How To Stop Scrolling

Summary

Science Vs – "How To Stop Scrolling" (April 2, 2026)

Host: Wendy Zuckerman
Produced by: Spotify Studios
Main Theme:
This episode investigates why many people feel hooked on mindless scrolling through their phones, delving into the psychological and technological factors that drive this behavior. The team dissects popular self-help advice and rigorously examines what science says about strategies to break free from habitual scrolling––from harsh lockouts to tiny nudges, friction-stacking, and an unexpected grayscale trick.

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Episode Overview

• Triggering Event: A recent court case against Meta (Instagram) and Google (YouTube) found the tech giants negligent for creating addictive products, reigniting public debate about social media’s irresistibility and impact on mental health ([00:00]–[00:50]).
• Central Question: Is there an evidence-based way to "unhook" ourselves from endless scrolling or are we at the mercy of our devices?
• Expert Guests: Dr. Chae Jeong Kim (Chungnam National University, South Korea) and Dr. Leah Christin Vicard (University of Koblenz, Germany).
• Co-Host & Researcher: Meryl Horne, Senior Producer.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Is Scrolling Worse Than Other Phone Use?

• Studies show that people regret scrolling (aimless consumption) more than other phone activities (e.g., messaging, information search).
  • Instagram Regret: "After they went on Instagram, they would say that I regretted that like 42% of the time" ([06:23] Meryl Horne).
• Mechanisms: Instant dopamine hits/rewards explain persistent use ([07:03] Meryl Horne).
• Scrolling Feels Bad: It’s described as "meaningless" more than other activities.

2. The Friction Factor: “Hardcore” Interventions

Research with App-Based Lockouts

• App: Goalkeeper tests different levels of intervention ([09:12] Meryl Horne):

  • Warning-only: Simple notification about time use
  • Temporary lockout: Short-term block from the phone
  • Strong lockout: Full lockout from phone use (except calls) until midnight
    • Findings: This reduced phone use by ~75 minutes daily.
    • Drawbacks: High frustration, stress, and inconvenience in everyday life. "People really didn't like it...they felt more frustrated and coerced..." ([11:17] Meryl Horne).

• Internet Cut-Off Study: Many participants refused or cheated, highlighting the difficulty of adopting extreme "cold turkey" solutions ([12:10] Meryl Horne).

3. The Gentle Nudge: Do Soft Pop-Ups Work?

• Simple Pop-Up Reminders:
  • Apps that ask "Do you really want to open this app?" on user-defined "blacklist" apps.
  • Result: About 10–15% reduction in app usage ([14:44] Meryl Horne).
  • Effectiveness: Marginal; described as "barely effective" in meta-reviews ([15:05] Meryl Horne).
  • Participant Attitude: Too easy to override––"I just automatically ignore it every single time" ([15:35] Meryl Horne).

4. Friction-Stacking & Gamified Barriers

Increasing the Hurdle

• Strategies: Hiding apps, using "Brick" (physical device to unlock apps), or apps that require action (e.g., photographing yourself "touching grass") ([16:23] Listener/Caller, [16:28] Meryl Horne).

• Study Example: Entering a 10- or 30-digit code to access blacklisted apps.

  • Effect: Many gave up; nearly half abandoned the attempt ("Almost half the time...f this it’s not worth it" [18:04] Meryl Horne).
  • Unexpected Consequence: When they get in, users binge—spending more time in the app during fewer but longer sessions ([19:17] Chae Jeong Kim, [19:34] Meryl Horne).
  • App displacement: About half the time, blocked users just switch to another app.

• Summary: Moderate friction works best; too little has no effect, too much can backfire ([20:33] Wendy Zuckerman & team).

5. The Grayscale Solution: Draining the Fun Out

Scientific Basis for Black and White Screens

• Concept: Turning your phone display to grayscale makes it visually dull, reducing the "reward" of use ([25:43] Meryl Horne).

