. Because we want to have our little funny phones.

We want to have, we want to play with our phone. We want to have a good time. We want to feel good using our phone. Yeah. But what they also said is, oh, it's really working. Yeah. So this generally works. In Leah's study, they found that after a day or two of their phones being on gray scale,

People spent a lot less time on their phones over an hour less on average. Whoa. An hour less? Just because their phone was on gray scale? Mm-hmm. And other, so there's also longer-term studies that have people do this for a week that don't find as big effects. So maybe 20 to 40 minutes less a day, like once you get used to it. Yeah, right.

But out of all the four studies that I could find on this, it did work. People use their phones for less time. Yeah. And there's a couple studies that looked at people who are really heavy. phone users. They were considered to have a problematic smartphone use, which is sort of a hand-wavy way of measuring how addicted someone is their smartphone. And they found that gray scale was helpful for them. One study found that people with this felt less anxious after switching their phones to gray scale. Oh, I mean, you don't see pokies machines, or what do you call them in the U.S.?

Slot machines. You don't see slot machines that are gray scale, right? Yeah. And, and, Well, but there are some things that are harder to do. I notice when I put my phone in gray scale, like when someone's calling you the buttons for answering the phone or declining it are in red and green. So now when I'm picking up a call, I'm like, oh gosh, like which button do I push? You really have to pay attention to make sure you hit the right one. What do you mean? It's that, Merrill. You don't realize how dependent you are on the colors until they're gone. Okay, okay. All right. But for most things, it still works. Okay. All right. And, you know, a few of our listeners told us that this worked for them, including this one, whose voice you might recognize.

I have been using Grayscale for like three weeks. And then when I look at my screen time report, my screen time is down. My phone time is down like 30%, which is actually more than I thought it would be. Wow. Blythe Terrell, executive editor here at Science Verses. Yes. she tried it. It worked for her. Here she is again. I do notice that if I'm on socials or whatever, I'm like,

ah, none of this looks like fun. Like, it really, nothing is popping. And also, you know what the main thing is, is that my phone does not look like a bag of jelly beans anymore. Like, it's really striking when you turn it back on, when you turn the color on, you're like, ooh, candy, mm, candy store. And when you put it on gray scale, you're like, ow, it looks like I'm reading a newspaper. And Wendy, this is one of the things that, you know, I still have my phone on gray scale most of the time.

I think it does help me too, which it kind of did make me think of a more sort of philosophical question about all this that I put to Leah. Is it a little sad that like we would need to like put our worlds in black and white on our phones to get us to scroll less? I think of course, somehow it can be sad, but on the other hand it can be so much more beautiful to realize all. the colors in your real life. And I think we are so concentrated on the life that we see in our phones. Let's say our YouTube friends and everyone we are following. Like, of course, they have a beautiful life and the perfect flats, amazing holidays, great outfits.

But what about your own life? What about your holiday, your friends, your dog? Yeah. The beautiful nature you're surrounded by. So I think if it helps us to realize, okay, we have that too and we see all that colors in our life, we don't need color on our phone. Do you know, Meryl, I wonder if I had such a humdrum reaction to, oh, okay, it's just my phone on grayscale.

Because the other day, I saw the most beautiful rainbow. It went over my house. I ran to one window. I saw the rainbow and then I ran to the other side. It's not a big house. But the other side and the rainbow was coming over my house. And so to put my phone on gray skin, not a big deal. You already have all the colors of your life.

That's right. But I'm sure that'll fade away. And then I'll just want to look at the cotton candy of my phone soon. So, okay, so I think my last question is, once people scroll less, do they actually feel better? Do they appreciate the rainbow in their life more? Well, the answer to this was sort of surprising. So there were a couple big trials that have found people's mental health

gets a little better when they use their phones less. So like one study got hundreds of people and had some of them use their phones for an hour less every day. And it worked to like improve life-sut-sut-sad-a-old. faction. But a lot of studies have been done on this and some of them haven't found any benefit at all. Some have found like negative effects. And one review that I found that looked at three other reviews about like whether or not these interventions that reduce screen time affects well-being, they said that that was quote questionable. What? Yeah. What do you make of that? Of all this mix? Yeah, I think maybe for some people, they really don't need to be reducing their screen time to feel better. And maybe,

you know, we shouldn't be beating ourselves up if we're having a hard time with this because there's no guarantee that cutting down on screen time is going to like turn your life around. But on the other hand, like, for me, I think it does help. Yeah. Yeah. And for all of our listeners who are saying that they really struggle with this and everyone online who's really been responding to the news of that court case that came down. down last week saying, you know, yeah, this is something that's maybe not the cause of all the sadness in my life, but I don't feel good after I kind of get sucked into my phone for a few hours.

Yeah. But if this is a problem for you and you want to try changing something, Che Jong said that the first thing that you got to do? You need to press the button. And that starting point is really hard. Yeah, I noticed that too. I first started researching for this episode, there was something in me that was just like, I don't want to do any of this. Like, I just want to keep using my phone.

Exactly. I think that's the hardest point. Wait, what does he mean, you need to press the button? I mean, for me, like, when I started doing this research, I just felt like nothing was really going to work. You know, I read about grayscale. And the first time I heard of it, I was just like, that sounds kind of like dumb. I'm not going to do that. Yeah, that's kind of where I'm at. But I think I was just resistant to doing anything. Really?

Like, I was just feeling kind of lazy. And so, Che Jong is basically like, you know, just starting is often the hardest part of this. And for him, you know, this means just like putting his phone in a different room sometimes, if he's working or going to bed. And then he has this one thing he does for when he's already in a scrolling session. I just physically, I talk to myself, hey, stop using. And just start work or just do it. And then you're more likely to actually just like close your phone if you just tell yourself, hey, yeah.

Stop. Yes. Interesting. Physically speaking, it works for me. I'm not sure if it works for others, but it does for me. I do find that when I am scrolling and don't want to be anymore, really questioning whether I'm enjoying any of the content I've just seen does help. So as an example, so I was on a good run.

Because you can be on a good run with social media where you're getting video after video that's actually quite delightful. And then I stopped it when I saw this video of kids, plucky little kids wearing moustaches and saying, I love wearing a moustache. And I was like, what the fuck am I doing with my life?

That was your dark moment. I thought it was going to be way worse than that. That was enough. Wow. Kids wearing mustaches. Phone in the bin. That was your wake-up call. Exactly.

That was it. Thanks, Merrill. Thanks, Wendy. That's science verses. And if you try any of the stuff that we've talked about on this episode, you put your phone in grayscale, you download an app that has a little nudge. you watch a dumb video that you despise and then you throw the phone in the bin

please let us know on Instagram we are at Science underscore VS I'm on TikTok at Wendy Zook and we love to hear from you Merrill how many citations are in this week's episode okay we have 44 citations great great great great which if you want to see those you can go to the show notes and follow the links

to the transcripts This episode was produced by Merrill Horn with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, Rose Rimla, Michelle Dang, and Akeddy Foster Keys. I'm the executive producer, we're edited by Blythe Terrell, fact-checking by Erica Akeko Howard, mix and sound design by Bobby Lord, music written by Bobby Lord, Bumi Hidaka, So Wiley, Emma Munga and Peter Leonard. Thank you so much to all of the researchers that we spoke to, including Dr. Kai Lukov, Hayansang Chou, Dr. Alex Holt, Dr. Jan O'Rickson, Dr. J. Olson, and Dr. Noah Costello. A big thanks to Joseph Lebel Wilson and the Zuckerman family. Science Versus is the Spotify's original. Listen to us for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Just follow us and tap the bell if you want to get notifications when new episodes come out. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next week.