How to Make Your Social Feed Boring, so That You Don't Get Lost Scrolling!
Ever noticed how a “quick” five-minute scroll on LinkedIn, YouTube, or Instagram turns into an hour lost to the rabbit hole?
Here are some effective ways by which you can create a short barrier between checking your feed and engaging with the feed.
Keep your social feeds blank. No suggestions mean no starting point for distractions. Here are a few tools
News Feed Eradicator
Platforms: Chrome, Firefox.
Features: Replaces social feeds with blank or quotes. It also removes distracting sections like YouTube’s "similar videos" sidebar.
BeTimeFul
Platforms: Chrome, Safari, Android app, ios app
Features: allows timed social media breaks (e.g., 1, 5, or 10 minutes). Removes the sidebar too.
Customise your feed to become boring. The algorithm may take time to adjust, so consistency in marking ‘not interested’ or ‘unfollow’ is key.
Tiktok
While watching a video, tap and hold (long-press) on the video until a menu appears.
Select “Not Interested” from the options.
Optionally, you may be prompted to specify why - select “Not relevant”
YouTube
On the Home or Recommended feed, click the three dots (⋮) next to a video. Select “Not interested” or “Don’t recommend channel”.
You can also select “Tell us why” to further refine what you don’t want to see.
Use “Don’t recommend channel” to mute all its content from your feed.
Click the three dots (⋮) on the top right of any post. Select “I don’t want to see this” to hide it.
Unfollow connections or mute specific people or companies to reduce their posts in your feed.
Use “Report this post” for spammy or irrelevant content to further clean your feed.
On Explore or Reels, tap the three dots (⋮) on a post. Select “Not Interested” to see less of that type of content.
Go to an account’s profile, tap “Following,” then “Mute,” and choose to mute posts, stories, or both.
Tap the three dots on an ad and select “Hide Ad” or “Not relevant.”
Tap the three lines (menu) in the Instagram app. Go to “Content Preferences.” Select “Hidden words and phrases.” Add “#” as a muted word to block most posts with hashtags (which covers a lot of Explore and Reel content). For extra filtering, add common words like “and,” “or,” “post,” “when,” etc.
Toggle “Snooze suggested feed for 30 days” to stop suggested Reels from showing up in your main feed.
Click the three dots (⋮) on the top right of a post. Select “Hide post” to see fewer posts like it.
“Snooze” a person/page/group for 30 days or “Unfollow” to stop seeing their posts without unfriending.
Tap the three dots on an ad and choose “Hide ad” or “Why am I seeing this?” to adjust preferences.
Filter out specific words, topics, or categories (e.g., politics, sports, spoilers), so your feed only shows less engaging content.
1. Poper Blocker
Platforms: Chrome, Edge, iOS
Blocks pop-ups and offers advanced social media content filtering, allowing you to hide posts containing specific keywords
2. uBlock Origin
Platforms: Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Opera (not mobile).
A free, open-source ad blocker that also allows custom filters for keywords, elements, and URLs. With some configuration, you can hide posts or sections containing certain words or topics.
If you want to build better digital habits along with a community, join the TBYT Slack community by filling out the intake form.