How to Break Away From Doomscrolling Without Quitting Social Media

How I managed to reduce my screen time to be more mindful with my life, both on and offline.

One of my biggest struggles over the last few years has been using my phone as a sort of digital pacifier, attaching myself to it to numb myself from all of the overwhelming feelings of life. Losing perception of time, space, and ourselves seems to be the easiest escape from the pressure, expectations, and struggles of reality. Like most addictions, the issue isn’t necessarily the substance, but the void that it’s trying to fill.

When it comes to social media and the online world, I find it to be quite tricky. On one hand, I am faced with all of the damage, negativity, and loss that it has brought into my life. On the other hand, these spaces have shaped my identity and my perception of the world by allowing me to connect, learn, discover, and enjoy so many wonderful things—so what do I do?

I see so many people quitting social media cold turkey, doing digital detoxes, and ditching smartphones, but realistically, how many of us can actually keep this up? I’ve tried deleting social media plenty of times, and I can absolutely see the benefits, but I ran into two main issues: first, I missed a sense of connection, and second, my willpower was never enough. As someone who finds so much connection and purpose through media—that being finding new things to read or watch, enjoying my favorite creators, sharing things with my friends, and engaging in online discourse—it felt like a part of myself was missing. Additionally, these apps are designed to keep us hooked, regardless of our feelings about them, so expecting sheer individual determination to be enough to keep us away from them is often setting ourselves up for failure.

As someone with AuDHD, these all-or-nothing frameworks always end up in chaos and disappointment for me. Between my chronic perfectionism, my struggles with focus and attention, task initiation and transitioning, procrastination, and emotional regulation, quitting cold turkey is a recipe for disaster. Additionally, habits have never worked for me; instead, systems and rituals help me with the structure I need to have a regulated and productive life. However, learning to deal with these very struggles has been the catalyst for me to not only transform my life, but create this wonderful community and help others who may be feeling the same way I have—and very often still do.

Caspar David Friedrich. Woman at Window, 1822.

In this month’s installment of Beyond The Algorithm, I share all of the tips, tricks, and resources that have paved the way for a more mindful, productive, and fulfilling life while staying online, divided into the following categories:

1. Setting Ourselves Up For Success

2. Mindful Consumption

3. Digital Transitions

4. Creating Momentum

5. Realistic Flexibility

I have figured all of these out through a lot of time, effort, tears, and especially trial and error. Hopefully, this guide can help you skip some of that and allow you to improve your relationship with social media, your phone, and especially yourself and your goals <3

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Given that there’s no media roundup today, make sure to check out the last installment of Things To Do Instead of Doomscrolling over on Perfectly Imperfect. This one is titled New Year, Same Me where I share a few things that I’m bringing into my 2026 which you can find below :)

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1. Setting Ourselves Up For Success

The way I see it, mindful media consumption needs a robust, layered architecture. It’s not just about creating a solid foundation, but about building structures that act as safety nets to make things easier for ourselves. These are some things that I do to set that architecture up.

• Lowering Stimulation: I often use TikTok or Instagram on silent and/or grayscale. One of the largest appeals of short-form content and visuals in social media is the dopamine hits from high stimulation, so lowering it helps us to have more agency over the time spent engaging with content.

If you have an iPhone, here’s how I easily turn grayscale on and off:

1. Go to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size

2. Click on Color Filters, turn them on, select grayscale, and turn the intensity all the way up

3. Go back to Accessibility > Touch > Back Tap > Double Tap

4. Scroll down to Accessibility and select Color Filters

5. Tap the back of your phone twice to switch :)

You can also do this with the side button, but I use it for Apple pay, so this way works better for me!

• Turning Notifications Off: I have had my notifications off on all social media for years now, and it has honestly lowered my anxiety and need to be constantly checking my phone—I think I only have the notifications on for Whatsapp, Calls, and my bank app. I also use the DND feature quite liberally. I have it on a schedule so that I only get notifications during a few hours of the day. You can do this in your settings and also allow notifications from certain people, apps, and repeat calls to go through.

• Physical Distance: I try to charge my phone away from my bed to protect the first and last moments of my day, as well as my sleep, given that I suffer from terrible insomnia. This is just one thing, though, leaving your phone away from your workspace, not taking it with you into every room, and even leaving it at home if you don’t need it outside are great ways to create distance. We are so used to taking our phones absolutely everywhere that it can almost feel like an extra limb, but slowly detaching it can help us feel more at ease without it.

• The Newsletter Inbox: I have talked about this plenty of times before, but it has been such a game-changer for me. I have a separate email designated for newsletters of my favorite publications, so I have this sort of bubble of really great stuff to explore away from algorithms and work-related things. This is not only super useful to find cool things to read and bookmark, but it also helps me whenever I get the itch to scroll.

• The Yarn App: I have tried so many screen time apps, but this one is the only one that I feel has made a significant difference. The way it works is that, in order to unlock selected apps for a period of time, you must first pause and write a micro journal entry from the prompts the app provides. I’ve found that it tackles the root cause of scrolling—which is often escaping discomfort by dissociating—by creating a moment of grounding. Also, if I feel too lazy to write the entry, I just start doing something else, which has done wonders for my productivity.

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