How To Stop Scrolling

The apps on our phones do an amazing job of sucking us in. In fact, a big court case just found that some of these companies should be held responsible for basically designing products to be addictive. And that might not be shocking for lots of us, who feel the pull of these algorithms every day. So, is there anything we can do to help us put down our phones?? Tons of solutions are bandied about: Buy this special device to stay off your phone! What we really need to do is up the friction! Or go hardcore — just get a flip phone! But what actually works to stop scrolling? We dive into the science to find out, with help from computer science and engineering researcher Dr. Jaejeung Kim and psychologist Dr. Lea-Christin Wickord. Find our transcript here: https://tinyurl.com/ScienceVsStopScrolling In this episode, we cover: (00:00) The Apps Got Us Trapped (04:21) Yes, it’s the scrolling that’s to blame (06:18) The Hardcore Approach (11:45) The Gentle Nudge (14:09) What if we up the friction? (19:59) Is greyscale the solution? (28:50) If we stop scrolling, do we feel better? (30:37) Final tips to stop scrolling This episode was produced by Meryl Horn, with help from Wendy Zukerman, Rose Rimler, Michelle Dang, and Ekedi Fausther-Keeys. Wendy Zukerman is our executive producer. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Fact checking by Erica Akiko-Howard. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Bobby Lord, Bumi Hidaka, So Wylie, Emma Munger and Peter Leonard. Thanks so much to the researchers we spoke to, including Dr. Kai Lukoff, Hyunsung Cho, Dr. Alex Holte, Dr. Jan Ole Rixen, Dr. Jay Olson, and Dr. Noah Castelo. A big thanks to Joseph Lavelle Wilson and the Zukerman family. Science Vs is a Spotify Studios Original. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Follow us and tap the bell for episode notifications. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Wendy Zukerman?

  Hi, I'm Wendy Zukerman and you're listening to Science Burses.

• 0:05Wendy Zukerman?

  This is the show that pits facts against phones.

• 0:13Wendy Zukerman?

  Today on the show, how do we stop scrolling? Just last week, in a landmark case, Meta, which owns Instagram and Google, owner of YouTube, were found negligent for basically creating addictive products that harmed a young woman's mental health.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  A huge slap to big tech today.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  A landmark verdict that could change the face of social media.

• 0:37Speaker 03

  Deliberately and negligently designed their products to get young users hooked on the apps.

• 0:42Speaker 04

  They kept her endless scrolling, constant notifications, algorithms that learn exactly what keeps you watching.

• 0:50Wendy Zukerman?

  The tech giants have been ordered to pay her $6 million they're appealing. But this case has reignited a huge conversation over how these apps can just suck us in. The young woman's lawyer said during closing arguments that these apps are, quote, "Trojan horses." They look wonderful and great, but you invite them in and they take over. Which, away from this case, is exactly the way that a lot of our listeners have been feeling about these apps.

• 1:23Speaker 05

  I want to use my phone less, obviously, like everyone else.

• 1:26Speaker 06

  I've been trying to quit for the last two years. It has gotten worse. I want to stop doom scrolling.

• 1:32Speaker 07

  This feels like I'm constantly consuming something off of a screen.

• 1:37Wendy Zukerman?

  Surveys find that over half of adults in the US want to spend less time on their phones. My mental health is just better when I'm off social media and it's hard to get out of the scrolling. So the question we have for this episode is this: given that so many of us feel hooked, is there any way to unhook ourselves, to stop scrolling? Rather ironically, online, you can find tons of people claiming that they've found the answer.

• 2:07Speaker 08

  These are five really simple brain tricks that can help you break social media addiction and stop doom scrolling.

• 2:13Speaker 02

  The first tip is friction stacking. We need to create as many layers between us and that damn phone.

• 2:17Speaker 09

  If you can slay that dragon, if you can resist temptation, well, you can do anything.

• 2:26Speaker 10

  So how do you slay that dragon? Is there anything that can actually get us off our phones? That's science approved. When it comes to scrolling, a lot of us have been. Endless scrolling, constant notifications. And then there's science.

• 2:45Speaker 10

  Science versus scrolling will be right back just after the break. Don't look at your phone.

• 2:58Speaker 11

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 3:31Speaker 10

  Welcome back. There's a lot of chat right now about how these tech giants have created social media apps designed to suck us in. Now we're gonna talk about how to get unsucked.

• 3:45Speaker 10

  Time for the science with Merrill Hawn, senior producer. Hello.

• 3:49Speaker 08

  Hi Wendy.

