I'm a programmer, a creative person, working on my projects, and regularly I need a short break, so on every break I usually lay in bed and checked the news and I often ended on YouTube watching more videos, wasting hours every day.

What eventually helped me was use css to replace entire YouTube (and other doom scrolling websites) with a motivational picture that says:

"One day, you'll realize that your dream died because you chose comfort over effort. Don't let that regret haunt you forever."

And it worked.

Edit: the css for yt looks like this:

    body {
     min-height: 100vh;
     background-image:url(https://example.com/effort.jpg);
     background-size: contain;
     background-repeat: no-repeat; 
     background-position: center; 
     background-color: black;
    }
    p,div,h1,span {display:none}

If you want to make a kids app... Forcing the child to do a number of math problems to continue using the tablet would be an amazing app that I would definitely pay for.

My daughter is a second grader. If every 5 minutes of tablet use 'cost' her 5 correct arithmetic answers she would be working at space x right now.

A lot of people are objecting to the "loser" unlock key. A lot of ideas about what to do instead. I think the biggest problem with social media is the loss of attention span.

So I think it should force you to stare into the camera for 180 seconds without context switching to unlock. Practice focus to unlock distraction.

This is cute, but in all seriousness it would be much more effective to shout "I'm a winner"

Research:

- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3354773/ – Low self-esteem + rejection hurts self-control

- https://selfdeterminationtheory.org/SDT/documents/2007_Power... – Self-criticism predicts less goal progress

- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9916102/ – Social exclusion slows inhibitory control

- https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1191... – Low teen self-esteem → poorer self-control

- https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8768475/ – Meta-analysis links shame to regulation drops

- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28810473/ – Self-compassion boosts self-regulation

- https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312138882_Self-Cont... – Ego threats deplete self-control resources

- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21632968/ – Self-criticism tied to worse goal progress

- https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-025-96476-8 – Low self-respect → low self-control → problems

Remember to be kind to yourself.

It's crazy I am/was a reddit user and it's like a compulsion. I now only look at news, worldnews and combatfootage but I keep reaching for something. The other thing is YouTube which I'm trying to stick to the educational stuff of people making things (I did get premium)'

Otherwise Hacker News or freelance/indiehacker sites

edit: I do have a hobby (making hardware stuff) but I fell out of it/trying to get back into it (motivation) and work multiple jobs, but on downtime trying to do mindless stuff which isn't always bad/need a mental break

You should run with this idea!

Now make a "Dungeon Crawler Carl" -branded one that requires a webcam, bare feet, and nail polish!

Perhaps a better approach would be to randomly replace links in your social media app with links to a random image of what you imagine to be a social media addict, or someone who has ruined their lives due to social media. Perpahs with a message like "This will be you in X years". Hopefully over time the subconscious parts of your brain will get the message. In your current approach, the signalling is largely aimed at the conscious part, which is usually not where the problem lies.

The relevant code: https://github.com/Pankajtanwarbanna/scream-to-unlock/blob/m...

Are you sure Chrome doesn't talk to Google's server to convert the speech to text?

Far from me criticizing people with disabilities. But are we, as a generation, really that desperate to use these kind of solutions to just control our impulses? Listen, I sometime spend my Saturday just doom scrolling and watching useless shorts for all day beside eating meals, doing nothing productive. But I can stop whenever I can. If you find hard stopping your compulsive behavior you have some other problem that these kind of apps can't solve.

I had similar efforts. so I made a Chrome extension that helps you be more mindful of your social media usage by prompting you to think twice before visiting social media sites. If you really want to see, just wait after the counting down:

https://github.com/chaosprint/twice

Good idea. Could be applied to other self-destructive categories: Porn, hookup apps, etc.

I genuinely don't get this. Let's say you believe it's an addiction - how is this an acceptable treatment? Would we justify something like this for alcoholics? "Scream you're a loser for another can of beer"

I'm not attacking this project and OP per se but if we do believe that social media addiction is a real problem we're approaching it in very immature ways. It's either an easy problem than can be solved with temperance or its a hard problem that needs to be solved with real science based tools. Anything in-between seems like it could be more harmful than helpful.

Ha, might be more effective to have to say some long passage; could see myself eventually saying "I'm a loser" habitually to access the sites without internalizing the meaning.

Does singing the Beck song work?

Could customize the user call out

Maybe something like “I know this is the opposite of socializing but I want to give in the the mindless algorithmic manipulation for a little longer anyways”

For the v0 captcha contest I was going to create a scream captcha where you have to scream really loudly to verify, but I got caught up with work. Nice job!

For a subset of the population, this will have an inverse incentive. To support those people, perhaps have a toggle that requires them to say “I’m a good person”?

Funny idea. I don't think I am a loser. But I'm pretty sure I'm addicted. So I'd prefer that sentence.

I found inverting colors in Accessibility settings works great. Phone is still useable, but everything feels strange and icky.

Can't you just uninstall the extension?

That's brilliant! Please make a Firefox extension too!

That volume bar could be labeled "Humiliation:"

As much as I hate to say it, forcing users to look at ads probably does a decent job of limiting social media time, at least it would for me.

On TikTok you can just swipe through ads when they come up, so lots of people now have built-in muscle memory to auto-swipe every 4th or 5th video, or if they see "Sponsored" in the lower left. If I was instead forced to watch every one of those through to completion, I'd spend a lot less time on there.

So you think screaming 'im a loser' 10 times an hour is going to be good for mental health?

At last verification can technology is real. YC better swoop this one up. It's going places.

Haha, definetely needed.

Great work

Now ship something that requires a convincing demonstration of inner peace before allowing the user access to X Dot Com The Everything App, and you'll really be cooking with fire.

This is hilarious. I can already imagine the real outcome though: I repeat "I'm a loser" 20-30 times a day, internalise it, and destroy my mental health even further :)

Does it work with LinkedIn

LOl hilarious!

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It should be “I’m addicted” instead of “I’m a loser”. Forcing someone to call themselves a loser over and over eventually weighs heavy on the soul, how would you feel if a user did it so many times one day they just decided to kill themselves? The blood is on your hands.