Endless scrolling through social media and news feeds often eats up hours of your time and drags down your mood. Owners of Android and iOS smartphones can use a range of built-in settings and additional tools to cut down on doomscrolling and reach for their phones less often.
One of the simplest steps is to make the interface less appealing. On Android, you can do this via Settings in the Digital Wellbeing section, where Bedtime Mode offers automatic activation of greyscale. You can also enable grey tones via Accessibility → Colour and motion → Colour correction. On iPhone, the greyscale feature is found in Settings → Accessibility → Display & Text Size → Colour Filters, and you can set up automated switching in the Shortcuts app.
Another effective tool is time limits for apps. On Android smartphones this is configured in Digital Wellbeing → App timers, where you set a daily usage time for individual apps. On iOS, similar limits are set via Settings → Screen Time → App & Website Activity. You can gradually reduce the limits to slowly wean yourself off excessive use of social networks.
Users also have access to specialised apps that gamify cutting back on unnecessary scrolling. Forest (Android, iOS), Focus Friend (Android, iOS) and Focus Traveller (iOS) motivate you to stay focused by, for example, “growing” virtual trees or helping characters move forward only when you are not getting distracted by your phone.
Google Pixel smartphones running Android 17 have gained a feature called Pause Point. You can enable it via Settings → Digital Wellbeing → Pause Point. For selected apps, short pauses are shown before they open – breathing exercises or curated photo collections – helping you stop and think about whether you really need to open yet another time-sucking app right now.
Physical gadgets can help too. For example, the Brick device, priced at 59 dollars, works via NFC: just tap your phone on it and a special “quiet” mode is activated on the smartphone, blocking access to certain websites and apps. A more affordable gadget, Autonomous Key, which costs about 19 dollars, works in a similar way.
Android and iOS both offer so-called Focus modes – an expanded version of Do Not Disturb that helps cut down on distractions. On Android they are located in Settings → Modes, and on iPhone in Settings → Focus. You can create separate profiles for sleep, work or travel, specify which apps and contacts are allowed to reach you and which will be completely muted.
Some popular services have their own time-control options. For example, in Instagram you just need to open the profile tab, tap the menu button (three lines) and select Time management. From there you can set daily usage limits and periods when notifications are disabled (sleep mode).
Owners of Samsung Galaxy smartphones with the One UI 9 skin get an extra tool – AI Network Guard. It is tucked away in Settings → Connections → Wi-Fi, where you need to tap the menu (three dots) and tap the Intelligent Wi-Fi item five times to open Connectivity labs. There you can activate AI Network Guard and specify the apps for which access restrictions will apply.
Finally, it is important to optimise notifications. On both platforms this is done via Settings → Notifications. Here you can choose how notifications are displayed, or turn them off completely for individual apps. On Android, notification snoozing is available; on iOS, you can set scheduled summaries to reduce the number of times you impulsively check your smartphone.
Combining these nine techniques can significantly cut the time you spend in news and social media feeds and help you return more of your attention to real life, conversations and rest.