• 3:50Speaker 10

  It's been a while since we've been chatting about science.

• 3:53Speaker 08

  Yeah, yeah, it has.

• 3:54Speaker 10

  So have you been spending all that time on your phone?

• 4:01Speaker 08

  Sometimes it feels like that.

• 4:03Speaker 10

  Seriously, do you have a problem with scrolling, do you think?

• 4:07Speaker 08

  Yeah. The reason I wanted to do this episode was because I'd find myself like just staring at my phone for way longer than I kind of meant to, especially at the end of the day. And like it wouldn't, it wouldn't even feel like good. Like I would often feel like worse about my life or just crappy in general. And yet I'd spend all this time, you know, scrolling, scrolling, scrolling.

• 4:33Speaker 10

  Yeah. And, you know, this is a feeling that many of us have had. And it is, it's kind of crazy to think about how pervasive this feeling is. So.

• 4:46Speaker 10

  Meryl, when it comes to this question of how do we stop scrolling? I mean, where do we begin?

• 4:51Speaker 08

  Well, first off, the research does find that scrolling itself is especially bad compared to other things we do on our phones.

• 4:58Speaker 10

  Okay.

• 4:58Speaker 08

  So like, one, one study asked people like how they felt after doing different things on their phones and the researchers could spy on them to see like exactly what they're using their phones for. And they found that, yeah, it was like the scrolling that people said they regretted the most compared to stuff like communicating with their friends or like getting information.

• 5:19Speaker 10

  Yeah.

• 5:20Speaker 08

  You could also see this in how much they regretted going on certain apps. Like after they went on Instagram, they would say that I regretted that like 42% of the time, where when they went on a messaging app, they only regretted it 18% of the time.

• 5:36Speaker 10

  Uh huh.

• 5:36Speaker 08

  And another study backed this up, finding something really similar, but this one looked at meaninglessness instead, which, you know, again, found that people said their experience was more meaningless if they had just spent that time scrolling compared to this other stuff, which helped me understand like why it feels so bad.

• 5:57Speaker 10

  But then why do we keep doing it, do you think?

• 5:59Speaker 08

  Cause it's like, it does give us some kind of like short-term happiness a lot of the time to scroll. The whole reason we do it is because we're probably getting some kind of, you know, dopamine hits or, you know, those, the parts of our brain that light up when we're doing something rewarding or do light up when we like see social media.

• 6:15Speaker 10

  Okay, okay. So that, I mean, that is why, yeah, we keep going back for more. So then, you know, what, what happens next? How do we stop? And, you know, I don't want to completely put the onus on us to work out how to unsuck ourselves from social media.

• 6:37Speaker 10

  The big tech companies clearly have a role to play here. But while we're waiting for them to sort it out, Beryl, do you have anything that we can do for ourselves?

• 6:47Speaker 08

  I do, yes. So let's dive in and find out like what actually works here to stop scrolling. So to start, let's meet Chejong Kim. He's an assistant professor at Chungnam National University in Korea. He's also had a problem with scrolling. For him, YouTube is the thing that would get him.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  I kept on watching, watching. And I end up watching something that I never intended.

• 7:11Speaker 08

  You just get sucked down these rabbit holes.

• 7:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 7:15Speaker 10

  Scientists are people too.

• 7:16Speaker 08

  Yeah, but he has done a lot of work trying to figure out like exactly what strategies work to stop. Like, how can people break these habits? And so I wanted to start with the most hardcore intervention that he's come up with. Do you want to guess what they did to help people stop scrolling?

• 7:37Speaker 10

  Delete the apps. Put your phone in the bin. Buy a Nokia from the early 2000s.

• 7:44Speaker 08

  Nice guesses. I guess it wasn't, it wasn't that extreme in a way.

• 7:52Speaker 10

  None of these are crazy.

• 7:55Speaker 08

  Well, not too many people would sign up for a study, I don't think, where they had to like get rid of their phones.

• 8:01Speaker 10

  I would, Chejong, if you want to go even more extreme, I'll sign up. Okay, so what did they do?

• 8:08Speaker 08

  So his approach was to just make an app that would kick you off your phone. If you go past a certain time limit, then you couldn't use your phone for anything except to make phone calls.

• 8:20Speaker 10

  Okay.

