How to stop doomscrolling on your iPhone

You opened the app to check one thing. Forty minutes later you're still scrolling, no longer sure what you were looking for.

What helps you stop is a rule decided in advance, at the door of the app, not willpower spent in the middle of the feed. On an iPhone that comes down to five changes, from easiest to firmest: cut notifications, take the app off your first screen, lock Screen Time behind a separate passcode, put a pause before the app opens, and check the weekly report once a week. If you only do one today, make it the second.

Doomscrolling, strictly, is scrolling bad news you can't put down. The mechanism is the same as any feed with no end, and that's what this post covers.

Five changes, what each one closes and what it leaves open

None of them closes everything. What matters is the set, and which gap you use most.

1. Turn off notifications that aren't from people

In Settings → Notifications, open the app and turn off likes, suggestions and "see what you missed". Keep messages. This is the door that opens without you touching anything.

2. Take the app off your first home screen

Press and hold the icon, tap Remove App → Remove from Home Screen. It stays in the App Library. To open it you now have to search for it, which buys a few seconds to notice that isn't what you wanted.

3. Set a Screen Time limit, with a separate passcode

Go to Settings → Screen Time → App Limits and create a limit for the app where you get lost most. Then, under Use Screen Time Passcode, set a code different from your iPhone passcode. Without that, Ignore Limit is a suggestion. Even with it, the limit is daily: it doesn't stop you spending it all by 9am.

4. Put a pause before the app opens

Offimo does this on iPhone: when you try to open an app you've protected, it holds access for a few seconds, and the screen offers to close the app or ask for access. With the simple pause, if you still want in, you go in. For the days you've already decided you don't want to negotiate, Commitment Mode makes the block firmer for the period you choose.

5. Look at the number once a week

"I'll use my phone less" can't be checked. In Settings → Screen Time, the weekly report shows time per app, how many times you picked up your phone and how many notifications arrived. Write down the two apps that weigh the most and compare next week.

What the studies measured, and what they don't prove

According to Allcott, Gentzkow and Song (American Economic Review, 2022), 31% of social media use came from self-control problems, not from wanting to be there. When people could set limits on their own future screen time, their use fell substantially. What worked was a rule chosen in advance. The study covers social media use in general, not scrolling bad news in particular.

According to Grüning and Lorenz-Spreen (PNAS, 2023), 280 participants used the one sec app for six weeks, which puts a one-second pause before certain apps open. 36% of the time, people closed the app instead of opening it, and by week six, attempts to open them were 37% lower than in week one. The study measures openings, not screen time, so it doesn't say how many minutes people stopped spending in the feed. And it tested one sec, not Offimo: the number is not a result of our app.

The full figures and sources are on the science page.

Why the feed gives you no signal to stop

A magazine ends. A feed doesn't. With no last page, the moment to stop has to be manufactured by you, at the point you least feel like it. And not every scroll pays off: it's the chance that the next one might that keeps the thumb moving, the same variable-reinforcement principle behavioural psychology describes.

What to expect

The first week is the most annoying: you'll reach for your phone by reflex and meet the barrier. There's no guaranteed timeline. In the one sec study the effect kept growing through week six, so the useful question isn't "did it work in three days?" but "are my attempts to open lower than in week one?".

For today, do only step 2, with the app where you lose the most time without meaning to. Decide the rest when you see Sunday's report.