Taking Control Of Your Habits

Hi, I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Faces. 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, were found negligent for basically creating addictive products that harmed a young woman's mental health. A huge slap to big tech today. A landmark verdict that could change the face of social media. Deliberately and negligently designed their products to get young users. on the apps. They kept her endless scrolling, constant notifications, algorithms that learn exactly what keeps you watching. 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 young 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 wanna use my phone less, obviously like everyone else. I've been trying to quit for the last two years. It has gotten worse. I wanna stop do scrolling. This feels like I'm constantly consuming something off of a screen. Surveys find that over half of adults in the US want to spend less time on their phones. My mental health is just better when I'm off social media and it's hard to get out. Crawling. 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. rather ironically, online, you can find tons of people claiming that they've found the answer. These are five really simple brain tricks that can help you break social media addiction and stop doom scrolling. The first tip is friction stacking. We need to create as many lay us and that damn phone. If you can slay that dragon, if you can resist temptation. You can do anything. So how do you slate 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 notifications. And then Science. Science versus scrolling, we'll be right back. Just after the break. Don't look at your phone. It's tax season, and at Lifelock, we know you're tired of numbers. But here's a big one you need to hear. Billions. That's the amount of money and refunds the IRS has flagged for possible identity fraud. Now here's another big number. 100 million. That's how many data poinflock monitors every second. If your identity is stolen, we'll fix it guaranteed. One last big number. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com slash podcast for the threats you can't control. Term supply. Protein is now at Starbucks, and it's never tasted so good. You can add Protein Cold Found to your favorite drink or try one of our new protein lattes or matcha. Try today at Starbucks. 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 gonna talk about How to get unsucked. Um time for the science. We've Meryl Horn, senior producer. Hello. Hi, Wendy. It's been a while since we've been chatting about science. Yeah, yeah, it has. So Have you been spending all that time on your phone? Sometimes it feels like that. Seriously, do do you have a problem with scrolling, do you think? Yeah. Um the r I that the reason I wanted to do this episode was because I'd I'd find myself like Just staring at my phone for way longer than I kind of meant to, especially at the end of the day. Um 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. 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 question of how do we stop scrolling, I mean, where do we begin? 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're 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. Yeah. You could also see this in how much they regretted going on certain apps, like after they went on Instagram, they would say That I regretted that like forty two percent of the time where when they went on a messaging app, they only regretted it 18% of the time. Uh huh. Another study backed this up, finding something really similar, but this one looked at meaninglessness instead, which You know, again found that people said their experience was more meaningless if they had just spent that time scrolling compared to this other stuff, which me understand like why it feels so bad. But then why do we keep doing it, do you think? 'Cause 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 or do light up when we like see social media. Okay. Okay, so that I mean that is why yeah, we keep going back for war. So then Uh we know, what 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 un suck ourselves from social media. 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 anything that we can do for ourselves? I do, yes. So let's dive in and find out like what actually works here to to stop scrolling. Um so to start, let's meet Chae Jong Kim. He's an assistant professor at Chungnum National University in Korea. He's also had a problem with scrolling. Uh, for him, YouTube is the thing that would get him. I kept on watching, watching and I end up watching something that I never intended. You just get sucked down these rabbit holes. Yeah, yeah. Scientists are people too. Yeah. But he has done a lot of work, uh, trying to figure out like exactly what strategies work to stop. Like how can people break these habits? Yeah. 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. Delete the apps. Put your phone in the bin. Buy a Nokia from the early 2000s. Nice guesses. Um I guess it wasn't it wasn't that extreme in a way. None of these are crazy Well not too many people would sign up for a study I don't think where they had to like get rid of their phones. Um I would Chae Jong if you want to go even more extreme. I'll sign up. Um, okay, so what did they do? So his approach was to uh 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. Okay. So yeah, first, you know, there's about forty people, and first you had to put in your goals for how long you wanna spend on your phone. So like maybe you're using it for five hours a day and you want it 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 levels, basically a control where you just get a warning message when you go past your time limit. Uh, and another one you just get kicked off your phone for a little bit of time. Um, but then the third level is is the intense one. So Chae Chang called this condition uh strong lock out. And a strong lock out is what I was very interested in. I was I'm eager to lock people out. Just because you want to make people suffer? Uh yeah. I won't make I wanna see the greatest effect. So we lock them out until the midnight after the ex time Exceeded. Interesting that he said it'll come back on at midnight. Like Cinderella. 