• 8:21Speaker 08

  So, yeah, first, you know, there's about 40 people. And first, you had to put in your goals for how long you want to spend on your phone. So like, maybe you're using it for five hours a day and you want to cut down to four hours a day. Then you got this special app. It's called Goalkeeper and it had three different levels. So sometimes people would just get the easy levels, basically a control where you just get a warning message when you go past your time limit. And another one, you just get kicked off your phone for a little bit of time. But then the third level is, is the intense one. So Chejong called this condition a strong lockout.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  And the strong lockout is what I was very interested. I was, I'm eager to lock people out.

• 9:04Speaker 08

  Just because you want to make people suffer?

• 9:07Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, I want me.

• 9:11Speaker 02

  I wanna see the greatest effect. So we locked them out until the midnight after the time exceeded.

• 9:20Wendy Zukerman?

  That, it's interesting that he said it'll come back on at midnight, like Cinderella. Because that would be the worst time to then get access to your phone. It's gonna interrupt with your sleep. At least just keep it off until 8 a.m. or something.

• 9:36Speaker 08

  That's true, but then people will be eating up their time for the next day. So, yeah, there, people were very aware of like how much time they had left on their phone.

• 9:44Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay.

• 9:45Speaker 08

  And so every, everyone tried out these like kind of different levels of the app for, for one week. And I, I first wanted to know, yeah, what happened when people were in this, the week when they had their really hardcore approach, the strong lockout. First, let's just look at, did it work to get people to use their phones less?

• 10:02Speaker 02

  Uh, yes, it did. Yes, it did. It's quite effective.

• 10:06Speaker 08

  So, yeah, people did use their phones for roughly 75 minutes less every day.

• 10:10Wendy Zukerman?

  Mmm.

• 10:11Speaker 08

  So in that sense, it worked.

• 10:13Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 10:14Speaker 08

  But then the caveat was that people really didn't like it, at least a lot of the time. Like they, they said they felt more frustrated and coerced compared to the control condition, where they were just getting a little warning, but they didn't actually get locked out of their phone. And then they got really stressed out when they saw that the time was getting close to when they would have to get cut off.

• 10:36Wendy Zukerman?

  Yes, that's the point.

• 10:37Speaker 08

  Yeah, but I think the thing that was frustrating was that we use our phones for a lot of different things, right?

• 10:43Wendy Zukerman?

  Yes, of course, yes.

• 10:45Speaker 08

  So when we get locked out of everything altogether, it can be really annoying.

• 10:48Wendy Zukerman?

  Yes, it's a big stick. It's a big stick. That's right. And there can be days where. You're off Instagram, but you've got a lot of work stuff to do, blah, blah, blah. You're traveling, you want to listen to a bunch of podcasts and then you've.

• 11:00Speaker 08

  You just want to like pay for the subway. Like I do all the sorts of things with my phone. I don't want to be locked out altogether.

• 11:06Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 11:07Speaker 08

  And then there's one other super kind of hardcore study I wanted to tell you about. Since you were interested in, you know, signing up for a study yourself where you just have to like, get rid of your phone. So I talked to this researcher who set up this study where they wanted to cut the internet off people's phones for two weeks. But then when it was actually time to to start the experiments and download this app that cut off the internet, a ton of people didn't actually go through with it. So more than 40% of them just didn't even get the app, even though they signed up for this study. And then even a bunch of people who got the app kept cheating. They'd like re-enable the internet again and again and again during the study.

• 11:50Speaker 08

  So even though you think you might want something super extreme, it seems like for a lot of people, they don't actually want to do this.

• 11:57Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I could, I could see, I could see myself falling on my own petard or whatever that phrase is. Petard?

• 12:09Speaker 08

  Batard?

• 12:10Wendy Zukerman?

  Batard? I don't know. I'm just saying words.

• 12:13Speaker 08

  I guess that's a loaf of bread.

• 12:16Speaker 08

  So maybe we should go in the opposite direction. Like what if all we need to do to to stop scrolling is a little like reminder, like a gentle nudge? You know, something that that just asks us like, are you sure you want to be doing this right now? So Che Jang has also also tried this approach, like in a in a different study, he created an app where people would just get a little pop up window when they tried to open up certain apps. And they could just get rid of this little pop up with a little click of the button.

• 12:46Wendy Zukerman?

  Yes, quite a few people have apps similar to this.

• 12:50Speaker 08

  Yeah, I've tried this out before because the iPhone comes with like a screen time app that works similar to this.

• 12:56Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh, yeah, I have always wondered, does it, does it actually work? Because the the pop up comes on and it's quite a low hurdle to just say, yeah, this is what I want to do.

• 13:06Speaker 08

  Yeah, it's easy to ignore, but it does give you that little nudge, right?

