How to Stop Doomscrolling: Why Short Videos Are Hard to Put Down and What Works

What is doomscrolling?

Doomscrolling combines “doom” (bad news, ruin) and “scrolling,” and refers to endlessly consuming grim news or provocative posts. The word originally described following coverage of disasters or pandemics without being able to stop, but today it is used for any mindless swiping through short videos.

A related term is “brain rot,” which describes the foggy state that comes from bingeing low-substance content; it was named a word of the year by an English-language dictionary in 2024. Both terms focus less on the content itself and more on a way of watching that doesn't stop.

Why it's so hard to stop

You can't stop not because your willpower is weak, but because these apps are designed to be hard to stop. Knowing the mechanisms by name lets you see where you're getting caught.

The most powerful factor is that the moment to decide to stop never comes. TV shows and DVDs end, and that's when you come back to yourself. Infinite scroll combined with autoplay erases that moment. That's why the core of the fix is creating your own ending.

It's not only time you're losing

Lost time is easy to measure, but the real impact is in what surrounds it.

• Slower switching: after watching a string of short videos, your focus doesn't return for a while even after you go back to work. The time it takes to get back on track is added on top of the time you spent watching.
• A later and later bedtime: when you open the app in bed, nothing tells you to stop, so your bedtime drifts a little later every night. That eats into your energy the next day, which tends to send you back to the screen in a cycle.
• Plans that quietly disappear: things you meant to do — read a book, exercise, reply to someone — slip away without ever being consciously decided.
• Nothing sticks: you often can't remember what you watched, leaving only a faint sense of having spent time.

Steps that don't rely on willpower

1. 1

   For the first week, just track it

   Don't try to cut back right away; first look at what you spend time on and how much. Check how long you use each app per day with your phone's screen time feature. Decide whether to cut back only after you've seen the numbers.

2. 2

   Turn off autoplay and notifications

   Of the changes you can make in settings, these two have the biggest effect. With autoplay off, you choose whether to play the next video each time, which brings back the chance to stop. Turning off notifications reduces how often you get pulled back in the first place.

3. 3

   Add steps before you can open it

   Move the app off the first page of your home screen so you have to search for it to open it. Even a few seconds of friction noticeably reduces how often you open it without thinking. Staying logged out or using only the browser version works on the same principle.

4. 4

   Prepare a signal to stop

   Set an outside boundary, such as starting a 15-minute timer before you watch or only watching videos in the living room. “Up to 15 minutes” works better than “three videos today,” because the shorter the videos, the less meaningful a count becomes. Set the Focus Timer to 15 minutes and it will chime when the time is up.

5. 5

   Decide in advance where the freed-up time goes

   Banning alone leaves you restless, and you drift back. Decide on a replacement first, such as listening to audiobooks or articles while commuting, or reading one page of a paper book or doing just four rounds of 4-7-8 breathing before bed.

6. 6

   Keep your phone out of the bedroom

   Charging your phone outside the bedroom is the most reliable fix for a drifting bedtime. If the reason is your alarm, buying an alarm clock ends up costing less in the long run.

• You don't need to start everything at once. The two with the biggest effect are turning off autoplay and keeping the phone out of the bedroom, so try those first.
• App limit features don't work if they're too easy to turn off. Setting them up so that turning them off takes effort creates a moment to come back to yourself.
• Deciding to “use the time for something else” sticks better than deciding to “stop.” Time left blank gets filled with whatever is easiest.
• You don't have to get it to zero. Time you decide to spend watching is time you can simply enjoy.

Make the time you spend visible

Whether you keep it up depends on whether you can see the effect. Screen time numbers alone make it hard to feel the change, so try placing them within how you spend your whole day.

1. 1

   Write out how you spend your day

   Divide your 24 hours into broad categories such as sleep, work or school, meals, commuting, phone and other. Keeping it to 6–8 categories is easier to sustain than splitting it finely.

2. 2

   Turn it into a pie chart

   Enter the categories and hours into the 24-Hour Day Chart tool and your day becomes a pie chart. Categories that are “bigger than I thought,” invisible in a list of numbers, stand out at a glance.

3. 3

   Make another one a week later

   After a week of the changes, make another chart the same way. Putting the two side by side shows where the time you cut has gone. This is also where you find out if it has simply moved to a different screen.

4. 4

   Review once a month

   Measuring every day turns the record itself into a burden. Making one in the same format once a month and comparing is a pace you can sustain.

By the way, there's no need to treat trendy meme-style words or brain rot content as the enemy. Using them for something like a fun name converter is over in a few minutes. Drawing the line only at ways of watching that never end is the realistic approach.

FAQ

What does doomscrolling mean?

It combines “doom” (bad news, ruin) and “scrolling,” and refers to endlessly consuming grim news or provocative posts. It originally described following coverage of disasters or pandemics without being able to stop, but is now used for any mindless swiping through short videos or social media.

What should I do first to cut down my phone time?

In order of impact: turn off autoplay, and don't take your phone into the bedroom. With autoplay off, you choose whether to keep watching after each video, which brings back the chance to stop. Charging your phone outside the bedroom ends the endless watching before sleep. Those two alone make a noticeable difference.

Why can't I stop at “just one more”?

The shorter each video is, the lower the mental cost of watching the next one. On top of that, infinite scroll and autoplay remove the moment to decide whether to stop. Limiting by time rather than by number of videos works better. With short videos your sense of “how many” is unreliable, so you need an outside signal such as a timer.

Should I cut my viewing time to zero?

There's no need. The problem is less the total than time disappearing without your deciding to watch. If you set when and how long you'll watch and enjoy it within that, that's enough. Turn your 24 hours into a pie chart and judge whether the balance is one you're happy with.