'Cause that would be the worst time to then get access to your phone. It's gonna interrupt with you asleep. At least Keep it off until eight AM or something. That's true, but then people w will be eating up their time for the next day. So Yeah, they're people were very aware of like how much time they had left on their phone. Okay. And so every everyone uh tried out these like kind of different levels of the app for for one week. And I 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? Uh yes it did. Yes it did. It's quite effective. So yeah, people uh did use their phones for roughly 75 minutes less every day. Mmm. So in that sense it worked. Yeah. 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. Yes, that's the point. Yeah, but I think the thing that was frustrating was that we use our phones for a lot of different things. Yes, of course, yes. So when we get locked out of everything altogether, it can be really annoying. Yes, it's a big stick. It's a big stick, that's right. And there can be days where You're off Instagram, but you got a lot of work stuff to do, blah, blah, blah. You're traveling, you wanna listen to a bunch of podcasts, and then you've You just wanna like pay for the subway. Like I do all the sorts of things with my phone. I don't wanna be locked out all together. Yeah. And then there's one other super kind of hardcore study I wanted to tell you about. Um since you're 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 the study where they wanted to cut the internet off people's phones for two weeks. Mmm. But Then when it was actually time to 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 the 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 wanna do this. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. I could uh I could see. I could see myself falling on my own. Petard or whatever that phrase is. Petard? Petard? I don't know I'm just saying words. I guess that's a loaf of bread. So maybe um we should go in the opposite direction. Like what what if all we need to do to to stop scrolling is a little Like reminder, like a gentle nudge. Um, you know, something that that just asks us. Like, are you sure you want to be doing this right now? Uh-huh. Um, so Chae Jong has also also tried this approach. Like in a 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 and they could just get rid of this little pop up with a little click of the button. Yes. Quite a few people have apps similar to this. Yeah. I've tried this out before because the iPhone comes with like a screen time app. That works similar to this. Oh yeah, I have always wondered, does it does it actually work? 'Cause the the pop up comes on and it's quite a low hurdle. To just say, Yeah, this is what I want to do. Yeah, it's easy to hit ignore, but it does give you that little nudge, right? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. And so yeah, he um Chae Jong set up the study where first people had to put in a a list of apps that they wanted to like stop themselves from from going on to so much. Mm-hmm. So we call it like the blacklist app. So it could be like, you know, Facebook, um Instagram or YouTube. Got it. And then he he looked at what happened when people got this little pop up window. Um, did did they decide not to go onto those blacklisted apps? It has uh reduced the use about ten to fifteen percent. Just from getting that little box that just says, Do you wanna continue? Yes or no? Yes, yes, yes. Huh. And that little um stop. Have made you think and re consider your use. So What of similar studies found? Does this gentle nudging work generally? We've got Chei Jong study. Yeah, other studies do find that it can work a little bit, like Che Jong's, but then a bunch of other studies. didn't find any effects. So yeah, I find a review that kinda looked at all these studies together and Uh, bottom line, it called um this type of strategy, quote, barely effective. Okay. Okay, it's just too easy to swat that fly away. You sh you sure? You sure? Yeah, I'm sure. I wanna stay on the app. I uh I just uh automatically ignore it every single time. So for me it was it wasn't surprising that it doesn't work great. Okay. 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 as like a buzzword online right now. Influencers are like, you know, to stop scrolling, we need to up the friction. Right. So the the friction is too hot and the friction is too cold. We need the goldilux of out of friction to stop us from scrolling. And you know, some of our listeners mentioned this sort of approach, like making it harder to use their apps. Um as like having worked for some of them. Now what I've tried and two Pretty good success is hide all the social media apps on your phone. That has really helped. I don't found like a bullet solution, but The Brick app has really helped me. The brick is something it's 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. I there's one called Touch Grass, where you have to like go outside and like take a picture of yourself touching grass before you could use your ass. 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 Okay. In that study that Chae Zhang did, where you know people put in these blacklisted apps. In in other cases, they he made it harder for them to get to those apps. They couldn't just, you know, click it away. Okay. People would get a pop up window where you had to enter in a string of numbers before you could go onto the app. Got it. So s sometimes it was only 10 digits long. Other times it was a thirty digit long number that they had to like manually put in before they got to use their app. Oh I asked Chae Dong uh what this was like. Very frustrating. And our participant mentioned that, oh, there's one little thing. Uh once you uh failed to input thirty digit number at once, you have to retype it. You start to start all over again. Yeah. Uh yeah, it's so it's very frustrating. Yeah, I was I was imagining that's what would happen. Very frustrating. Very frustrating. Okay, so surely that. Stops you going on. That feels like enough. 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 gonna bother. Yeah. Almost half the time they decided like yeah. F this. It's not worth it to go on this app. and the other the ten 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, which is that once people were in the app, they then spent more time in it than they than they would have done otherwise. Uh This is like Meryl. 