• 13:10Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 13:11Speaker 08

  And so, yeah, he, um, Che Jong set up the study where first people had to put in a list of apps that they wanted to like stop themselves from going on to so much. Mm-hmm.

• 13:20Speaker 02

  So we call it like the blacklist app. So it could be like, you know, Facebook, um, Instagram or YouTube.

• 13:29Wendy Zukerman?

  Got it.

• 13:29Speaker 08

  And then he looked at what happened when people got this little pop-up window. Um, did they decide not to go on to those blacklisted apps?

• 13:37Speaker 02

  It has, uh, reduced the use about 10 to 15%.

• 13:43Speaker 08

  Just from getting that little box that just says, do you want to continue? Yes or no?

• 13:47Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 13:48Speaker 08

  Huh.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  And that little, um, stop, uh, have made you think and reconsider your use.

• 13:55Wendy Zukerman?

  So what have similar studies found? Does this gentle nudging work generally? We've got Che Jong's study.

• 14:01Speaker 08

  Yeah, other studies do find that it can work a little bit like Che Jong's, but then a bunch of other studies didn't find any effects.

• 14:09Wendy Zukerman?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:09Speaker 08

  So, yeah, I found a review that kind of looked at all these studies together. And, uh, bottom line, it called, um, this type of strategy, quote, "barely effective."

• 14:20Wendy Zukerman?

  Hmm, okay. Okay, it's just too easy to swat that fly away. You sure? You sure? Yeah, I'm sure. I want to stay on the app.

• 14:31Speaker 08

  I, I just automatically ignore it every single time. So for me, it wasn't surprising that it doesn't work great.

• 14:37Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay.

• 14:38Speaker 08

  So I think, yeah, we probably, we need to turn up the dial back up a little bit now, right? Because, you know, maybe the problem with these kind of approaches, the gentle nudge, is that there's not enough like friction. So I don't know if you've heard of this, this like a buzzword online right now. Influencers are like, you know, to stop scrolling, you need to up the friction.

• 14:59Wendy Zukerman?

  Right, so the friction is too hot, then the friction is too cold. We need the Goldilocks amount of friction to stop us from scrolling.

• 15:08Speaker 08

  And, you know, some of our listeners mentioned this sort of approach, like making it harder to use their apps, um, as like having worked for some of them.

• 15:17Speaker 05

  Now what I've tried and two pretty good success is hide all the social media apps on your phone. That has really helped.

• 15:24Speaker 07

  And I haven't found like a bullet solution, but the Brick app has really helped me.

• 15:30Speaker 08

  The Brick is something, I've been getting ads for it a ton. It's like this little device that like you physically have to like go to to unlock your apps. That's sort of expensive. There's also cheaper ways to do the same thing. There's one called Touch Grass where you have to like go outside and like take a picture of yourself touching grass before you can use your apps. So this is, it's a really common strategy, but let's find out if it actually, like what actually happens when people try this. So

• 15:56Speaker 10

  Okay.

• 15:57Speaker 08

  In that study that Che Jang did, where you know, people put in these blacklisted apps, in, in other cases, they, he made it harder for them to get to those apps. They couldn't just, you know, click it away.

• 16:08Speaker 10

  Okay.

• 16:09Speaker 08

  People would get a pop-up window where you had to enter in a string of numbers before you could go on to the app.

• 16:16Speaker 10

  Got it.

• 16:17Speaker 08

  So sometimes it was only 10 digits long, other times it was a 30-digit long number that they had to like manually put in before they got to use their app.

• 16:25Speaker 10

  Oh.

• 16:26Speaker 08

  I asked Che Jang what this was like.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  Very frustrating. And our participant mentioned that, oh, there's one little thing. Once you failed to input 30-digit number at once, you have to retype it.

• 16:41Speaker 08

  You start to start all over again.

• 16:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's, so it's very frustrating.

• 16:48Speaker 10

  Yeah, I was, I was imagining that's what would happen. Very frustrating, very frustrating. Okay, so surely that stops you going on the app, right? That feels like enough.

• 17:01Speaker 08

  Yeah, yeah. So in the study, again, around 40 people, a few weeks long, he looked at like what happened when these, they got these different kind of levels. And yeah, when they, especially when they got the 30-digit number, a lot of the time, they decided, I'm not even gonna bother.

• 17:15Speaker 10

  Yeah.

• 17:16Speaker 08

  Almost half the time, they decided like, yeah, F this. It's not worth it to go on this app. And the other, the 10-digit number like worked okay too. So overall, it did work to get people to stop going on their apps as much. But there is a pretty big caveat to this.

