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Doomscrolling is the easiest way to lose track of time and lose your day’s productivity in a zombie-fied state. The Steppin app puts control back in your hands—or even, your feet—making you earn your time to unblock phone apps by walking first.
Why I Chose to Use the Steppin App
As with many Millennials or Gen Zers—and let’s be honest, even our parents’ generations too—I find myself wasting the day away scrolling on my phone. Hour after hour. And it often feels like I don’t have enough time in the day to complete the real tasks on my to-do list.
As I work from home, I can have my phone right by me at all hours of the day. And it’s tough to put it down once I’ve picked it up. I’ve tried countless other techniques to try to reduce my screen time, but I always find excuses to use my phone, and then, before I know it, four hours of scrolling have gone by.
With an average of over eight hours per day of screen time—which includes all types of apps and domains, not just social media—it was getting problematic for me. But downloading Steppin was a technique I hadn’t yet tried.
I figured, why not try something new? It couldn’t make my phone addiction any worse.
Download: Steppin for iOS (Free)
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I Used Steppin For A Week—What I Learned
I first downloaded Steppin late on a Sunday night. I’d already been making changes to my life to encourage less phone use, more outdoor time, and, overall, a more productive day, including avoiding my inbox before midday. Finding Steppin allowed me to combine all these items together, in hopes that I can reduce my phone screen time while being more active and ultimately productive with my time.
Since I’ve already been trying to get outdoors more in the day time, Steppin came at the perfect time. I always intend not to use my phone in the morning anyway, so scheduling a midday walk most days works for me, as it builds the minutes of available screen time after the time I allow myself to use my phone.
I work as a pet-sitter and dog-walker, so when I have clients to walk, I easily build up screen time earlier in the day than when I’m at home on a regular day. This is both a benefit and a curse, as it’s beneficial to get outside and walk earlier in the day, but then the temptation of knowing I have available screen time niggles in the back of my head earlier on than if I knew I had none.
When first installing Steppin, I set my preferences at the time. I went for the default options, which included a midnight reset, daily accumulation of steps, and 100 meters of walking, resulting in one minute of screen time.
I Take My Phone With Me More
Usually, I try to leave my phone in my bedroom when I start my morning routine. I never take my phone to the bathroom unless it’s already in my pocket. I don’t pick my phone up when walking to the kitchen or from room to room in my house. Often, I try to leave my phone by my bed while I work in my office for the day, in a bid to avoid more distractions.
Since downloading Steppin, I’ve found I take my phone absolutely everywhere I go in hopes I can earn a minute or two of time from gaining steps from the mindless walking around my house. This goes against the purpose of downloading Steppin, really. But maybe that’s how bad my phone addiction has gotten.
On days when I know I can’t get out for a walk until the evening, it makes me nervous that I am entirely blocked from social media. I don’t have a large house, but I have found myself making reasons to walk downstairs to the kitchen or from bedroom to office at midday just in hopes I can reach the first 100m of walking and gain one minute of time, in case I have an emergency to use my apps.
This is nonsensical, of course, and over the course of a week using Steppin, I found myself doing this less. I make intentional walks part of my daily routine as a result, benefitting my time management and my health.
Over time, using Steppin has made me less reliant on my phone, even if initially it made me more obsessed with it.
Customization Isn’t Super Flexible After Setting Up
Although the preferences in Steppin are customizable and actually quite flexible, once you’ve set them at the start, it becomes less flexible to change them. This is due to the streak-based system in place. If you change your preferences later, you lose your streak.
In my self-imposed rules of “good” or “bad” apps, messaging apps are “good” and scrolling apps are “bad.” I want to keep my contact availability for work, friends and family, or organizations I’m in, and not make myself feel like I’ve forced social isolation by removing access to messaging apps.
There’s no differentiation between a domain and an app block in Steppin, so despite the fact I tried to keep my Facebook Messenger app unblocked but blocked the Facebook domain—since I don’t have the app installed anyway—I found it frustrating that the Messenger app was equally blocked. This could probably be avoided if I installed Facebook so I could block the app rather than the domain—but that seems counterproductive to me.
The time resets at midnight, so any steps I’ve earned throughout the day don’t matter once I’ve woken up. Largely, this is a great system, as it means there’s nothing to entice me to switch off my phone alarm and immediately start scrolling.
I meditate after waking up each morning by using YouTube videos. I initially wanted to block YouTube as it encourages mindless scrolling or watching long videos with less intention, but that meant I didn’t have any steps built up when I woke in the morning and couldn’t access my meditation videos.
So I had to unblock YouTube—I have found myself doomscrolling or watching longform videos throughout the day, since I can’t block YouTube.
I would love a setting to choose specific times for the apps to be blocked or unblocked. I know if I didn’t reset at midnight and gave myself access to apps until after I’d woken up, I would end up doomscrolling in that extra time. I have no self-control.
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Once I’ve built up time on Steppin, I’ve found that I’m not doomscrolling nearly as much as I would before. Previously, I never even took notice of the time I’d scroll for, and I’d often spend up to two hours endlessly scrolling in a zombie state when I was “just checking my messages for five minutes.”
Unlike the iPhone Screen Time function, which I’ve had set up for years, Steppin has more options for how much time you can unblock the apps for. The iPhone Screen Time options are just for one minute (which only offers that option once per day, per app), 15 minutes, or switching off for the rest of the day.
Steppin offers minute-by-minute options up until the current maximum time you’ve earned from walking. Since downloading Steppin, the idea of actively choosing 30+ minutes has horrified me. I mostly opt for just two minutes—the default option—or even one minute.
These quick times let me use social media with intention, and I’ve been surprised by how long two minutes really feels in these cases. You can get a lot done in two minutes when you’re not zombified.
The Guilt Is Real
Steppin works on a streak-based system, similarly to Duolingo—another of my daily habits. Gamified productivity works successfully because we, as humans, don’t like the guilt of failure. Even when it’s something as mundane as using your phone.
The one time I felt like I needed to use a social media app before I’d earned any time, trying to choose the option to bypass the block prompted a pop-up saying I’d lose my streak if I unblocked. That immediately made me feel bad, and I realized my reasoning for using the app wasn’t that important. It could wait a few hours until I’d got some steps in later.
The streak helps a lot, but even the process of unblocking an app through Steppin makes you question how much you need to use the app or your phone to begin with. Unlike the iPhone Screen Time notification, which is a one-click system, Steppin is a multi-step process. This puts more intention and interruption in your decision to use one of your blocked apps.
When you first install Steppin, you set your preferences for which apps to block. Once your streak has started, changing any preferences will break your streak. This adds an extra element of guilt because it makes me question how much I really need to use a certain app or not. I kept my streak going rather than breaking it for extra use.
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Steppin Has Improved My Life
Of the many techniques I’ve tried over the years to lessen my screen time or to avoid doomscrolling, installing the Steppin app has been the most successful.
Steppin has taught me more self-control and time management about doomscrolling. I use my blocked apps or domains—Instagram, Reddit, BBC News, LinkedIn, and Facebook—with intention instead of mindlessly scrolling.
I don’t even use many of my earned minutes, as I choose just two minutes at a time, and with it being on my conscience, I find I don’t want to scroll endlessly anymore.
The biggest surprise of using Steppin is learning how much time I now have in the day. I get my work done faster, often even finishing before my self-imposed no-inbox-before-midday rule is relevant, and then I go out for a walk in the middle of the day. All this extra time to be more productive in the afternoons and evenings makes me not want to doomscroll. and I’d rather read a book, do some crafts, or have a conversation with someone. I don’t miss doomscrolling and my life is much better off this way.
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