  • "All those saturated colors...keep you distracted and keep you on your phone." ([25:24] Dr. Leah Christin Vicard)

• Research Evidence:

  • First days: Marked reduction — up to one hour less screen time per day ([28:05] Meryl Horne).
  • Longer term: Decrease settles to 20–40 minutes daily ([28:19] Meryl Horne).
  • Notable Quote: "It sucks. It's boring. We don't want it. ...But what they also said is, oh, it's really working." ([27:22] Dr. Leah Christin Vicard)
  • For heavy users: Less anxiety reported, phone use significantly down ([28:40] Meryl Horne).
  • Drawbacks: User experience degraded; some routine tasks become harder (confusing call answer buttons, etc. [28:58] Meryl Horne).

• Listener Experiments:

  • Blythe Terrell (Science Vs Executive Editor): "My phone time is down like 30%...it really. Nothing is popping. ...My phone does not look like a bag of jelly beans anymore." ([29:38] M, [30:03] M]

6. Does Reducing Screen Time Actually Improve Wellbeing?

• Mixed Data:
  • Some large trials: Less screen time leads to improved life satisfaction ([33:16] Meryl Horne).
  • But: Other studies show no effect or even negative outcomes; a 3-review meta-review calls the wellbeing benefits "questionable" ([33:16] Meryl Horne).
  • Takeaway: Individual results may vary; don’t expect cutting screen time to solve everything.

7. Getting Started: The Psychological Hurdle

• Starting is Hard:
  • "The first thing that you gotta do, you need to press the button. And that starting point is really hard." ([34:16] Chae Jeong Kim)
  • Internal resistance, "I don't want to do any of this. I just want to keep using my phone." ([34:21] Meryl Horne)
  • Self-talk can help: "I just physically...talk to myself, hey, stop using and just start work or just do it." ([35:18] Chae Jeong Kim)
  • Wendy’s anecdote: Jarring content (silly videos) can prompt self-reflection and stopping ([36:12] Wendy Zuckerman).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “These apps are Trojan horses. They look wonderful and great, but you invite them in and they take over.” ([00:50] Wendy Zuckerman, quoting lawyer)
• "You don't see slot machines that are grayscale." ([28:49] Wendy Zuckerman)
• On starting self-control efforts:
  • "Just starting is often the hardest part of this." ([34:32] Chae Jeong Kim)
• Touching on the beauty of real life:
  • “It can be so much more beautiful to realize with all the colors in your real life.” ([31:28] Dr. Leah Christin Vicard)
• User insight: "My phone does not look like a bag of jelly beans anymore. ...When you put it on grayscale, you're like, ow. It looks like I'm reading a newspaper." ([30:03] M)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• 00:00 - Overview of court case, listener testimonies
• 05:55 - Why scrolling is uniquely regretful (studies)
• 08:09 - Introduce Dr. Chae Jeong Kim and lockout app studies
• 09:12–11:16 - Hard lockout trial: effectiveness and downsides
• 12:10 - Internet cut-off study (high drop-out rate)
• 13:16 - Nudge intervention: pop-up reminders
• 15:05 - Nudge meta-reviews ("barely effective")
• 16:23 - Friction stacking & physical app barriers
• 17:13–19:34 - Code entry “friction” study; consequences
• 25:24–28:19 - Grayscale approach: theory, evidence, limitations
• 29:38–30:29 - Listener testimonials on grayscale effects
• 33:16 - Does reducing screen time improve wellbeing?
• 34:16–35:40 - The challenge of starting, self-talk, and experiments

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Conclusions & Science-Backed Recommendations

1. Friction Helps—But the Amount Matters:

• Too slight (pop-ups): mostly ignored.
• Too harsh (lockouts): effective but resented and inconvenient.
• ‘Just right’ friction (e.g., code entry, hiding apps): reduces frequency, but not necessarily overall screen time.

2. Grayscale Is Surprisingly Effective:

• An easy, science-supported strategy for reducing habitual phone use, with demonstrated effectiveness, especially for heavy users.

3. Benefits for Mental Health Are Mixed:

• Some may feel better with less screen time, but research is inconclusive. Don’t bank on it as a universal fix.

4. Starting Is the Hardest Part:

• Most important is making a conscious first step—installing an app, setting grayscale, or simply self-talking to disrupt the cycle.

