How to Stop a Scrolling Addiction

How often through out the day do you reach for your phone? How many hours a day do you scroll? It's a real addiction that takes up more time than you might realize. Not only does this habit drain your time, it also has negative effects on your mental health. Today we talk about how to stop the scrolling addiction.

Gray Scale mode for the iPhone:

Go to Settings

Select Accessibility

Select Display and Text Size

Scroll to Color Filters - it's set to OFF - click it

Move the toggle on Color Filters 

Select Gray Scale

Transcript

Hello, my name is Tiffany, and welcome to the podcast Working on Amazing. This is the podcast where we talk about the work that it takes to rebuild an amazing life. Now, in today's episode, we're gonna be talking about the scrolling addiction.

Have you heard of doom scrolling, where you just pick up your phone, and suddenly an hour has gone by. You scroll and you don't feel better for it. I think this is something a lot of us in today's society struggle with.

Most adults have a smartphone, and we do look at it all the time. So how do we break that barrier of still enjoying our phone, using it for what we need, but where we're not addicted? That's what we're gonna talk about today.

If you're new here, I just want to say, this podcast is designed for women who feel like they're starting over in the middle of their life.

Now, that can mean a lot of different things for different people, but for me, just as an example, starting over looked like divorce after a 20-year marriage.

On the other hand, for my sister, that looked like the sudden, very unexpected death of her spouse. So those are two extremely different situations, and I'm not trying to compare them.

But what I am saying is the commonality is when all your hopes, all your dreams, all your plans for the future have gone up in smoke, your day-to-day life looks totally different than what it used to. And it does. It feels like you're starting over.

If that's you, first, from the bottom of my heart, I truly want to say, I'm sorry. I know how overwhelming and itchy that feels. But I'm here to offer hope.

I'm here to offer encouragement. I'm here to tell you, it gets better. Countless women have gone through this process in the middle of their life and come out on the other side.

Better for it. You can too, all right? So you are not alone.

You're actually in the right place. Welcome. I am so glad you're here.

Now, as we get down to today's episode, I just want to remind you, in the beginning, I said there were five areas I focused on when I rebuilt my life. I focused on my spiritual help. I focused on my mental help.

I focused on my physical help, my financial help, and growth and goals. And I said each episode would fall under one or more categories.

In today's episode, as we talk about the scrolling addiction, I feel like it falls under growth and goals, because when you set a goal to do something, you need time to do that. And this takes away so much time.

I feel like there's a piece of this, it is 100% time management. And this time sink we have when we scroll.

But I also feel like this falls under mental health as well, because scrolling, doom scrolling, sitting there, just going through your phone, never leaves you feeling better. And it almost always leaves you feeling worse.

Whether it's social media, and you just feel bad because you feel like you're not good enough, whether it's the news, and it's all the horrible things happening in the world.

All these things truly affect our mental health, and we've got to figure out how to cut the cord. I am not here to tell you that cell phones are bad. Smart phones are so cool.

They have all this information. We have access to libraries' worth of information. Encyclopedias, things that I had to go to the library for when I was growing up.

We have a camera. We have a calculator. And I'm of the generation, when I was in school, my math teacher said, you have to learn all this because you will not have a calculator with you all the time.

You've got to do this math in your head. And now I have a calculator with me all the time because it's an app on my smartphone, right? So it's really cool, but let's also look at it realistically.

I've had a smartphone for 15 years, maybe 16, 17 years. I got my first smartphone after my children were in maybe kindergarten. I'm trying to remember.

I remember it came in the mail. I remember I ordered it. I got an Apple iPhone, and I remember it coming in the mail, me setting it up, and I was so thrilled.

Okay. But my children were little. So my oldest is 22.

So I think I've had a smartphone between 15 to 18 years, somewhere around in there. I did not know when I got this phone how addictive it was going to be.

I didn't realize what a big place in my life it would have in just not really that long of a time frame, right? Because this is relatively new technology, we really didn't know those things.