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 friggin' tasters to take their time. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. But we're still waiting in the line. Heaven. Yeah, it's exactly what happened. Yeah. Okay. So they once they got in, so hey. Once I got in, I wanna Use this for thirty minutes instead of like ten minutes, ten minute, ten minute, three times of ten minutes. Sessions. So so the frequency decreased, but the total time remained the same. So overall, people didn't actually spend less time on their blacklisted apps. Um, 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, che like habitual checking less. Yes. 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, um they looked at what people did when when they did decide to not go on to that naughty listed app. It 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 'cause they didn't put it on their blacklist. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that feels right. I mean, if you're sitting on the toilet. You gotta look at that. You gotta do something. So Here is what we have learned thus far. If you wanna stop scrolling, adding some friction. Is a good idea, but if the hurdle is too low, like a little pop up, it's not gonna work. If the hurdle is too high, once you jump it, watch out, because then you might be spending more time scrolling. Cause you're so proud of yourself for putting in those dirty digits. Yeah. Right. Yeah, but might sort of backfire once you get in. So is there any Goldilocks amount of friction then? Well, there is actually an approach that nothing to do with friction at all that I found that it seems to be the the best way to stop scrolling, according to the science that that I found. So I'll tell you what that is after the break. Snoring? Gasping during sleep? Feeling fatigue? Wake up to Zebbound Tersepitite. 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Only at Sephora. Welcome back. Today, we are talking about how we can stop scrolling. Meryl Horn, senior producer at Science First, has been looking into this, and I think you've Promised us a solution. Yes, scrolling dilemmas. Is that am I overselling I mean it I think no, I think it's a solution. That's definitely worth trying. Yeah. And it it is something that is even easier than a lot of the things we've been talking about to try. Let's jump in. So Next, we're gonna meet Dr. Leah Kristen Vickard. She did a study on this. She's a researcher at the University of Coplands in Germany. And like basically all the researchers that I talked to about this, Leah also got into this for personal reasons. Um, she's a psychologist. In psychology we don't do Research? We do a me search. Oh yes. Me search. As you can imagine, I I have a problem with my phone on my own. So I realized uh especially during Covid that um this is a research topic that could really uh help me uh with my usage pattern, using my phone, using social media in a healthy and beneficial way. And not only doom scroll the whole day. Mm-hmm. What has She uncovered. Well, so the idea for her came up in a meeting she was having one day with some students where they're basically brainstorming ways to stop scrolling. One of the students um talked about, okay, but uh 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 use it to call somebody, maybe play a game, but that's it. And then we discuss okay, like how can we arrange that nowadays. Can we make our phones crappier like they used to be? Not to make it more crappy, but to make it less attractive. And um we realized all those saturated colours. Your uh blinking red uh push or notification uh button, all of those colours. keep you distracted and keep you on your phone. So yeah, the colors. Uh we know from studies that people generally prefer bright colors. Uh it's probably why our apps are all rainbow colored. And so the idea was maybe if we get rid of these bright colours, make our phones black and white, or or put it in grayscale, we'll use our phones less. Hmm. Have you heard of this approach, Wendy? I I guess I know some people obviously who have their phone on grayscale, but I didn't know that this was a tactic. them to stop using their phone so much. Yeah. So do you want to try one day? Sure, sure, sure, sure. All right. And if listeners want to try this too, so on both iPhones and Androids is under accessibility. So when do you have an iPhone? Yeah, yeah. Okay, so go to settings. Accessibility. Accessibility and then scroll down to display and text size. Got it. And now color filters. Yes. And toggle that button on. And there you go. Okay, grayscale, here we go. Oh, okay. It's subtle. It's noir. Clappy. 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. Did you really? I did Yeah, no when I first did it, I was like, What? Like But tell me about the science. So does it actually work? I would be really surprised if this made a difference. Well, yeah, let's see uh what happened in her study. So she got about a hundred people to do this. Um, switch their phones to grayscale. Yeah. And yeah, right away they they got Pretty big response. We asked our participants, Okay, how do you feel? How are you? And what they did say was um It sucks. It's bombing. We don't want it. Yeah. Because we want to have our little funny phones. We want to have uh we want to play with our phone. We want to have a good time. We want to feel good using our phone. Yeah. But what they also said is Oh, it's really working. Mm. So this Generally works. In in Leah's study they found that after a day or two of uh their phones being on grayscale, people spent a lot less time on their phones, over an hour less on average. Less just 'cause their phone was on grayscale? Mm-hmm. And other there's so there's l also longer term studies that have people do this for a week that don't find as big effects. So maybe twenty to forty minutes less a day, like once you get used to it. Yeah. Right. 