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Practical Tips Mentioned

• Try turning your phone to grayscale (settings → accessibility → display/text size → color filters).
• Install friction-adding apps (Goalkeeper, Brick, or Touch Grass) to slow access to social media.
• Hide or move problematic apps off your home screen.
• Set up app limits/pop-up reminders—even if only modestly effective.
• Practice self-awareness (ask: "Am I enjoying this?") to break scrolling spells.

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Final Thoughts

The Science Vs team highlights that while no solution is perfect, introducing just enough "friction" and draining your phone of its visual appeal with grayscale are both science-backed steps that many find helpful. But for real change, you do have to start by—literally or metaphorically—pressing the button.

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Did you try grayscale or another tip from the show? Science Vs wants to hear from you on Instagram (@scienceVS) or TikTok (Wendy Zook).

Transcript

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman, and you're listening to Science Verses. 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,

[Chae Jeong Kim]

a landmark verdict that could change the face of social media.

[Listener/Caller]

Deliberately and negligently design their products.

[Meryl Horne]

To get young users hooked on the

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

apps, they kept her endless scrolling, constant notifications, algorithms that learn exactly what keeps you watching.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

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 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 phone less obviously. Like everyone else. I've been trying to quit for the last two years. It has gotten worse.

[Listener/Caller]

I want to stop doom scrolling. This feels like I'm constantly consuming something off of a screen.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Surveys find that over half of adults in the US Want to spend less time on their phones.

[Listener/Caller]

My mental health is just better when I'm off social media and it's hard to get out of the scrolling.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

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?

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Rather ironically, online you can find tons

[Wendy Zuckerman]

of people claiming that they've found the answer.

[Meryl Horne]

These are five really simple brain tricks that can help you break social media addiction and stop doom scrolling.

[Chae Jeong Kim]

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.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

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

[Wendy Zuckerman]

notifications, and then there's science. Science versus scrolling. We'll be right back just after the break. Don't look at your phone.

[Sponsor Voice]

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[Wendy Zuckerman]

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.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Time for the Science with Meryl Horn, senior producer.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Hello.

[Meryl Horne]

Hi, Wendy.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

It's been a while since we've been chatting about science.

[Meryl Horne]

Yeah, yeah, it has.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

So have you been spending all that time on your phone?

[Meryl Horne]

Sometimes it feels like that.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Seriously?

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Do you have a problem with scrolling, do you think?

[Meryl Horne]

Yeah. The reason I wanted to do this episode was because I'd find myself just staring at my phone for way longer than I kind of meant to, especially at the end of the day. And like, 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.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

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 this

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

question of how do we stop scrolling? I mean, where do we begin?

[Meryl Horne]

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. 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.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah.

[Meryl Horne]

You could also see this in how much they regrette 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. And another study backed this up, finding something really similar, but this one looked at meaninglessness instead, which again found that people said their experience was more meaningless if they had just spent that time scrolling compared to this other stuff, which helped me understand, like, why it feels so bad.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

But then why do we keep doing

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

it, do you think?

[Meryl Horne]

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, those. The parts of our brain that light up when we're doing something rewarding do light up when we, like, see social media.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay, okay.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

So, 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 any.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Anything that we can do for ourselves?

[Meryl Horne]

I do, yes. So let's dive in and find out, like, what actually works here to stop scrolling. So to start, let's meet Chae Jong 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.

[Chae Jeong Kim]

I kept on watching, watching, and I end up watching something that I never intended.

[Meryl Horne]

You just get sucked down these rabbit holes.

[Chae Jeong Kim]

Yeah, yeah.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Scientists are people too.

[Meryl Horne]

Yeah. But he has done a lot of work trying to figure out, like, exactly what strategies work to stop. Like, how can people break these habits?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Interesting. Yeah.

[Meryl Horne]

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?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Delete the Apps. Put your phone in the bin. Buy a Nokia from the early 2000s.

[Meryl Horne]

Nice guesses. I guess it wasn't that extreme in a way.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

None of these are crazy.

[Meryl Horne]

Well, not too many people would sign up for a study, I don't think where they had to get rid of their phones.