But now we do, and now I think it's imperative that we set up healthy boundaries, that we understand, oh, this is taking a bigger chunk than I wanted, this is taking a bigger chunk for me than I realized and I expected.

So I'm interacting with this new technology in a different way than I anticipated. I'm going to set up healthy boundaries to protect my mental health, to protect my time and the people around me.

So I spend time with the actual people and not just a digital world. So that's what we're talking about today. I'm not here to tell you to get rid of your smartphone.

I'm not here to tell you it's bad. I'm here to talk about let's manage our phone instead of our phone managing us. Is that fair?

Okay, so let's break it down. Step one, let's understand that this device is created to be addictive. It is.

Apple, for example, don't think for a minute that they don't hire psychiatrists and psychologists, people who understand and study behavior. They know what makes the colors, the sounds, the layout that makes you want to stay looking at it.

I've watched studies about popular YouTube channels like CocoMellon and stuff like that, and they have researchers constantly looking what makes this particular one, when kids are looking at it versus when they look away, what colors, what objects

make a child stay engaged with. They literally have a team of researchers doing that.

If CocoMellon has a team of researchers doing that, don't for a minute fool yourself by thinking somebody like iPhone and Android and all these other companies don't have the same thing.

They make money when their device feels irreplaceable in your life. So understand that the psychology of it isn't working for your benefit. It's made to be addictive.

And then the apps themselves, the same thing. They're made to be addictive. The news stories are made to catch your attention.

We call them clickbait for a reason. The way an article title is phrased, there are certain keywords that make you want to click on it. We have a curious nature.

We sometimes have a morbid nature, and we want to click on things. We want to find out why. Generally, negative stuff sells way more than positive stuff.

I mean, I actually studied this in school, and I know it was 30 years ago, but the psychology has not changed. The technology has changed, but the psychology has not changed.

We are drawn to a new story that, oh my gosh, 20 people got injured, versus this great cute little puppy that did something wonderful. The negative story is going to have way more clicks.

All these things, and you are taught, you learn to phrase a story in the most dramatic way possible so people will click on it. So when your newsfeed has really negative-themed and negatively-slanted things, it's going to affect your mental state.

You're going to feel negative about the world, the world around you. And a lot of it is the way this stuff is phrased so that you click on it.

And all I want to say is just step one, realize that there is a system, and it's not a game that's set up in your favor, okay? It's made for you to stay addicted.

When you scroll, whether it's through the news or social media, you're looking for a dopamine hit. So maybe most of the stuff isn't something that you really care about, right? Scroll, scroll, scroll, it's an ad, it's a this.

Oh, wait, that's cute, that's funny. Oh, wait, that's interesting. So every time you, oh, wait, you stop and you look at it, you get a dopamine hit.

And trust me, these app companies, these social media companies, the news companies, they know when you stop your scroll, and they feed you more of that where you stop.

And as long as you're moving the bar and you're scrolling, they take less of that stuff out of the algorithm. It is not geared in your favor, okay?

And when you get a dopamine hit, it's like putting a coin in a slot machine, and you're pulling the trigger like, well, okay, I just found something interesting there, maybe I'll find something interesting again, and we scroll again.

And look, and look, oh, I found something. So understand that it truly is an addiction. It really is a cycle, and it's not set up for your benefit, okay?

So understanding that, I feel like, gives you the courage, the ability, the mental fortitude to tackle it from a different angle, okay? So, step two, what do you do? Okay, so we acknowledge this is set up to be addictive.

I understand why it's addictive. What do I do about that? Step two, start to notice what makes you scroll.

So, for example, for me, I scroll when I'm bored. Have you ever been in line somewhere? Like, maybe you're waiting to check out, there's a little bit of line at the grocery store.

Have you ever pulled out your phone and scrolled through it? Any line, really, that you're just kind of bored, you're sitting there, you scroll.

Okay, when you come home and you sit down on the couch, do you pull out your phone and just check in, look at what's going on? So maybe boredom is a trigger for you. What are other triggers?

For me, I realized one of my triggers was when I got upset, I would scroll through my phone to distract myself. That was a big trigger for me.