• 17:35Wendy Zukerman?

  OK.

• 17:36Speaker 08

  Which is that, once people were in the app, they then spent more time in it than they would have done otherwise.

• 17:44Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh.

• 17:48Wendy Zukerman?

  You know what this is like, Meryl?

• 17:50Speaker 08

  What?

• 17:50Wendy Zukerman?

  It's like when people are waiting in line at an ice cream shop.

• 17:54Speaker 08

  Hmm.

• 17:55Wendy Zukerman?

  And then, when they get to the front, they have to get all the friggin' tasties.

• 18:01Speaker 08

  To take their time, yeah.

• 18:03Wendy Zukerman?

  Exactly, exactly. But we're still waiting in the line, Heather.

• 18:10Speaker 08

  Yeah, it's exactly like that.

• 18:12Wendy Zukerman?

  Is this what happened? Yeah, OK.

• 18:14Speaker 08

  Yeah, here's Che Zong.

• 18:15Speaker 02

  So they, once they got in, so, hey, once I got in, I wanna use this for 30 minutes instead of like 10 minutes, 10 minutes, 10 minutes, three times of 10 minutes sessions.

• 18:26Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh.

• 18:26Speaker 02

  So, so the frequency decreased, but the total time remained the same.

• 18:31Speaker 08

  So overall, people didn't actually spend less time on their blacklisted apps. Um, so like, I mean, maybe this is still helpful. If your goal is to go on to your apps less often, to like, kind of do that checking, checking, like habitual checking less.

• 18:46Wendy Zukerman?

  Yes.

• 18:46Speaker 08

  But if your goal is to spend less time on your phone, it might not work to do this kind of friction approach. And then, one final thing from the study I thought was interesting. They looked at what people did when they did decide to not go on to that naughty listed app. And it turns out, about half the time, people just went to some other app instead.

• 19:07Wendy Zukerman?

  Hmm.

• 19:08Speaker 08

  So they were still on their phones often, just doing something else that maybe they thought was better for them because they didn't put it on their blacklist.

• 19:14Wendy Zukerman?

  OK, yeah. Yeah, that feels right. I mean, if you're sitting on the toilet, you gotta look at something, right?

• 19:21Speaker 08

  You gotta do something.

• 19:24Wendy Zukerman?

  All right, so here is what we have learnt thus far. If you want to stop scrolling, adding some friction is a good idea. But if the hurdle is too low, like a little pop up, it's not going to work. If the hurdle is too high, once you jump it, watch out because then you might be spending more time scrolling because you're so proud of yourself for putting in those 30 digits.

• 19:51Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 19:53Wendy Zukerman?

  Right.

• 19:53Speaker 08

  Yeah, that might sort of backfire once you get in.

• 19:55Wendy Zukerman?

  So is there any Goldilocks amount of friction then?

• 20:01Speaker 08

  Well, there is actually an approach that, nothing to do with friction at all, that I found, that it seems to be the best way to stop scrolling, according to the science that I found. So I'll tell you what that is after the break.

• 20:25Speaker 11

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 20:58Wendy Zukerman?

  Welcome back. Today, we are talking about how we can stop scrolling. Meryl Horn, senior producer at Science First, has been looking into this, and I think you've promised us a solution.

• 21:11Speaker 08

  Yes.

• 21:11Wendy Zukerman?

  To our scrolling dilemma.

• 21:12Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 21:13Wendy Zukerman?

  Is that, am I overselling?

• 21:15Speaker 08

  I mean, I think, no, I think it's a solution. That's definitely worth trying.

• 21:19Wendy Zukerman?

  Right.

• 21:20Speaker 08

  Yeah, and it is something that is even easier than a lot of the things we've been talking about to try.

• 21:25Wendy Zukerman?

  Let's jump in.

• 21:26Speaker 08

  So next, we're going to meet Dr. Lea Kristen-Vickard. She did a study on this. She's a researcher at the University of Coplens in Germany. And like basically all the researchers that I talked to about this, Lea also got into this for personal reasons. She's a psychologist.

• 21:43Speaker 12

  In psychology, we don't do research, we do a me-search.

• 21:48Speaker 08

  Oh, yes. Me-search.

• 21:52Speaker 12

  As you can imagine, I have a problem with my phone on my own. So I realized, especially during COVID, that this is a research topic that could really help me with my usage pattern, using my phone, using social media in a healthy and beneficial way, and not only doom scroll the whole day.

• 22:12Wendy Zukerman?

  Mm hmm. What has she uncovered?

