Social media sucking me in 😱 What's your favorite app-blocking productivity app?

Posts like this are often leading to promoting a product or attempting to validate a need. If that’s the case here, no problem at all..
OTOH, if it’s a genuine challenge you’re facing then I doubt you’ll find a way to escape social by treating the symptoms of the cause of wanting to “scroll the day away”.
I’ve noticed my habit of twitter or IH (my only real social vices) completely disappears if I go to Bali for a couple of weeks or I’m in Melbourne for work etc. This seems to be a consistent experience and when I get back it’s usually a week or two before I build up to the same level of scrolling.
Once upon a time people would sit and stare out the window or sit around daydreaming or even reading a novel to achieve the same result - which is simply “escaping the humdrum of our day to day experience”.
So, I guess unless you’re able to find alternative ways to escape that you find acceptable or figure why you’re trying to escape in the first place then I’d suggest you’re probably going to be stuck in a cycle of scrolling and fighting the urge to scroll for quite some time(up until the point where you realise it’s not providing any value, just an escape hatch for your day-in-day-out life).
Another option is to just embrace it and indulge yourself until you’re so sick of it you do something else 🤷‍♂️
Sorry for the long rambling BS reply, but maybe it’s provided some escape for you so you can get back to the joy of making whatever you’re working on 🙂

I'm currently working with a founder who's building a better solution to help people focus during work sprints and reduce screen time :D

We've built a macOS app that would not just track your habits/how you use your time but actually guides you through the process of doing your habits and getting more work done.

If you're available sometime this week for 20 mins, I'd love to learn how the app that you currently use has failed to work for you, and also have your feedback on our solution :)

The problem is that you're trying to fix the issue by punishing yourself (blocking sites) and then feel guilty because you can always find a workaround.

Instead, why not rewarding yourself with positive reinforcement? And on top of that, use social accountability to help with this?

PS. Disclaimer, I built my app timeivy.com with this exact philosophy in mind, so I know the struggle first hand! :)

Some ideas about browsing social media too much, which are similar to Shaunau's:

A) You could make it harder to scroll through social media, like you describe. A low tech solution could be to move your phone or whatever other device you use to browse social media, so you can't see it and are less distracted by it.

B) Maybe you could modify your social media to be better. Maybe you could find some groups that are more related to what you want to do, or more useful to you, or less addicting. For a while I was trying to leave my least favorite group every day and join a new group every day, and that helped me to remove things that I didn't like. I actually found this post because in my news reader I currently have a filter for the word "favorite": I enjoy hearing about things that people like more than things that they don't.

C) You could make it easier to find other things to do. Do you have ideas about what you wish you were doing? How many ideas do you have? I find it's easier for me to actually do something else if I have lots of ideas. I write them down and I think I'm up to several hundred now, ranging from types of exercise to lots of specific coding tasks and even other forms of entertainment like various games. If watching TV makes you feel better than social media then that could be an improvement.

The app that I use to record my ideas also allows me to compare how good they are, and when I ask it for an idea it often suggests things I haven't thought of in a while or that I liked previously. You might like
github.com/mathjeff/ActivityRecommender ! I'm the developer, and feedback is welcome and super appreciated.

Good luck!

Been there! I've heard ClearLock is good, but I don't know of any that you actually can't get around. Interested to see what everyone else is using.