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 of 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. Okay. And they found that grayscale was helpful for them. Um one study found that people with this felt less anxious after switching their phones to grayscale. Oh. I mean you don't say pokey's machines or what do you call them in the US. Um slot machines. You don't see slot machines that are grayscale, right? Yeah. And uh well, but there are some things um that are harder to do. Um I notice when I put my phone grayscale, like when someone's calling you the the buttons for answering the phone. Uh or declining it are uh in red and green. So now when I'm picking up a call, I'm like, Oh gosh, like which button do I push? Like you really have to pay attention to make sure you hit the right one. What do you mean? It's that h no. You don't realize how dependent you are on the colors until they're gone. Okay, all right who thinks it still works okay. All right. And you know, a few of our listeners uh told us that this worked for them, um, including this one whose voice you might recognize. I have been using Grayscale for like three weeks. Um and then when I look at my screen time report. My screen time is down. My phone like 30%. Which is actually more than I thought it would be. Wow, Bla Terrell Executive Editor here at Science Versus. Yeah. She tried it, it worked for her. Um here she is again. 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 color on, you're like, ooh, candy. Mm candy store. And when you put it on grayscale, you're like, ow. It looks like I'm reading a newspaper. 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 um it did make me think of a more sort of philosophical question about all this that I 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? I think of course somehow it can be said, but on the other hand it can be so much more beautiful to realise. or the colours 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 uh everyone we are following. Like of course they have a beautiful life and Amazing holidays, great outfits. But what about your own life? What about your Your holiday, your friends, your dog, the beautiful nature you're surrounded by. So I think if it helps us to realise okay, we have that too and we see all the colours in our life, we don't need colour on our phone. Do you know it, Meryl? wonder if I had such a humdrum reaction to oh okay, it's just my phone on grayscale. Because The other day. I saw the most beautiful rainbow. It went over my house. Over I I ran to one window. I saw the rainbow and then I ran to the other side of it's not a big house, but I the other side and the rainbow was coming over my house. And so uh to put my phone on gray skin, not a big deal. Not a big You already have all the colours of your life. That's right. But I'm sure that'll fade away and then I'll just wanna look at the the cotton candy of my phone soon. So Okay, so I think my last question is Once people scroll less, do they actually feel better? Do they appreciate the rainbow in their life more. Get. answer to this was sort of surprising. So there there were a couple big trials that have found people's mental health gets a little better when they use their phones less. So w like one study got hundreds of people and had some of them use their phones for an hour less every day. And it it worked to like improve life satisfaction. 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. What? Yeah. What do you make of that? Of all this mixed Yeah, I I think maybe for some people, it they really don't need to be reducing their screen time to feel better. And maybe, you know, we shouldn't be beating ourselves up if if we're having a hard time with this, because there's no guarantee that Cutting down on screen time is gonna like turn your life around. But on the other hand, like for me, I think it does help. Yeah. Yeah, and for all of our listeners who are saying that they really struggle with this, and 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 this is something that's maybe not the cause of all the sadness in my life, but I don't feel good. After I kinda gets sucked into my phone for a few hours. Yeah. But if this is a problem for you and you want to try changing something, Chae Jong said that the first thing that you gotta do. You need to press the button. And that starting point is really hard. Yeah, I noticed that too. Like when I first started researching For this episode, there was something in me that's just like, uh, I don't wanna do any of this. Like I just wanna keep using my phone. Exactly. I think that's the hardest point. But what does he mean? You need to press the button. 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 he I I write about grayscale and the first time I heard of it, I was just like, that sounds kinda like dumb. I I'm not gonna do that. Yeah. That's kinda where I'm at. But I think I was just resistant to doing anything. Like I was just Feeling kinda lazy. And so uh Jong was 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. I just physically I talked myself. Hey. Stop using and just Start work. Or just do it. And then you're more likely to actually just like close your phone if you just tell yourself, hey, stop. Yes. Interesting. Physically speaking, it works for me, but I'm I'm not sure if it works for others, but it does for me. I do find that When I am scrolling and don't want to be anymore. 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. Cause you can be on a good run with social media where you're getting video after video that's actually quite delightful. Then I stopped it. When I saw this Video of kids little kids wearing mustaches and saying, I love wearing a mustache. And I was like, what the f am I doing with my life? That was your dark moment. I thought it was gonna be way worse than that. That was enough. That was enough. Kids wearing mustaches. Turn in the Wake up call. Exactly. That was it. Thanks, Meryl. Thanks, Wendy. That's science versus. And if you try any of the stuff that we've talked about or this episode, you put your phone in grayscale, you download an app that has a little nudge, um you watch a dumb video that you despise, and then you throw the phone in the bin. Please let us know uh on Instagram. We are at science underscore V S. I'm on TikTok at Wendy Zook and we love to hear from you. Meryl, how many citations are in this week's episode? Okay, we have forty four citations. Great, great. Which if you want to see those, you can go to the show notes and follow the links to the transcripts.