• 22:16Speaker 08

  Well, so the idea for her came up in a meeting she was having one day with some students, where there are basically brainstorming ways to stop scrolling.

• 22:24Speaker 12

  One of the students talked about, okay, but have a look at our old phones, like the first phones we ever had. It was like in Europe, we had this old Nokia phones. It was a black and white phone. We used it to text somebody, we used it to call somebody, maybe play a game, but that's it. And then we discussed, okay, like, how can we arrange that nowadays?

• 22:50Speaker 08

  Can we make our phones crappier, like they used to be?

• 22:52Speaker 12

  Not to make it more crappy, but to make it less attractive. And we realized all those saturated colors, your blinking red push or notification button, all of those colors keep you distracted and keep you on your phone.

• 23:11Speaker 08

  So yeah, the colors. We know from studies that people generally prefer bright colors. It's probably why our apps are all rainbow colored. And so the idea was maybe if we get rid of these bright colors, make our phones black and white, or put it in grayscale, we'll use our phones less. Have you heard of this approach, Wendy?

• 23:31Wendy Zukerman?

  I guess I know some people, obviously, who have their phone on grayscale, but I didn't know that this was a tactic to get them to stop using their phones so much.

• 23:41Speaker 08

  Yeah. So do you want to try it, Wendy?

• 23:43Wendy Zukerman?

  Sure, sure, sure, sure. All right.

• 23:45Speaker 08

  And if listeners want to try this too. So on both iPhones and Androids, it's under accessibility. So Wendy, you have an iPhone?

• 23:52Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 23:53Speaker 08

  Okay, so go to Settings.

• 23:55Wendy Zukerman?

  Accessibility.

• 23:57Speaker 08

  Accessibility, and then scroll down to Display and Text Size.

• 24:01Wendy Zukerman?

  Got it.

• 24:02Speaker 08

  And now Color Filters.

• 24:04Wendy Zukerman?

  Yes.

• 24:05Speaker 08

  And toggle that button on. And there you go.

• 24:08Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay, grayscale, here we go.

• 24:11Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh, okay. It's subtle. It's noir. It's classy.

• 24:18Speaker 08

  Well, for me, it was more of a like, whoa, it's like a completely different thing. Like, I felt like it was super dramatic.

• 24:24Wendy Zukerman?

  Did you really?

• 24:25Speaker 08

  I did. Yeah, no one ever stood out. I was like, what?

• 24:31Wendy Zukerman?

  But tell me about the science. So, does it actually work?

• 24:35Speaker 10

  I would be really surprised if this made a difference.

• 24:39Speaker 08

  Well, yeah, let's see what happened in her studies. So, she got about 100 people to do this, switch their phones to grayscale.

• 24:46Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah.

• 24:46Speaker 08

  And, yeah, right away, they got a pretty big response.

• 24:50Speaker 12

  We asked our participants, okay, how do you feel? How are you? And what they did say was,

• 24:57Speaker 12

  it sucks.

• 25:00Speaker 12

  It's boring. We don't want it.

• 25:02Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 25:03Speaker 12

  Because we want to have our little funny phones. We want to have, we want to play with our phone. We want to have a good time. We want to feel good using our phone.

• 25:11Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 25:12Speaker 12

  But what they also said is, oh, it's really working.

• 25:17Wendy Zukerman?

  Hmm.

• 25:20Speaker 08

  So, this generally works. In Leah's study, they found that after a day or two of their phones being on grayscale, people spent a lot less time on their phones, over an hour less on average.

• 25:32Wendy Zukerman?

  Whoa, an hour less? Just because their phone was on grayscale?

• 25:37Speaker 08

  Mm-hmm. And other, so there's also longer-term studies that have people do this for a week that don't find as big effects. So, maybe 20 to 40 minutes less a day, like, once you get used to it.

• 25:47Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah, right.

• 25:48Speaker 08

  But out of all the four studies that I could find on this, it did work. People used their phones for less time. Yeah, and there was a couple of studies that looked at people who are really heavy phone users. They were considered to have problematic smartphone use, which is sort of a hand-wavy way of measuring how addicted someone is to their smartphone.

• 26:07Wendy Zukerman?

  Okay.

• 26:08Speaker 08

  And they found that grayscale was helpful for them.

• 26:10Wendy Zukerman?

  For sure.

• 26:11Speaker 08

  One study found that people with this felt less anxious after switching their phones to grayscale.

• 26:17Wendy Zukerman?

