Seriously, Stop Opening Instagram When You Get Bored

So How Do You Take Back Control?

You will never win by fighting boredom. It’s not your enemy. The real problem is the reflex you’ve built over time — the one that pushes you to reject boredom and scroll instead.

That reflex is the real enemy. The goal here isn’t to become more disciplined, but to break the reflex (or at least make it harder).

Step 1: Break the Physical Motion

When you feel bored, you quickly grab your phone, unlock it, and start scrolling. Sometimes you don’t even realize you’re doing it—that’s how deep the reflex runs. And that’s the first part of the problem.

The idea is to interrupt this automatic gesture by keeping your phone as far away as possible or by making it harder to access. Here are a few practical tips you can use:

• Don’t keep your phone easily accessible (like in open pockets or loose pants pockets). Instead, use small bags or zipped pockets. The simple act of opening something and reaching in can add 15–20 seconds, which is often enough to become aware of what you’re about to do.

• Don’t use Face ID—use a passcode instead. Avoid unlocking your phone with a smile. Entering a code creates friction. You can even use more than four digits to make it more tedious. And don’t hesitate to choose numbers that are harder to reach with your thumb, which makes the action slightly more uncomfortable.

• When you’re at home, avoid leaving your phone on the table while you eat, next to you on the couch, or on your desk. Try to keep at least 1.5 meters of distance from it. Every time you want to use it, you’ll have to physically move, which can be discouraging.

This small effort is often enough to bring awareness: “Why am I picking this up?”

Step 3: Replace the Gesture

Just like with smokers, what’s often hard isn’t only the nicotine — it’s the gesture. Bringing a cigarette to the lips, inhaling, exhaling… it becomes deeply wired into daily life and part of the smoker’s identity.

For phone addicts, it’s very similar. That mechanical movement of the thumb, the swipe, the scroll — it’s often compulsive and difficult to control.

So here, the recommendation is the same as for someone trying to quit smoking: replace the gesture with another one to redirect your brain’s attention. For example:

• Drink a glass of water

• Walk for one minute

• Look out the window

• Write down an idea, doodle something

• Stretch

The goal is not to do something productive, but to give your reflex a different outlet.

©️ Art by Bonde.

Step 4: Add Software Friction

As we often say: when it comes to problematic phone use, you’re not the only one responsible. App designers also play their part. Everything you use today is monetized (yes, companies need to make money). So you either pay with your credit card — or with your time and attention.

Side note: if you’re interested in the business model of social media and the attention economy, we wrote a full article about it.

The idea here is to make these apps a little less easy to access and limit how much they take over your daily life. Use them — but in a controlled way.

To do this, we recommend installing the free app Jomo. It’s an app we’ve been developing for 4 years and continuously improving to adapt to the increasingly sneaky tactics of social media.

With Jomo, you’ll create a blocking rule that adds friction to your most addictive apps. These apps will be blocked by default, and you’ll have to take a break before using them. That break will require you to complete a small exercise and will be limited in time.

Here’s the quick Jomo tutorial:

1. Download Jomo from the App Store.

2. Open Jomo and go to Rules.

3. Tap the template “Use With Intention.”

4. In Block > add your social media apps to start.

5. In Active > set it to Always-On.

6. In Breaks > allow yourself only 4–5 breaks per day (that’s enough… even just 5 breaks of 15 minutes already adds up to 1h25 per day on those apps).

For the exercise required before a break, the best options are:

• Wait: you must wait before using the app, with an increasing delay.

• Intention: you must state why you want to use the app.

• Recopy: you must retype a long text that discourages you from using the app.

• Take a photo (AI): you must take a photo of a completed action to unlock the break (for example: dishes done, dishwasher emptied, laundry hung, etc.)

7. Then simply tap Schedule to start.

A Final Note

Now you understand why scrolling just to kill time isn’t such a good idea — and why it can explain that strange feeling of emptiness you sometimes experience.

But if there’s one thing to remember, it’s this: you should never be in a state of resistance, but in a state of change. You’re not fighting boredom or fighting your phone. You’re breaking the reflex so you can choose boredom instead.

Thanks so much for reading this far — it really means a lot. I wrote this article with my own brain and the help of the internet. I include sources when I remember, so you can keep exploring the topic.

If you’d like to try the Jomo app, you can use my referral code FG2HA9 to get 14 days of free access to the paid version.