You open your phone to check the time or a quick message. Next thing you know, an hour has passed and you’ve scrolled through endless celebrity drama, cat videos, horrible news stories, influencer rants, and whatever else the algorithm decided to throw at you.
Even though you probably don’t want to continue wasting your time and energy on this mind-numbing content, you start again the next day.
Doomscrolling, the habit of spending excessive time on content on social media, has become incredibly prevalent. A survey last year found that 64 percent of Americans say they are pessimistic.
Researchers have warned that doomscrolling can negatively affect several aspects of your well-being, including your mental health and attention span. Spending long periods of time scrolling can lead to brain fatigue, difficulty concentrating, and disrupted sleep. And if a lot of the content you consume is negative or stressful, it can leave you feeling discouraged, anxious, and emotionally exhausted.
It’s hard to break the cycle of doomscrolling, but there are plenty of apps that provide engaging and productive content.
Of course, you can always read a book or take a walk (we have a guide on how to stop doomscrolling), but this list is for when you have a few free minutes and want to do something on your phone that isn’t endless scrolling.
Bullfinch
Finch is a pet personal care app designed to help you adopt healthy habits. You care for an adorable virtual pet by achieving small daily goals, like drinking enough water, taking a walk, and practicing mindfulness. You can write about your day, perform a breathing exercise, or send good vibes to a friend by adding it to the app.
The more you take care of yourself, the more your pet thrives. The app offers a fun way to trade mindless scrolling for small moments of self-care.
Finch is available for free on iOS and Android.
Libby
Libby is a free reading app that connects you to your local public library’s digital collection of e-books, audiobooks, and magazines. All you need is a library card to borrow thousands of titles, making it easy to turn screen time into something productive.
You can explore a new book during a commute or while waiting at a doctor’s office, transforming times when your fingers might otherwise itch to scroll through reading opportunities.
Libby is available for free on iOS and Android.
Draw for guys
If you want to take a break from doomscrolling and try something creative, Dudel Draw might be a good app for you. Every day, the application offers you a random shape that you transform into a drawing. These everyday shapes vary from basic geometric shapes to more complex and abstract designs.
You can also get your friends involved in creativity with a fun competition comparing your different creations, which could provide a nice break from sending each other endless TikToks or Instagram Reels.
Dudel Draw is available for free on iOS.
Garden Radio
If you still want to feel connected to the world without scrolling through social media, you can check out Radio Garden. The app lets you listen to over 25,000 live radio stations from around the world.
Once you open the app, you will see green dots marking cities and towns. Tap any point to listen to radio stations broadcasting from that location. You can add favorites or search for radio stations, countries and locations.
Radio Garden is free, but it also offers an ad-free premium plan for $2.99 per month. The application is available on iOS and Android.
Raise
Elevate is an app designed to help improve concentration, memory, reading, math skills, and other cognitive abilities. It includes more than 40 games to train different skills you use in daily life, from reading faster to comparing prices more effectively.
You can track training sequences and compare your mind’s performance over time.
The app offers a free version with access to three games per day, or an annual subscription of $39.99 for unlimited access. It is available on iOS and Android.
Vocabulary
Vocabulary is an app that helps you learn new words every day. You can choose your difficulty level and choose the categories that interest you, like emotions, human body, business, etc. Each word comes with a definition, example sentences, and a guide on how to pronounce it.
The app also includes mini-games to help you review the words you’ve learned. You can set a goal of how many words you want to learn each week and create a regular learning routine.
Vocabulary offers a free trial, then costs $4.99 per month or $59.99 per year. It is available on iOS and Android.
Séterra
If you are a geography enthusiast and looking to test your knowledge or simply want to improve your geography skills, Seterra is perfect for you. The app offers over 300 different games to test your map skills. You can test your knowledge of world flags; discover the oceans, seas and rivers; and explore mountain ranges and volcanoes around the world.
Seterra allows you to track your progress in categories and view top scorer rankings for each match.
The app is free and available on iOS and Android.
New York Times Games
The NYT Games app offers several word, logic and number games that change every day to exercise your mind. You can play crosswords, try the Wordle guessing game, group words with a common theme in Connections, see how many words you can make from seven letters in Spelling Bee, and much more.
The app costs $5.99 per month for unlimited access and archives, but some games like Wordle, Strands, and Mini Crossword are available for free.
NYT Games is available on iOS and Android.
Drops
If you want to learn a new language but try something other than Duolingo, Drops is a good option. The app uses visually engaging mini-games to help you build vocabulary and common expressions in over 45 languages, with bite-sized lessons designed to be completed in around five minutes per day.
Drops is designed for both beginners and experts who want to develop their foreign language vocabulary.
The free version of the app offers five-minute lessons per day. You can get unlimited access and premium features for $11.99 per month or $79.99 per year. The application is available on iOS and Android.
This story was originally published in March 2026 and is regularly updated with new information.
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