How to stop scrolling:Scroll Loop Notice Choose

A Scroll Loop moment

I was sitting outside a café, waiting for a friend. At the next table, two women were having the most wonderfully spicy conversation about divorce and dating, and I couldn't help overhearing.

So I got out my phone.

Nothing on Instagram was more interesting than the conversation happening to my left. But sitting alone doing nothing, I felt like I had to. The phone can feel like a shield. A way of saying: look, I'm busy, I'm not earwigging.

Except once I was in my phone, I wasn't looking at anything in particular. Scrolling, swiping, a low-level restlessness bubbling up. And then I heard myself say, clearly, almost as if someone else had said it:

"Katie, you are in a Scroll Loop."

So I put my phone face down. Looked up. Took a breath. The sun was shining, people walked by, and we exchanged smiles. Human and real.

Step 1: Scroll

This is the moment you pick up your phone. Maybe it's intentional. More often it isn't. It sort of just happens.

The scroll doesn't start with a decision. It starts with a trigger.

Sometimes the trigger is external: notifications, pings and dings, someone else getting their phone out (it's contagious). More often it's internal. I can be a top procrastinator, and I'll pick up my phone whenever there's a task I'm avoiding. A text conversation that's gone quiet: have they replied yet? Check. Something happening in the world that I want all the latest on. Check. Check. And now AI: what shall I ask it next? Check.

Your triggers will be different to mine. But once you start to notice them, the scroll takes on a whole different dimension.

Which doorways lead you into your phone? Tap the ones you recognise in Scroll Loop Bingo.

Why do I keep picking up my phone?

Step 2: Loop

Once you're in, the apps take over. Content is personalised. The apps know what you like, what you linger on, what makes you stop for half a second longer than everything else, and they show you more of it. The algorithm has been paying attention, even when you haven't.

A brain imaging study of TikTok users found that personalised videos activate the default mode network, the part of the brain where we daydream, remember and sense who we are. Which is why time collapses in the loop. You look up and twenty minutes have gone. Or forty. And you can't quite say where they went.

Loops look different for different people. Mine include:

• The dopamine loop: a tightening in my tummy, an excited anticipation, even when nothing that rewarding is going to happen.
• The validation loop: has anyone replied, liked it, seen me? I call it my "Please Like Me" loop.
• The rabbit hole: one post leads to another, and suddenly I'm watching a documentary before breakfast.

A loop can feel good. Great, even. I love a rabbit hole. But loops swing the other way too, leaving us hollow, a bit grim, low on energy, without quite knowing why.

Endless scroll and autoplay are designed, on purpose, to have no natural stopping point. Because a stopping point would mean you might stop.

Why is it so hard to stop? It isn't your willpower.

Step 3: Notice

This is the moment the whole sequence hinges on.

Something glitches and you become aware of what's happening. Maybe it's physical: shoulders up round your ears, a clenched jaw, hunched over your knees, an aching thumb, tired squinty eyes. Maybe it's a feeling: frustrated, anxious, bored, envious, comparison creeping in. Or maybe it's a sudden burst of consciousness, like coming up for air.

And here you name it.

"I'm in a Scroll Loop."

No judgement. No self-criticism. Just recognition. Oh. Here I am again.

Naming what you're doing while you're doing it is called metacognition: thinking about your own thinking. A UCLA study led by Matthew Lieberman found that when people put their feelings into words, activity in the brain's reactive centre dropped and activity in the thinking, decision-making part rose. That study was about emotions, but it's why I believe naming the Scroll Loop matters. It brings what's happening into conscious awareness, and that's where choice lives.

You can't choose differently if you don't know what you're doing in the first place.

Step 4: Choose

Now you have a choice, which you didn't really have before.

You might put the phone down. Look up. Notice the room, the person across from you, the view out of the window. Stretch, breathe, drink some water.

Or you might keep scrolling, but consciously now. Because you actually want to see something, or you need a few more minutes to send that message. That's completely different from the unconscious loop. That's agency. Just stay aware of the loop dropping back into its well-worn groove.

Add one breath

When you notice you're in the Scroll Loop, and just before you choose, take one deep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Feel your feet on the floor. Feel the phone in your hand.

Then choose.

It sounds so simple. But that one breath is the gap made physical. It's the noticing landing in your body, not just your head. For many people, and especially young people, that physical anchor makes a big difference.

I first wrote about this in 2019, in my book Social Media for a New Age 2: A Digital Self-Care Guide. I called it conscious use: each time you pick up your phone, pause, take a deep breath and ask yourself, what am I doing here? Is this intentional? The Scroll Loop grew from there.

Why this works when screen time limits don't

We're dealing with technology made by a trillion-dollar industry, where we are the product. They use the neuroscience of attention to keep us in the loop. That's persuasive design, and it was never our fault.

They used neuroscience to hook us. I want to use it to help unhook us.

The first few times you try this, the gap between notice and choose might be a fraction of a second. You name it, then keep scrolling anyway. That's still the sequence working, because you noticed. And noticing is a muscle. The more you use it, the stronger it gets.

I Scroll Loop Notice Choose every day (every hour, if I'm honest). I still get into Scroll Loops on the regular. But now there's a door, and I'm getting out much quicker. It has changed my relationship with my phone in a way no screen time limit ever has.

More simple practices: my digital self-care guide.

Try it with someone you love

I was driving home through the Somerset countryside with a friend. Comfortable quiet, music on. Then something shifted. He was on his phone, and five minutes later I could see he was scrolling Instagram. It felt like he wasn't really in the car with me anymore.

Aha, I thought. He isn't being rude. He's in a Scroll Loop.

So I didn't make a thing of it. I just asked: what are you looking at?

He looked up. "Oh, nothing really." And put it away. His choice. We talked for the rest of the drive, taking in Glastonbury Tor as we dropped into the valley.

If you have a young person in your life, model it for them. Say "I'm in a Scroll Loop" out loud and put your phone down. See if they clock it. Let it open a conversation.

Want to bring this to your school? I run assemblies, workshops and staff sessions. See the schools programme

Questions people ask