Have you ever picked up your phone to look at social media “for a minute,” only to realize 30 minutes or an hour—or more—has passed?
Do you scroll to relax, but find that after a session on your phone you feel stressed, depressed or not good enough?
You’ve probably noticed that too much time staring at your phone and mindlessly scrolling doesn’t leave you feeling your best. Maybe you even feel like your brain is broken: “Brain rot,” which refers to mental decline after watching too much meaningless content, was Oxford’s 2024 Word of the Year.
“There’s a dulling of our senses when we’re passive in front of that much constant content. It leads us away from other pursuits with more cognitive potential and creativity,” says UNC Health psychiatrist Nadia Charguia, MD. “There’s also a psychological impact, impacting the way we feel about ourselves when we experience comparison.”
If you think you’re losing too many hours and too many brain cells to your algorithm, here are five tips to reduce your screen time.
1. Pay attention to when you reach for your phone.
You may check your screen time usage and see how many hours you spend on your phone, but do you know when you’re most likely to scroll?
“Scrolling has become an automatic habit for us, and we often do it without intending to,” Dr. Charguia says. “Take a step back and try to understand why. Look at what might be driving you to seek out the phone rather than something else.”
Maybe you start your morning with excessive scrolling because you’re postponing the moment you get out of bed and head to work. Or perhaps you think that a few videos will help you wind down in the evening, only to stay up way past your bedtime. You might notice that you turn to social media when you’re avoiding a dreaded household chore or that you always check it after responding to a text.
“Social media was designed to give us a dopamine burst, an instance of joy or pleasure,” Dr. Charguia says. “Those moments begin to add up, and they can interfere with what you intended to do and result in a loss of time.”
Having awareness of when you might be losing the most time out of your day can help you create a plan to preserve it.
2. Create barriers to change your patterns.
We tend to keep our phones close—they sit on our nightstands while we sleep and then we carry them from room to room or place to place throughout the day. That’s partly why they’re so easy to reach for automatically.
“You can create barriers once you understand when you’re most likely to use your phone,” Dr. Charguia says. “Put it in another room at times when you know you have triggers that lead to using it.”
If your mornings get off to a slow start because you stay in bed with social media, you may need to buy an alarm clock for your bedroom and leave your phone in the hallway (you could turn the ringer up if you’re worried you’ll miss a call). If you’re a nighttime scroller, decide when the phone goes to bed and put it in another room then.
You can start small: Ask everyone in your family to put their phone in another room during dinner. If you find yourself scrolling while watching television, only to have no idea what you just saw, try putting it away for one episode so you can fully focus on the show.
If your job allows, try to find 30 minutes or an hour for focused work time with no phone next to your computer, or try a session with the phone in the room but out of reach from your workspace. When it’s inconvenient or not possible to reach for your phone, you may start to do it less.
3. Check your settings and notifications.
Your phone and its apps have many ways to grab your attention, including notifications and alerts that make you stop what you’re doing and see what’s happening.
“Remove those external motivations to reach for your phone,” Dr. Charguia says. “Turn off the notifications, and disconnect alerts or reminders that go to other devices, such as your watch or Fitbit.”
To hold yourself accountable, take note of your screen time, both overall and for the apps that you use the most.
“If you want to cut back, that’s the way to track it objectively,” Dr. Charguia says.
Both iPhone and Android devices have settings that allow you to set a timer or limits for how long you use an app, so try those if you want an alert when you’ve reached a certain number of minutes or hours in a day.
You can experiment with putting your phone in focus or do-not-disturb mode if you know that text messages that don’t need an immediate response will draw your attention to your phone.
4. Aim to cut back on your screen time, not stop immediately.
If there’s an app that you no longer enjoy using, go ahead and delete it from your phone. But for most people, simply deleting all social media won’t work in the long run.
“Going cold turkey, or approaching this as all-or-nothing, will be difficult,” Dr. Charguia says. “Start by reducing your screen time by an hour, and see if you can make it at least two weeks at that reduced state before setting another goal. Maybe then you aim to carve that screen time in half. Every successful step towards a goal counts.”
In addition to making small, consistent steps toward your goal, it’s also important to give yourself grace as you change this habit.
“Recognize how long it takes—more than two months—to create new behaviors or habits,” Dr. Charguia says. “These apps have the potential to be addictive, so it will take time for a new habit to be created.”
5. Replace phone time with a specific activity.
Checking your phone less often will give you more free time, and it’s good to have a specific plan for some of it.
“Rather than being strictly focused on what we are no longer wanting to do, it is beneficial to envision what we hope to do instead,” Dr. Charguia says. “Pick a new pursuit or habit you’ll use to carve time away from the old habit. Maybe you’ve realized you’re not cooking as much as you would like, or you never reach for the book you intend to read. Think about what deserves your time, as opposed to what gets it.”
If you tend to spend too much time on social media after work, try a 10-minute walk instead of scrolling. If you’re trying to break a morning scrolling habit, you might create a new ritual of reading a book while savoring a cup of coffee.
“Sub in something else so that you’re not looking at an empty hand,” Dr. Charguia says, noting that you don’t have to make the new habit a household chore such as washing dishes, even if those do need to get done. “You can be a little selfish and connect with something that will give you joy and pleasure.”
If you’ve become accustomed to multitasking—drinking coffee or watching television while scrolling—Dr. Charguia says that it may be uncomfortable at first to focus on just one thing, but your brain will adjust.
“We live in such a fast-paced world, with so much constant distraction, that being alone with yourself can feel under-stimulating or even intimidating,” she says. “Give yourself time to build a new habit. We can all get to a place of calm without that extra stimulus. You’ll feel less stress. You’ll see the benefits of having more time for your hobbies and the knowledge that you’re in control of your time.”
If you have questions or concerns about your mental health, talk to your doctor. If you need a doctor, find one near you.