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

It was built this way, on purpose

Speaking in 2017, Facebook's founding president Sean Parker said the thinking behind building these apps was: "How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?"

That's the product. Our attention, our time, our data.

When I read Cal Newport's book Digital Minimalism, I learned how the tech industry borrowed ideas from gambling and slot machine design to make its apps as compelling as possible. That flutter in my stomach, the pull to reach for my phone: it had all been cultivated, encouraged and programmed into my nervous system.

I opened a chapter of my second book with this poem:

In March 2026, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube negligent over the design of their platforms. For years, too much social media has been called a parenting problem, a willpower problem, our children's problem. It was always a design problem.

The slot machine in your pocket

The infinite feed has no natural stopping point, no finish line. Autoplay starts the next video before you've decided whether you want it. And pull-to-refresh works on us like a slot machine: an uncertain reward, always one more pull.

That uncertainty is engineered so we produce dopamine, the chemical that drives us to seek reward. But the reward rarely satisfies, so we hunt, and we hunt for more, again and again.

Likes work the same way. For years, they were the thing that had me picking up my phone to check, and check again. Has anyone seen it? Has anyone liked it?

The feed that learns you

In my first book, back in 2018, I described the algorithm like this: it learns what you like, by what you like. And then it predicts what you would like to see.

Today, that learning is relentless. Every pause, every tap, every video you watch to the end tells the system something about you. It shows you more of what holds you, which makes you stay longer, which teaches it more. A loop.

Caught up in the news? How to stay informed without being consumed.

The digital dreamstate

A few years ago, researchers scanned people's brains while they watched TikTok videos. They found that personalised videos, chosen for each person by the algorithm lit up the default mode network much more than generic ones, along with a key part of the brain's reward system.

The default mode network is the part of the brain that's active when you daydream, remember, and reflect on who you are. It's where your sense of self lives.

In other words, personalised feeds no longer just compete for our attention. They enter the self.

Oof. Let that one sink in.

As a social media strategist, I used to teach people to create "identifiable content", because content people recognise themselves in gets more engagement. Now multiply that by everything in your feed. Content that mirrors you back to yourself, over and over. Hello, me. Here you are.

So we drift into something like a dream. It's a bit like lucid dreaming: we're awake, eyes open, conscious. But in a lucid dream, you know you're dreaming. When we scroll, we often don't. That's why time slips away so easily, and why the phone feels so hard to put down. You don't just get lulled into a dream state. You get lulled into yourself.

It's also why getting out of it so often starts with the body. You've left your body for a while, so the way back is noticing it again: your shoulders, your jaw, your breath.

Why willpower isn't enough

We are being asked to out-regulate a trillion-dollar industry with willpower. That isn't a fair fight, for any of us.

And for young people, still working out who they are, a feed that reflects their identity back to them isn't just sticky. It's shaping them while they grow.

This is why screen time limits and good intentions so often fail. They work from the outside in. The pull works from the inside.

So what can we do?

Start by understanding what's happening. Then start to notice when you're caught in a Scroll Loop.

Name what you're feeling when you find yourself scrolling, or just after you stop. Bored? Lonely? Anxious? Excited? The algorithm exploits those states and brings you back for more. But naming them interrupts the spell.

A few things that help me:

• Before you open an app, ask: what am I actually looking for right now? (It's my phone's screensaver.)
• Set a 9pm cut-off.
• Charge your phone in another room.
• Go for a walk without it.
• Have curious, not confrontational, conversations with your friends, family and children about what they love, and what drains them, about their phones.

Awareness is our first act of agency. And getting offline is an act of rebellion.

The method I teach, Scroll, Loop, Notice, Choose, is built on exactly this. See how it works, step by step

What needs to change

Understanding and agency are what we can work with right now. But the deeper fix is design. Endless scroll, autoplay and algorithmic recommendation shouldn't be the default, especially for young people. Tech companies need to be accountable for the impact of their products. And digital wellbeing education needs proper investment, for children and for the adults around them.

Until then: I want to take back what's mine. I hope you'll join me.

Questions people ask