19.11.2025, Second research blog
Update on current research:
Findings: I did not manage to stick to it at all. When you are in the app and you have reached your daily limit a widget pops up saying that you have reached the limit you have set. Then you have two options: “OK” that takes you out of the app, and “ignore” where you can choose how long you wish to ignore it for. For me I found it way too easy to just ignore the limit. Especially when I was in the middle of a video or of reading something, and I did not really feel any consequences of ignoring it in the moment. The time limit did not help me reduce my screen time at all.
Moving forwards: I will keep the time limit on my phone, but I will extend it to 45 minutes and see if that makes it more manageable to uphold.
Findings: I myself subconsciously reaching for my phone a lot, but in contrast to setting the time limit I moves my phone out of my immediate reach which made it much more effective. I did manage to stick to staying off social media for the first part of my day, and defaulting to reaching for my phone reduced after a while. I found having a phone free morning very nice and freeing, and I started the day feeling lighter. After I while I would have to start using my phone for checking things like emails and messages and stuff, and I would go back to my normal use pretty quickly so it did not really reduced my scrolling through the rest of my day, but for my morning while getting ready and having breakfast it definitely worked.
Moving forwards: I will continue with this experiment and see if It can affect my daily use over time, and if I can become more aware of my using patterns.
Upcomming research
This week I will start trying to dedicate 30 min of screen time every evening to see if having a preset time for scrolling makes it easier to stick to only using social media within that frame.
I will also conduct more secondary research about the affects of doomscrolling. I will also research other people who have conducted similar experiments to mine and compare their findings to mine.
