Doom scrolling isn't a habit, it's a designed outcome

The word habit lets everyone off the hook. It suggests something you picked up, like biting your nails. Doom scrolling is not something you picked up. It is the equilibrium state of a system tuned, session by session, to maximise the time you spend inside it.

> Outrage is cheap fuel

A ranking system does not have opinions. It has metrics. If content that alarms you produces more dwell time, more comments and more shares than content that pleases you, then alarming content wins — not because anyone chose cruelty, but because the optimiser found it first. You end up with a machine that has independently rediscovered that fear and anger are the stickiest emotions available.

Nobody in the building decided you should feel worse. The metric decided, and nobody in the building overruled it.

> Why night is the worst hour

Late at night your prefrontal control is at its lowest, your emotional reactivity is at its highest, and there is nothing else to do. This is the ideal customer state. It is also why so many people describe their scrolling as something that happens to them rather than something they do. At 1 a.m., functionally, it is.

> The exit is structural

• ▪Do not try to consume the feed better. Curation is a hobby; the ranking will out-iterate you.
• ▪Cut access by clock, not by intention. Locked from 22:00 is a rule. 'Less at night' is a mood.
• ▪Charge the phone in another room. Physical distance beats every setting screen ever shipped.
• ▪Delete the app from the home screen even while locked. The icon is an advertisement you pay for.

The goal is not to become the kind of person who can resist an optimised feed. Nobody is that person. The goal is to spend fewer hours standing in front of one.