And it started, I realized, when I would watch a TV show, if it got really intense, like an action scene or a scary scene, there was just a lot of tension. It was something maybe that bothered me. There was physical violence.

I would want to create emotional distance. I needed to disconnect just a little bit. So I would start scrolling through my phone just to get myself a little bit of distance there.

But that became a habit. So now when I get upset, sometimes one of the first things I do is to scroll through my phone to create distance within myself. Like I don't want to sit with those negative emotions.

And a little bit of distraction is okay, but learning to sit with our emotions is probably really healthy. We used to do that. But relearning, it's okay to sit with negative emotions sometimes and just work through them.

Distracting myself, so I didn't feel the pain, the upsetness, the anger, whatever big, big, big emotion I was feeling. Scrolling distracted me from that. So that's a thing.

And it is just an addiction. You just pick it up out of habit, right? If you've ever been to a concert where they make you put your phones in one of those pouches, you realize very quickly how often you reach for your phone unconsciously.

You don't even realize it. You just reach for it and you're like, oh yeah, it's in that pouch, I can't use it. If you've ever had to not have your phone, you realize, oh my goodness, I reach for it way more than I realize.

So identifying why you reach for your phone is helpful. All right, step three, really practical stuff here. How do you start cutting that loop?

How do you do that? Well, one thing is you can start disabling notifications.

There are settings in your phone that you can set your phone on focus mode, do not disturb, and you can set your settings so that the important people in your life, their notifications still come through.

So I still, no matter what my phone is set on, I want my husband or my children to be able to reach me. So you can set certain people and their notifications still come through.

But the notifications from social media, email notifications, whatever, you know, like I don't want these notifications to come through at certain times. So play around with your phone settings. I have an iPhone and it's pretty extensive.

I'm not an Android user, but I know all the phones now have some sort of settings like this, where you can do, do not disturb, focus mode, things like that. Look in your settings and see what you can find. It makes a big difference.

If you've gone, you know, like, OK, I'm setting my phone down. I'm not going to look at it. But then a notification pops up.

It sucks you back in. Right. So if you turn off those notifications, even if it's a dumb notification from an app, you don't use that much.

Sometimes we just pick our phone back up and then we're sucked back in that tunnel. Right. So one option, and I went through my settings and turned off notifications on apps that I didn't need to have a notification pop up for.

I could check that out myself, you know. I set focus modes. I set the people who could, who their information would come through, even if it was on focus mode.

And I played around with that. It is really helpful. So if your phone's sitting there and you haven't picked it up, less notifications are coming through to draw you back to that phone, okay?

So that's one thing. Another option that I think is amazing, and I have to turn it on and off. I'll be honest with you, but I need you to try it.

Put your phone on gray scale mode. When your phone is on gray scale mode, everything is just a color of gray, like darker gray to lighter gray. The bright colors aren't on there anymore.

Your mind, it is amazing. You'll have a lesson in psychology in the way we're drawn to colors versus the way we're not. You pick up your phone when it's in that mode, and you're not as attached and attracted to it.

You're less likely to scroll, you're less likely to do. Now, I play Wordle, and it really messes me up.

The yellow and the green colors on Wordle, if you play Wordle, I have to turn it off when I play Wordle, because I have trouble distinguishing yellow from green. So when you pick a letter and it's green, that means it's in the right slot.

If it's yellow, it's not in the right slot, but that letter is in the word. So I kinda need the color. So I go back and forth and turn grayscale on and off.

But if you fiddle with your settings, and I'm gonna tell you what to do to go to grayscale. If you have an iPhone, I want you to go to Settings, and then from Settings, I want you to go to Accessibility. Okay?

And then under Accessibility, it'll have the option for Display and Text Size. I want you to click on that, and then it'll have Color Filters. Okay?

And Gray Scale, Color Filters are generally off. It just has like the factory settings, so you have to turn the Color Filters on and pick Gray Scale. That sounds like a lot.

I'll put that exact rundown in the notes. Now, if you have an Android phone, I highly suggest that you Google and see what the steps are for your particular model.