[Dr. Leah Christin Vicard]

I would.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Jaejung, if you want to go even more extreme, I'll sign up. Okay. So what did they do?

[Meryl Horne]

So his approach was to just make an app that would kick you off your phone. If you go past a certain time limit, then you couldn't use your phone for anything except to make phone calls.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Okay.

[Meryl Horne]

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 level, basically a control where you just get a warning message when you go past your time limit. In 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 Chae Jeong called this condition strong lockout.

[Chae Jeong Kim]

And the strong lockout is what? I was very interested. I'm eager to lock people out.

[Meryl Horne]

Just because you want to make people suffer.

[Chae Jeong Kim]

Yeah, I want to see the greatest effect. So we locked them out until the midnight after the time exceeded that.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

It's interesting that he said it'll come back on at midnight like Cinderella, because

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

that would be the worst time to then get access to your phone. It's gonna interrupt with your sleep, at least just keep it off until 8am or something.

[Meryl Horne]

That's true, but then people will be eating up their time for the next day. So, yeah, people were very aware of, like, how much time they had left on their.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay.

[Meryl Horne]

And so everyone tried out these, like, kind of 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?

[Chae Jeong Kim]

Yes, it did. Yes, it did. It's quite effective.

[Meryl Horne]

So, yeah, people did use their phones for roughly 75 minutes less every day. Mm. So in that sense, it worked.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah.

[Meryl Horne]

But then the caveat was that people really didn't like it at least a lot of the time. Like, they. 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.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yes, that's the point.

[Meryl Horne]

Yeah. But I think the thing that was frustrating was that we use our phones for a lot of different things, right?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yes, of course, yes.

[Meryl Horne]

So when we get locked out of everything altogether, it can be really annoying.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yes, it's a big stick. It's a big stick.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

That's right.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And there can be days where you're off Instagram, but you've got a lot

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

of work stuff to do, blah, blah, blah.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

You're traveling, you want to listen to a bunch of podcasts, and then you've,

[Meryl Horne]

you just want to like pay for the subway. Like I do all the sorts of things with my phone. I don't want to be locked out altogether.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Meryl Horne]

And then there's one other super kind of hardcore study I wanted to tell you about since you were 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 this study. And then even a bunch of people who got the app kept cheating. They'd like re enable 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.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Okay.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I could, I could see. I could see myself falling on my

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

own petard or whatever that phrase is.

[Meryl Horne]

Petard.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

But I don't know, I'm just saying words.

[Meryl Horne]

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 reminder, like a gentle nudge, Something that just asks us like, are you sure you want to be doing this right now? So Chae Jeong has also tried this approach. 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.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yes. Quite a few people have apps similar to this.

[Meryl Horne]

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.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

I have always wondered, does it, does it actually work? Because the, the pop up comes on and it's quite a low hurdle to

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

just say, yeah, this is what I want to do.

[Meryl Horne]

Yeah, it's easy to hit ignore, but it does give you that little nudge, right?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah, yeah, that's right.

[Meryl Horne]

And so, yeah, he. Chaejong set up the study where first people had to put in a list of apps that they wanted to stop themselves from going onto so much.

[Chae Jeong Kim]

So we call it like the blacklist app. So it could be like, you know, Facebook, Instagram or YouTube.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Got it.

[Meryl Horne]

And then he looked at what happened when people got this little pop up window. Did they decide not to go onto those blacklisted apps?

[Chae Jeong Kim]

It has reduced the use about 10

[Meryl Horne]

to 15% just from getting that little box that just says, do you want to continue yes or no?

[Chae Jeong Kim]

Yes, yes, yes. And that little stop have made you think and reconsider your use.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So what have similar studies found? Does this gentle nudging work? Generally? We've got Chae Jeong's study.

[Sponsor Voice]

Yeah.

[Meryl Horne]

Other studies do find that it can work a little bit like Chae Jeong's. But then a bunch of other studies didn't find any effect. 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.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay. Okay. It's just too easy to swat that fly away.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Sure. You sure?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah, I'm sure.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

I want to stay on the app.

