Strategies for controlling my Reels usage
How I balance touching grass and staying extremely online
I, like many in my generation, face a constant struggle against the draw of Instagram Reels and TikTok. I’m not winning the war - in fact, every year I lose a bit more - but I think that I’ve picked up some techniques that are helpful.
If you take nothing else from this post, charge your phone at least 5 feet from your bed.
Why not just delete TikTok and Reels entirely?
I pride myself on being very plugged in to Gen Z culture; I’m what many would call “extremely online” and “needs to touch grass”.
I actually did spend about a month earlier this year without using Reels or TikTok entirely, by setting an incredibly strict limit on them via Time Limit. During that month, I completely missed the phenomenon of Italian Brainrot.
Maybe when I’m in my early 30s, it will feel OK for me to not know the new Gen Alpha slang, but as long as I’m in my 20s, and my brother is going through college, I want to stay in touch with the youths. It feels good for me to be aware of all of the inside jokes and memes; it makes me feel like part of a larger community.
So I can’t totally stop using these apps. In some ways, I feel like someone with an eating disorder, stuck with an addiction to something that I can’t give up entirely but have to still control. I’ve had to come up with moderating strategies, rather than giving up Reels cold turkey.
Strategy #1: Physical Separation
The first 30 to 60 minutes of my day used to be spent in bed, half-awake, scrolling on my phone.
That’s an enormous waste of time - one hour a day is seven hours per week, or 30 hours per month, or 365 hours per year. I do a Sunday crossword in about an hour, so I could have done all of the Sunday crosswords seven times over instead of scrolling.
How did I fix this? I moved my phone far enough away from my bed that I have to stand up to reach it.
My phone and charger now live on a shelf 5 feet away from my bed. That’s close enough that I can very quickly cancel the alarm when it goes off, but far enough that I have to be standing to do so.
Why does this work?
When you’re already in bed and have your phone, the inertia to stay in bed and scroll is very hard to fight. When you’re already standing up, it’s very easy to not lie back down. You’re making the good decision by default.
As a bonus, you can’t snooze your alarm with this method. This is great because snoozing mainly wastes time — it makes you no more rested than if you had just gotten up.
This is my most effective strategy. I can consistently follow it (I just don’t leave a phone charger next to the bed), and it works reliably, due to physics.
Strategy #2: Have something else to do
I read a lot. My links posts capture probably 2% of all of the blogpost content that I read in a month, and that doesn’t count hours of scrolling through Reddit comments or Twitter. Any time I’m on my phone, I’m usually reading something.
I like reading short-form content, but often I run out of Hacker News, having read all relevant articles in the top 300 entries. Having something that’s not social media that’s still compelling to read on my phone gives me a good alternative to using Reels. I make sure to always keep something good on my Kindle app, which is permanently pinned to my home bar.
Rules that I’ve adopted:
I can read anything I want if it’s interesting enough.
If I don’t find the book interesting - if, for example, I voluntarily close the Kindle app a lot to go look at other social media - I’ll abandon it halfway through.
I always need to keep at least one book purchased and ready to read.
This rule doesn’t make me spend less time on my phone. If I’m reading a really good book, I will just scroll through the book for hours. But at least I’m not on Reels.
Strategy #3: Grayscale
I keep my phone in grayscale most of the time.
You can do this on an iPhone by going to Settings > Accessibility > Display & Text Size > Color Filters and turning on Grayscale. If you do this, I also recommend adding Accessibility Settings to your Control Panel so you can rapidly toggle grayscale if you need color for whatever reason temporarily.
Color is a powerful dopamine trigger. If my phone has color, I’ll catch myself mindlessly scrolling Reddit all the time in a way that just doesn’t happen in grayscale. All of the social media apps on your phone are designed with just enough enticing bright colors to keep you scrolling regardless of the content that they present.
Caution: I was literally addicted to the dopamine I got from bright colors. I first turned on grayscale on New Years Eve 2024, and I felt withdrawal symptoms on all of January 1st. I was irritable, grumpy, and agitated all day, and I couldn’t enjoy a day off with my friends. After the first week, it gets better.
Strategy #4: Drugs
Specifically melatonin.
Gwern makes a great point about melatonin’s power as a way to add cost to staying up at night late on your phone:
Melatonin allows us a different way of raising the cost, a physiological & self-enforcing way. Half an hour before we plan to go to sleep, we take a pill. The procrastinating effect will not work - half an hour is so far away that our decision-making process & willpower are undistorted and can make the right decision (viz. following the schedule). When the half-hour is up, the melatonin has begun to make us sleepy. Staying awake ceases to be free, to be the default option; now it is costly to fight the melatonin and remain awake.
Normally, I won’t allow myself to use my phone in bed when I’m preparing to go to sleep. Instead, I put myself to sleep by trying to get through as much of the Talmud as I can as part of Daf Yomi; this is similar to how some people read Supreme Court opinions as a sleep aid.
However, there are days when I just don’t have the willpower to put my phone down before climbing into bed. If that’s the case, I have an escape hatch: I’m allowed to use my phone in bed if I take a melatonin.
When I inevitably get sleepy about 20-30 minutes into using my phone, that physiological reminder is usually enough for me to put the phone down and actually go to sleep. Unfortunately, I don’t always remember to charge my phone at that point, since my charger is across the room.
Strategy #5: Time Limit (beware)
I keep a 15 minute Time Limit on TikTok and Reels.
This is one of the most common recommendations for controlling scroll usage, but I’ve found it to not work as well.
It’s way too easy to bypass, with just two taps. Worse, while bypassing the Time Limit, you’re given the option to turn it off for the rest of the day, which is a horrible idea. There are products like Brick that are supposed to help with this but I haven’t tried them.
Instagram has a popular messaging app bundled with Reels, and you can’t time limit only one of those! So if you want to message your friends on Instagram, you have to also give yourself access to Reels.
This is, of course, an insanely destructive dark pattern.
Things I’ve tried that don’t work for me
Taking Instagram and TikTok off my home screen doesn’t really affect my usage of them. I’m so used to searching for apps on my phone now via the search bar that I have a reflex to type “insta-” and click the first result.
However, if I’ve already used up all of my Time Limit on Instagram, my phone won’t surface Instagram as the first result. Seeing the Settings app pop up (because there are Instagram settings) is sometimes enough for me to break free of the Reels and put my phone down.
The web version of Instagram is bad enough that deleting the app off my phone would effectively constitute a cold-turkey habit breaking event, and TikTok web doesn’t even work for me at all. I still want to use the apps a little bit, just not a lot.
One day, I’ll look in the mirror and notice some gray hairs, or attend my own 30th birthday party, and I’ll finally accept becoming uncool and out of touch. Until then, I will carry on the fight.