Breaking Free From Endless Scrolling

Have you ever fallen into a black hole on your phone? It might have started innocently enough, maybe a notification or text message. Yet, five hours later, you're swiping through videos as the day fades.

Those hours can feel like seconds, leading us to miss out on life. Yet, excessive social media and habitual doomscrolling are becoming increasingly common problems, particularly for young people and young adults.

Researchers have named the phenomenon "digital dissociation" (Goel, 2025), linking unbridled use of social media to an escape from reality. They argue that over time, excessive use can chip away at our identities, as we are no longer living life in full color but spending a significant amount of it in an alternate reality. We can check out of the real world and become less connected to ourselves and others.

Interrupting the Zombie State

While parents have been "encouraging" teens to get off their phones since the beginning of phones, a more nuanced movement is rising. Garner Hall has been a leader in this initiative through his Instagram account, Brain Nourishment. A young adult himself, he has partnered with others to create content that meets doomscrollers where they are. I met with Garner to understand this idea and the philosophies behind it.

Like many young people, Garner found himself captured by technology. He shares, "It started out of boredom but transitioned into something as a solution to my own problems. I saw my own life with my own compulsive phone use and the people around me. It was becoming more and more of a prevalent issue."

Many supports exist to assist people struggling with technology overuse, from accountability goals to tech-free wellness retreats. Yet, few of these are available on the apps themselves. Garner wanted to create something integrated within the apps to interrupt the zombie state. So, he got to work.

Garner shares, "It started as an Instagram page and evolved from there. Essentially, it began with a very simple message. We'd take a brain rot video or some very intrusive video—that's known to exacerbate negative associations with social media—and we'd interrupt them with peaceful music or quotes as a reminder to help people get off of social media."

There's a Paradox

Garner acknowledges the irony in using social media to help people unhook from social media. He states, "There is a ceiling—if you are telling people to get off social media but you are posting on social media, there is a paradox there."

So, he took it further. He ignited a collaboration called JourneyKeep, an app meant to encourage digital wellness through assigning "side quests," or activities that can only be done offline. He elaborates, "Doomscrolling is fueled through not having other things to do; we're helping people to have other fun things to do to not exacerbate that."

He is not alone in this journey. Others have been designing programs that fight the problem from within. Apps like Focus Friend, designed by video blogger Hank Green, are gamifying time offline using digital rewards for time spent away from the phone.

Life Offline...and Online

As I speak with Garner, I am reminded of the Community Reinforcement Approach to tackling addiction. Traditionally utilized as an intervention for substance use, the community reinforcement approach theorizes that a major contributor to substance use is that individuals' worlds center around that addiction or compulsion, while sober life fades away. The Community Reinforcement Approach utilizes sampling of activities without substances in a treatment setting to change this pattern and has been found to improve quality of life among people with addictions (Khalid et al., 2024).

Unlike substance use, where absence of use is often the goal, in this digital age, totally letting go of technology is rarely the objective. It's more about how we relate to it. Garner encourages activities like taking a photo with a phone rather than doomscrolling. He shares, "The phone itself isn't the bad thing, it's what you are doing with it."

Connection and Mindfulness

Admittedly, I use social media as a way to connect with old friends and make new ones. Yet, it's a slippery slope. It's tempting to disappear into the mist, especially with all the short videos and spaces for comparison. I asked Garner about this.

Garner expresses, "If we don't use it mindfully, it can exacerbate isolation from others."

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I agree. How we manage these experiences matters.

Taking time away from technology sometimes is essential. Yet, there is value in evaluating our use from time to time, asking ourselves questions like, "Is this truly bringing me joy? Would I rather be doing something else? If I keep using technology in this manner, will it bring me closer or further away from the life I want to live?"

Sometimes, support is needed for us to change our habits or to rebuild our lives offline to make them as interesting as what's on a screen. I appreciated my conversation with Garner and hope that we as a society continue to question our use of media.