[Meryl Horne]

I just automatically ignore it every single time. So for me it wasn't surprising that it doesn't work.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Great. Okay.

[Meryl Horne]

So I think yeah, we probably, we need to turn up the dial back up a little bit now. Right. Cause 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. This is like a buzzword online right now. Influencers are like, you know, to stop scrolling you need to up the friction, right.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

So the friction is too hot, the friction is too cold. We need the Goldilocks amount of friction to stop us from scrolling.

[Meryl Horne]

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 to pretty good

[Wendy Zuckerman]

success is hide all the social media apps on your phone.

[Meryl Horne]

That has really helped and I haven't

[Listener/Caller]

found like a bullet solution, but the brick app has really helped me.

[Meryl Horne]

The brick is something, I've been getting ads for it a ton. 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 Chae Jeong 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.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Okay.

[Meryl Horne]

Would get a pop up window where you had to enter in a string of numbers before you could go onto the app.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Got it.

[Meryl Horne]

So sometimes it was only 10 digits long. Other times it was a 30 digit long number that they had to like manually put in before they got to use their app.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Oh.

[Meryl Horne]

I asked Chae Jeong what this was like.

[Chae Jeong Kim]

Very frustrating. And our participant mentioned that, oh, there's one little thing. Once you find failed to input 30 digit number at once, you have to retype it.

[Meryl Horne]

You start, have to start all over again.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Chae Jeong Kim]

It's so it's very frustrating.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Yeah, I was, I was imagining that's what would happen. Very frustrating. Very frustrating. Okay, so surely that stops you going on the app.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Right? That feels like enough.

[Meryl Horne]

Yeah, yeah. So in the study again, around 40 people a few weeks long, he looked at like what happened when these, 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. 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.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay.

[Meryl Horne]

Which is that once people were in the app, they then spent more time in it than they, than they would have done otherwise. Oh,

[Wendy Zuckerman]

you know what this is like, Meryl?

[Meryl Horne]

What?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

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 frigging

[Meryl Horne]

tasters to take their time. Yeah, exactly.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Exactly. But we're still waiting in the line, Heather.

[Meryl Horne]

Yeah, it's exactly like that.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Is this what happened?

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Chae Jeong Kim]

Okay, so they, once they got in. So hey, once I got in, I want to use this for 30 minutes instead of like 10 minutes. 10 minutes. 10 minutes. 3 times of 10 minutes sessions. So the frequency decreased, but the total time remained the same.

[Meryl Horne]

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.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yes.

[Meryl Horne]

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.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that feels right. I mean, if you're sitting on the

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

toilet, you got to look at something,

[Meryl Horne]

you got to do something.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

All right, so here is what we

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

have learned thus far.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

If you want to stop scrolling, adding some friction is a good idea.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

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.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah, right.

[Meryl Horne]

Yeah, that might sort of backfire once you get in.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

So is there any Goldilocks amount of friction then?

[Meryl Horne]

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.

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[Meryl Horne]

So good so good. So good.

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[Meryl Horne]

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[Wendy Zuckerman]

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[Meryl Horne]

K Pop Demon Hunters, Haja Boy's Breakfast Meal and Hunt Tricks meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans.

[Sponsor Voice]

What do you say to that, Rumi?

[Meryl Horne]

It's not a battle.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

So glad the Sajiboy boys could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.

[Chae Jeong Kim]

It is an honor to share.

[Sponsor Voice]

No, it's our honor.

[Chae Jeong Kim]

It is our larger honor.

[Meryl Horne]

No, really, stop. You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side

[Chae Jeong Kim]

and participate in McDonald's while supplies last.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Welcome back. Today we are talking about how we can stop scrolling. Meryl Horne, senior producer at Science Versus, has been looking into this and I think you've promised us a solution to our scrolling dilemmas.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Is that. Am I overselling?

[Meryl Horne]

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.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Let's jump in.

[Meryl Horne]

So next we're gonna meet Dr. Leah Christin Vicard. She did a study on this. She's a researcher at the University of Koblenz 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.

[Dr. Leah Christin Vicard]

We don't do research. We do research.

[Meryl Horne]

Oh, yes, me search.