But I think now they all have the option for this Gray Scale mode, and you will be so surprised when you look at your phone in Gray Scale. You just don't... It kind of turns off that attraction.

It's like taking the sweet out of a dessert. It's like, meh, I don't really need that now. It's amazing how we are so attracted to the colors.

That really is a piece of what draws us in. So if you really want to start breaking your addiction, then that's another thing to do. I also highly recommend, so you can disable notifications, you can turn on gray scale.

The other thing that is really good to do, iPhone does this, but I believe Androids do too, you can track your screen time. And it's gonna be very surprising at first if you don't already do it. Like you spent so many, you know, five hours today.

Five hours, I averaged five hours on my phone a day. That's a part time job. Like, oh my gosh, that's ridiculous.

What would I have done with that time? What could I have accomplished with that time? So when you start setting it, track your screen time, because mine was not tracking, I had to turn it on.

It incentivizes you. Look how much time you've wasted. And not all of it's wasted, I get that, but it incentivizes you to want to get that number down once you start seeing how much time you could be wasting on your phone.

All right? All right. Number four, as we're going through this, you know, the first thing you acknowledge why this is addictive.

Number two, identify your triggers. Number three, like really practical steps to cut that addiction loop. But number four, don't just say, okay, I'm going to stop scrolling.

Replace it with something. So if you come home from the day and while you're eating dinner, you scroll through your phone or whatever it is. You know there's this time you scroll that you wish you didn't.

You wake up in the morning, you scroll through your phone. Why don't you come up with something really positive to replace that with? Like, I'm going to read a book.

Or whatever it is that you're going to do, I'm going to go for a walk. I'm going to get up in the morning, and I'm going to go for a walk, and start scrolling through my phone. That would be a pretty big change, but it would be very positive.

The people who've replaced their morning scrolling with book reading, I read an article from a neuroscientist who said, she was realizing how negative the effects were of scrolling, and she started replacing scrolling with reading, and how many books

she's read, how much more she has learned, and how her mind doesn't feel as tense and uptight, like it's starting to relax. And it's taking time, but scrolling through your phone is not good for your mental health. Let's just say that.

And other people can talk about it better than me. They're scientists, they know more than me, but it is not really overall super healthy. And she was saying how many books she had read since she started that practice.

So if you decide, hey, I'm going to stop scrolling, maybe pick a certain time of day that you realize I scroll a lot and I wish I didn't. Find something to replace it with.

A walk, reading a book, doing something different, but don't just remove it, replace it. And then it's more likely to be a habit that you're going to stick with, right?

If you just say, I don't want to do this, but don't replace it with something else, you're going to, it's going to be so much easier to fall back into that habit. All right? Number five, the fifth thing I would say would be, create friction.

What do I mean by that? Maybe there's some of the apps on your phone that you can delete. Maybe you can just say, I'm only going to look on that app on the computer.

That's hard for some of us to do because we're not always at a computer or at a laptop, but there were apps that I deleted that I say, okay, I've got to create the time to sit down at my laptop or at my computer to look at that.

I'm not going to look at that on my phone. You can make your home screen completely clean and move your apps to different folders, and maybe label them, TimeSync. This is going to suck all your time.

And it's just a reminder when you go to click on those, maybe social media or news apps or whatever they are, that their time sucks, and you're remembering that. And so maybe just organize the layout of your phone in such a way.

I put my social media apps that I use the most on the last page, of my cell phone, so I scroll through different pages, because each page can only have so many apps in the very last page. So I made myself work to get to that place to scroll.

And it's just a reminder, as I'm going to get to this app, that it's probably not the best thing for me. Little things like that, little barriers help. Actually logging out instead of staying logged in.

If you really know that this is a real time set for you, and you truly want to start breaking that cord, actually log out and make yourself log back in when you go to work again.

It's not a perfect answer, but putting little barriers there, they're like speed bumps, right? It might help slow you down. And remember that, hey, I actually want to decide what to do with those five hours.