  Oh, I mean, you don't see Pokys machines, or what do you call them in the US? Slot machines. You don't see slot machines that are grayscale, right?

• 26:26Speaker 08

  Yeah. And, well, but there are some things... That are harder to do. I noticed when I put my phone in grayscale, like when someone's calling you, the buttons for answering the phone or declining it are in red and green. So now when I'm picking up a call, I'm like, oh, gosh, like, which button do I push? You really have to pay attention to make sure you hit the right one.

• 26:48Wendy Zukerman?

  What do you mean? It's that hard, Meryl.

• 26:51Speaker 08

  You don't realize how dependent you are on the colors until they're gone.

• 26:54Wendy Zukerman?

  Hmm, OK, OK, all right.

• 26:56Speaker 08

  But for most things, it still works OK.

• 26:58Wendy Zukerman?

  All right.

• 26:59Speaker 08

  And, you know, a few of our listeners told us that this worked for them, including this one, whose voice you might recognize.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  I have been using grayscale for like three weeks. And then when I look at my screen time report, my screen time is down. My phone time is down like 30%, which is actually more than I thought it would be.

• 27:21Wendy Zukerman?

  Wow, Blythe Terrell, executive editor here at Science Versus.

• 27:27Speaker 08

  Yeah, she tried it. It worked for her. Here she is again.

• 27:31Speaker 01

  I do notice that if I'm on socials or whatever, I'm like, ah, none of this looks like fun. Like, it really, nothing is popping. And also, you know what the main thing is? Is that my phone does not look like a bag of jelly beans anymore. Like, it's really striking when you turn it back on, when you turn the color on. You're like, ooh, candy, mm, candy store. And when you put it on grayscale, you're like, ow, that looks like I'm reading a newspaper.

• 27:57Speaker 08

  And Wendy, this is one of the things that, you know, I still have my phone on grayscale most of the time. I think it does help me too, which it kind of, it did make me think of a more sort of philosophical question about all this that I put to Leah. Is it a little sad that like we need to like put our worlds in black and white on our phones to get us to scroll less?

• 28:19Speaker 12

  I think, of course, somehow it can be sad. But on the other hand, it can be so much more beautiful to realize all the colors in your real life. And I think we are so concentrated on the life that we see in our phones. Let's say our YouTube friends and everyone we are following. Like, of course, they have a beautiful life and... The perfect flats, amazing holidays, great outfits. But what about your own life? What about your, your holiday, your friends, your dog?

• 28:55Speaker 10

  Yeah.

• 28:56Speaker 12

  The beautiful nature you're surrounded by. So I think if it helps us to realize, okay, we have that too, and we see all those colors in our life, we don't need color on our phone.

• 29:07Speaker 10

  Do you know, Meryl, I wonder if I had such a humdrum reaction to, oh, okay, it's just my phone on grayscale, because the other day I saw the most beautiful rainbow. It went over my house. I ran to one window, I saw the rainbow, and then I ran to the other side of, it's not a big house, but the other side, and the rainbow was coming over my house. And so to put my phone on grayscale, not a big deal, not a big.

• 29:39Speaker 08

  You already have all the colors of your life.

• 29:42Speaker 10

  That's right. But I'm sure that'll fade away, and then I'll just want to look at the, the cotton candy of my phone soon. So, okay, so I think my last question is, once people scroll less, do they actually feel better? Do they appreciate the rainbow in their life more?

• 30:01Speaker 08

  Well, the answer to this was sort of surprising. So there, there were a couple big trials that have found people's mental health gets a little better when they use their phones less. So like one study got hundreds of people and had some of them use their phones for an hour less every day, and it worked to like improve life satisfaction. But a lot of studies have been done on this, and some of them haven't found any benefit at all. Some have found like negative effects. And one review that I found that looked at three other reviews about like whether or not these interventions that reduce screen time affect well-being, they said that that was quote questionable.

• 30:44Speaker 10

  What?

• 30:46Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 30:47Wendy Zukerman?

  What do you make of that, of all this mix?

• 30:49Speaker 08

  Yeah, I, I think maybe for some people, it, they really don't need to be reducing their screen time to feel better. And maybe, you know, we shouldn't be beating ourselves up if, if we're having a hard time with this because there's no guarantee that cutting down on screen time is gonna like turn your life around. But on the other hand, like for me, I think it does help.

• 31:09Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah, yeah. And for all of our listeners who are saying that they really struggle with this and, and everyone online who's really been responding to the news of that court case that came down last week, saying, you know, yeah, this is, this is something that's maybe not the cause of all the sadness in my life, but I don't feel good after I kind of get sucked into my phone for a few hours.