[Dr. Leah Christin Vicard]

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 doom scroll the whole day.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

What has she uncovered?

[Meryl Horne]

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.

[Dr. Leah Christin Vicard]

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 these 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 discussed, okay, like, how can we arrange that nowadays?

[Meryl Horne]

Can we make our phones crappier like they used to be?

[Dr. Leah Christin Vicard]

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.

[Meryl Horne]

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 grayscale, we'll use our phones less.

[Chae Jeong Kim]

Hmm.

[Meryl Horne]

Have you heard of this approach, Wendy?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

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.

[Meryl Horne]

Yeah. So do you want to try it, Wendy?

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Sure, sure, sure, sure.

[Meryl Horne]

All right. And if listeners want to try this too. So on both iPhones and Androids, it's under accessibility. So, Wendy, you have an iPhone.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Meryl Horne]

Okay, so go to settings.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Accessibility, Accessibility.

[Meryl Horne]

And then scroll down to display and text size.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Got it.

[Meryl Horne]

And now color filters.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yes.

[Meryl Horne]

And toggle that button on. And there you go.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay. Grayscale. Here we go. Oh, okay. It's subtle, it's noir, it's classy.

[Meryl Horne]

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. So.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Did you really?

[Meryl Horne]

I did, yeah. Yeah. Nobody first did it. I was like, what?

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

But tell me about the science here. So does it actually work? I would be really surprised if this made a difference.

[Meryl Horne]

Well, yeah. Let's see what happened in her studies. So she got about 100 people to do this, switched their phones to grayscale, and yeah, right away, they got a pretty big response.

[Dr. Leah Christin Vicard]

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.

[Meryl Horne]

Yeah.

[Dr. Leah Christin Vicard]

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. But what they also said is, oh, it's really working.

[Meryl Horne]

Yeah. So this generally works. In Leah's study, they found that after a day or two of their phones being on grayscale, people spent a lot less time on their phones over an hour less on average. Whoa.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

An hour less just because their phone was on grayscale.

[Meryl Horne]

Mm. 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.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah, Right.

[Meryl Horne]

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 problematic smartphone use, which is sort of a hand wavy way of measuring how addicted someone is to their smartphone.

[Sponsor Voice]

Okay.

[Meryl Horne]

And they found that grayscale was helpful for them. One study found that people with this felt less anxious after switching their phones to grayscale.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Oh.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

I mean, you don't see pokies machines, or what do you call them in the US? Slot machines. You don't see slot machines that are grayscale.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Right.

[Meryl Horne]

Yeah. And. Well, but there are some things that are harder to do. I noticed when I put my phone in grayscale, 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, which button do I push? You really have to pay attention to make sure you hit the right one.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

What do you mean? It's that, Meryl, you don't realize how

[Meryl Horne]

dependent you are on the colors until they're gone.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay, okay. All right.

[Meryl Horne]

But for most things, it still works. Okay.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

All right.

[Meryl Horne]

You know, a few of our listeners told us that this worked for them, including this one, whose voice you might recognize.

[M]

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.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Wow. Blythe Terrell, executive editor here at Science Versus.

[Meryl Horne]

Yeah, she tried it. It worked for her. Here she is again.

[M]

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

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

color on, you're like, ooh, candy.

[M]

Mm, candy store. And when you put it on grayscale, you're like, ow. It looks like I'm reading a newspaper.

[Meryl Horne]

And Wendy, this is one of the things that, you know, I still have my foot on grayscale most of the time. I think it does help me too. Which it kind of. It 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 need to, like, put our worlds in black and white on our phones to get us to scroll less?

[Dr. Leah Christin Vicard]

I think, of course, somehow it can be sad, but on the other hand, it can be so much more beautiful to realize with 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. Your holiday, your friends, your dog?

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah.

[Dr. Leah Christin Vicard]

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.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

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

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

the most beautiful rainbow. It went over my house. Over.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

I ran to one window, I saw

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

the rainbow, and then I ran to the other side of. 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 grayscale, not a big deal.

[Dr. Leah Christin Vicard]

Not a big.

