Meryl Horn

So maybe we should go in the opposite direction.

Like what if all we need to do to stop scrolling is a little like reminder, like a gentle nudge, you know, something that dad just asks us like, are you sure you want to be doing this right now?

Uh-huh.

So, Chae Jung has also tried this approach.

Like, 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.

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

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

Oh yeah, I have always wondered, does it actually work?

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

And so, yeah, he, Jae-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.

And then he looked at what happened when people got this little pop-up window.

Did they decide not to go onto those blacklisted apps?

Just from getting that little box that just says, do you want to continue?

Yes or no?

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

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

I just automatically ignore it every single time.

So for me, it wasn't surprising that it doesn't work great.

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.