• 31:34Speaker 08

  Yeah.

• 31:37Speaker 08

  But if this is a problem for you and you want to try changing something, Che Jong said that the first thing that you gotta do?

• 31:44Speaker 02

  You need to press the button. And that starting point is really hard.

• 31:49Speaker 08

  Yeah, I noticed that too. Like when I first started researching for this episode, there was something in me that was just like, ugh, I don't want to do any of this. Like, I just want to keep using my phone.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  Exactly. I think that's the hardest point.

• 32:03Wendy Zukerman?

  Wait, what does he mean? You need to press the button?

• 32:06Speaker 08

  I mean, for me, like when I started doing this research, I just like, I just felt like nothing was really gonna work. You know, I, I read about grayscale and the first time I heard of it, I was just like, that sounds kind of like dumb. I'm not gonna do that.

• 32:19Wendy Zukerman?

  Yeah, that's kind of where I'm at.

• 32:20Speaker 08

  But I think I was just resistant to doing anything.

• 32:22Wendy Zukerman?

  Really?

• 32:23Speaker 08

  Like I was just feeling kind of lazy. And so Che Jong was, is basically like, you know, just starting is often the hardest part of this. And for him, you know, this means just like putting his phone in a different room sometimes if he's working or going to bed. And then he has this one thing he does for when he's already in a scrolling session.

• 32:46Speaker 02

  I just physically, I talk to myself, hey, stop using and just start work or just do it.

• 32:55Speaker 08

  And then you're more likely to actually just like close your phone if you just tell yourself, hey.

• 32:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:59Speaker 08

  Stop.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 33:01Speaker 08

  Interesting.

• 33:02Speaker 02

  Physically speaking, it works for me, but I'm, I'm not sure if it works for others, but it does for me.

• 33:08Wendy Zukerman?

  I do find that when I am scrolling and don't want to be anymore.

• 33:15Speaker 10

  Really questioning whether I'm enjoying any of the content I've just seen does help. So as an example, so I was on a good run because you can be on a good run with social media where you're getting video after video that's actually quite delightful.

• 33:29Speaker 08

  Hmm.

• 33:30Speaker 10

  And then I stopped it when I saw this video of kids,

• 33:40Speaker 10

  plucky little kids wearing mustaches and saying, I love wearing a mustache. And I was like, what the fuck am I doing with my life?

• 33:51Speaker 08

  That was your dark moment. I thought it was going to be way worse than that.

• 33:55Speaker 10

  That was enough. That was enough. I was, no.

• 33:59Speaker 08

  Kids wearing mustaches. Okay.

• 34:00Speaker 10

  Phone in the bin.

• 34:01Speaker 08

  That was your wake up call.

• 34:04Speaker 10

  Exactly. That was it. Thanks, Meryl.

• 34:07Speaker 08

  Thanks, Wendy.

• 34:08Speaker 10

  That's Science vs.

• 34:12Speaker 10

  And if you try any of the stuff that we've talked about on this episode, you put your phone in grayscale, you download an app that has a little nudge, you watch a dumb video that you despise and then you throw the phone in the bin, please let us know on Instagram. We are at science underscore V S. I'm on TikTok at Wendy Zook and we love to hear from you.

• 34:37Speaker 10

  Meryl, how many citations are in this week's episode?

• 34:40Speaker 08

  Okay, we have 44 citations.

• 34:43Speaker 10

  Great, great, great.

• 34:43Speaker 08

  Which if you want to see those, you can go to the show notes and follow the links to the transcripts.

• 34:55Speaker 10

  This episode was produced by Meryl Horn with help from me, Wendy Zukerman, Rose Rimla, Michelle Dang and Akedi Foster Keys. I'm the executive producer. We're edited by Vlach Terrell. Fact checking by Erica Akiko Howard. Mix and sound design by Bobby Lord. Music written by Bobby Lord, Bumi Hidaka, So Wiley, Emma Munga and Peter Leonard. Thank you so much to all of the researchers that we spoke to, including Dr. Kai Lukoff, Haeon Sung Cho, Dr. Alex Holt, Dr. Yan Ol Rikson, Dr. Jay Olson.

• 35:25Wendy Zukerman?

  And Dr Noah Costello. A big thanks to Joseph Lavelle Wilson and the Zukerman family. Science Versus is a Spotify Studios original. Listen to us for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Just follow us and tap the bell if you want to get notifications when new episodes come out. I'm Wendy Zukerman. Back to you next week.