[Meryl Horne]

You already have all the colors of your life.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

That's right. But I'm sure that'll fade away and

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

then I'll just wanna look at the cotton candy of my phone soon. So.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Okay, so I think my last question is, once people scroll less, do they actually feel better?

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Do they appreciate the rainbow in their life more?

[Meryl Horne]

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, hundreds of people and had some of them use their phones for an hour less every day. And it worked to, like, improve life satisfaction. 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 affect well being, they said that that was, quote, questionable.

[Listener/Caller]

What?

[Meryl Horne]

Yeah.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

What do you make of that? Of all this mix?

[Meryl Horne]

Yeah. I think maybe for some people, they really don't need to be reducing their screen time to feel better. And maybe 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 gonna turn your life around. But on the other hand, for me, I think it does help.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah.

[Dr. Leah Christin Vicard]

Yeah.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

And for all of our listeners who were 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 last week saying, you know, yeah, this is something that's

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

maybe not the cause of all the

[Wendy Zuckerman]

sadness in my life, but I don't feel good after I kind of get sucked into my phone for a few hours.

[Dr. Leah Christin Vicard]

Yeah,

[Meryl Horne]

but if this is a problem for you and you want to try changing something, Chae Jeong said that the first thing that you gotta do, you

[Chae Jeong Kim]

need to press the button. And that starting point is really hard.

[Meryl Horne]

Yeah, I noticed that too. Like, when I first started researching for this episode, there was something in me that was just like, ugh, I don't want to do any of this. Like, I just want to keep using my phone.

[Chae Jeong Kim]

Exactly. I think that's the hardest point.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Wait, what does he mean, you need to press the button?

[Meryl Horne]

I mean, for me, like, when I started doing this research, I just, like, I just felt like nothing was really gonna 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 gonna do that.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Yeah, that's kind of where I'm at.

[Meryl Horne]

But I think I was just resistant to doing anything really. Like, I was just feeling kind of lazy. And so Chae Jeong 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.

[Chae Jeong Kim]

I just physically, I talk to myself, hey, stop using and just start work or just do it.

[Meryl Horne]

And then you're more likely to actually just like close your phone if you just tell yourself, hey, stop. Yes, interesting.

[Chae Jeong Kim]

Physically speaking, it works for me, but I'm not sure if it works for others, but it does for me.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

I do find that when I am scrolling and don't want to be anymore,

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

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 and then I stopped it when I saw this video of kids,

[Meryl Horne]

plucky

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

little kids wearing mustaches and saying, I love wearing a mustache. And I was like, what the am I doing with my life?

[Meryl Horne]

That was your dark moment. I thought it was gonna be way worse than that.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

That was enough. That was enough.

[Meryl Horne]

I was dark kids wearing Massachusetts so far.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Burn in the bin.

[Meryl Horne]

Wake up call.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

Exactly. That was it. Thanks, Meryl.

[Meryl Horne]

Thanks, Wendy.

[Senior Producer/Interviewer]

That's Science Versus. 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 ScienceVS.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

I'm on TikTok, Wendy Zook, and we love to hear from you. Meryl, how many citations are in this week's episode?

[Meryl Horne]

Okay, we have 44 citations.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

Great, great question.

[Meryl Horne]

Which if you want to see those, you can go to the show notes and follow the links to the transcripts.

[Wendy Zuckerman]

This episode was produced produced by Meryl Horne with help from me, Wendy Zuckerman, Rose Rimler, Michelle Dang and Aketty Foster. Keys. I'm the 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 Wiley, Emma Munger and Peter Leonard. Thank you so much to all of the researchers that we spoke to, including Dr. Kai Lukoff, Hayeon Sung Cho, Dr. Alex Hoffman, Dr. Jan Ol Rixon, Dr. Jay Olson and Dr. Noah Costello. A big thanks to Joseph Labelle Wilson and the Zuckerman family. Science Versus is a Spotify Studios 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.

[Listener/Caller]

Quick break. This surprised me. The most useful advice I get now doesn't come from experts. It comes from regular people on TikTok. What works, what doesn't. No filters. Download TikTok and see for yourself.