The internet isn’t rotting your brain. Algorithm-driven doomscrolling is rotting your brain.
To be online in 2025 is to be miserable. A lot of that is the current state of the world, to be fair, but some of it is also the way we all engage with stuff online. We’ve all sat down to browse Instagram and looked up to realize two hours have passed that we barely remember. And it seems as if the feed on every social media site is filled with AI slop, advertisements, and weird garbage we don’t want to see.
But there is something you can do. The top line is that you must stop being a passive participant online and get better control over what comes across your various feeds. It’s possible. I’ve done it, and you can, too. I won’t lie; this will be work. You might have to install some software, learn some new tools, and even pay for some things.
I promise it’s worth it.
It’s not the algorithm, it’s you
Who do we blame when it’s 2 a.m. and we’re watching our 50th YouTube short in bed? The algorithm. What do we want to destroy when we realize our Instagram feed is full of tarot card readers and spellcasters? The algorithm. “It’s not my fault,” we say to ourselves. “It’s just what the algorithm is serving me.”
That’s cope, a cop-out, and it’s how Big Tech wins. Yes, many of these companies have powerful algorithms designed to keep you enchanted and scrolling. But the heart of the problem is you. In the age of social media and being extremely online, some of us have chosen to eat the swill that companies like Meta and Google serve up to us.
A recent video from the YouTuber Technology Connections identified the problem and named it. “I’m starting to see evidence that an increasing number of folks actually prefer to let a computer program decide what they will see when they log on, even when they know they have an alternative,” Technology Connections said in their video. “I’ve chosen to call it algorithmic complacency.”
The YouTube video does a great job of breaking down what we’re losing by letting algorithms decide what we see online. It also offers a great place to start breaking the cycle: YouTube. I have a friend who complains that YouTube is attempting to turn him into a right-wing ideologue. He watches a lot of news on the site and believes that the algorithm is warping his newsfeed to make him more conservative. He also doesn’t subscribe to any channels. And as such, he’s at the mercy of the algorithm. It doesn’t have to be this way.
YouTube is one of the easiest sites to fix. It allows anyone to see a pure feed of only the channels they’ve subscribed to. This is the link to it. If you use a bookmark or button to take you directly to YouTube, make it point to this URL instead of the YouTube homepage. That way whenever you go to the site, you’re just seeing the latest stuff from creators you already know you like.
No, this doesn’t help with discovering new stuff, but I’ll explain how to solve that issue at the end of this piece. What it does is make it so you see videos from creators you already know you like. It skips over the algorithm and takes you directly to the stuff you wanna see. It gives you control over your experience.
Use an RSS reader
This is an old and powerful technique and if you master it you can be free of many online problems.
Every morning I spend the first hour of my day reading the news and various niche websites. To do this, I pull up an RSS reader, like Feedly, and sort through a list of the latest material from all the websites I find interesting in chronological order. Instead of going to the homepage of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, or Wired, I open my RSS reader and see everything all in one list. I scan the headlines, read some things, discard others, save some things for later, and go about my day.
Almost everything has a default RSS feed. Government websites, substacks, newsletters, blogs, all generate RSS feeds. This is Gizmodo’s. Good RSS readers will let you plug in custom URLs so you can set up a feed to, say, track incoming packages from FedEx or UPS. Hell, you can even convert those YouTube subscriptions into an RSS feed.
There are a lot of different readers out there and you’ll have to play around with them to figure out what you like and what works for you. I use NewsBlur, which costs $36 a year but has a lot of features and customization options.
Ditch Google search
This one took me the longest to do. It’ll probably take you the longest to do. If you want search results that don’t suck, you’re going to have to pay for them. I know. I’m sorry.
A few weeks ago I was trying to find an old story of mine using Google search. No matter what combinations of keywords I typed in, the story would not appear. It wasn’t on the first page, it wasn’t on the second page, it wasn’t on the third page. I was awash in AI-generated answers to a question I hadn’t asked, landing pages for outlets I work at, and tangentially related news material.
In my frustration, I went to Kagi.com and bought a subscription to its search engine. The story I was looking for was the first result on the first page after the first search. You can try Kagi for free for 100 searches. It’s $5 for 500 searches after that and $10 a month for unlimited searches.
I resisted this one for a long time, but now that I’ve started using it I can’t go back. Google search is broken and Kagi works like magic.
Take control of social media or turn them into RSS feeds
This is another difficult one.
Social media platforms are another place where algorithmic-driven doomscrolling controls our lives. It’s on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, BlueSky, X, and Reddit where our brains go to die. But you have options. They all rely on control and a little labor upfront.
Like YouTube, many—though not all—social media platforms allow you to just see a feed of people you’re following or subscribed to. You can’t do this on the web-based version of Instagram, but you can on Android and iOS. If you must be on X, stick to the “following” tab and never touch the “for you” tab. BlueSky allows you to cultivate lists of accounts based on areas of interest. Reddit allows you to subscribe to what you want to see.
Every day you get on social media, do it with an active goal in mind. Pick a time and scroll through what’s been posted by the people you actually care about. Stick with what you’ve subscribed to. If you want to get really wild, you can use a number of programs to convert social media feeds into, you guessed it, RSS.
Here’s one for Instagram. The same company makes one for Facebook. Inoreader is a good RSS reader that will allow you to convert social media accounts and even LinkedIn posts into RSS feeds.
Put time limits on doomscrolling
Look, sometimes you just want to let your brain run free in a sea of mush. Sometimes you just want to flip your finger along the screen and let the endless Reddit threads and Instagram Reels flash before your eyes. As well as having a lovely narcotizing effect, this kind of scrolling does help you discover things you want to subscribe to that you may not have noticed otherwise.
But you need to set hard limits on the amount of time you scroll. I’m going to suggest 15 minutes knowing that many of you will set the upper limit of the scroll at 30 minutes or even an hour. How do you enforce this rule? A timer and not one that is on the device you’re using. You need to make something across the room beep when it’s time to put the phone down. You need your oven or microwave to yell at you when the timer goes off.
The point of the alarm is to get you off your feet and moving around. Just changing your physical position and focusing on something that isn’t your phone, laptop, tablet, or desktop will sometimes be enough to free you from the clutches of the algorithm. Here’s an adorable fox-shaped egg timer on Amazon for less than $10.
This fox can free you if only you’ll let him into your life.