I don't want to just waste them looking at something that brings me no joy and no pleasure. Number six. We do still scroll through our phone.

Let's be real with ourself, but maybe let's set up a schedule. So, okay, I can scroll through my phone when I eat lunch. And I eat lunch when I'm at work, and that is a set schedule.

I'm going to eat lunch for half an hour. I can scroll through my phone for a good solid 25 minutes, and I allow myself that, and I don't feel guilty about it. Or at night, I'm going to set a timer.

I can scroll through my phone for 25 to 30 minutes, but when the timer goes off, I put my phone down, okay?

Allowing yourself to still do that and not feel guilty about it is good, but then you're setting up boundaries, healthy boundaries, with the way you use this device. So you're managing the device, and the device isn't managing you.

When you spend hours scrolling unintended, that's the device managing you. When you set up boundaries and say, you know what, I'm going to scroll for 30 minutes, that's you managing your device, okay? So just set up a little bit of a schedule.

What are you going to allow yourself? The lines get really blurred with work. And I think when I started scrolling through my phone the very most was when I had a job that I managed a lot of social media accounts.

And so I had constant notifications on my phone, and I was constantly, half the time, the things I was doing on my phone were for work. And then I would get sidetracked and go down my own rabbit trails.

So as you set up a scrolling schedule, also maybe be really specific of what you say, this is what I want to allow, this is okay, and this is not okay. And set up boundaries for yourself.

Like, this is what I'm good with, this is what I'm not so good with. I don't want to just sink a few hours every day into doom scrolling. But I have to manage work stuff, or I have to manage this or that.

So as you set up a schedule, just set up smart boundaries. Look at it realistically for your life, your work, and how you manage the things in your world. What's reasonable and what's not, okay?

I mean, you got to be practical with that. I also think it's important, just like any addiction, you've got to have some accountability and support. So when you say, I'm just going to stop scrolling, but maybe talk to a friend about it.

Like, hey, I'm trying to do this. Like, create accountability with yourself. Maybe post it on social media.

I'm going to stop scrolling, or I'm going to work on that. Having accountability is important to any goal in changing habits and making new patterns. Accountability really, really helps a lot.

So if you have a friend that y'all both are wanting to reduce your screen time, and you're like, okay, because on the iPhone, you get a report, I think it's on Sunday, what your screen time or your average screen time was for that week.

You can say, oh, I reduced my screen time by an hour, and y'all can compare notes, and oh, well, this week was bad for me, but you're at least talking to somebody about it, and you're holding each other accountable and striving towards a goal

together, and that's always, I feel like, really helpful. The last thing I want to tell you, as we're going over these lists, don't beat yourself up.

Look at the plan you've created, and be willing to adjust it to what works and maybe what doesn't work. Well, I realized that as I started implementing these ideas, I actually scrolled more this time than that time. Just be flexible.

Realize it's an evolving plan. It's not one plan set in stone in the beginning. And as you grow and move and work, that you may need to make adjustments and reassess what worked this week.

My scrolling time, my screen time was up this week. What was different? Or, oh, my screen time was down so much this week.

What worked? What was good? And just be willing to adjust and adapt.

As you see real results in your life, what works for you? Because the whole point is finding what works for you. You want this device to serve you.

You don't want to serve the device. Okay? So those are some ideas about stopping the scrolling addiction.

I would love to hear from you. Maybe you've got some really unique idea, some way you stop scrolling. Maybe you did something different that I haven't thought about.

You put tape on your phone. I don't know. People come up with crazy ideas.

I would love, love, love to hear from you. You can find me online, just www.workingonamazing.com. You can find me there.

And then I'm on most social media platforms, but I will say, I do hang out on Facebook the most, and that's just a page, Working on Amazing. You can find me there. Reach out, send me a note, send me a message, write on the wall, whatever.

I would love, I really would love to hear from you, and I would love, because I think there are way more ideas out there than just the ones I know. So I would love to hear what you do to help reduce your screen time.

Thank you so much for joining me today. I look forward to talking to you next time. Bye.