Doomscroll Terminator

Inspiration

It’s currently early March, the second semester of the year. Students have been going through the cycles of classes, midterms, repeat... and they’re starting to lose steam. What do they begin doing? Scrolling on different social media platforms, neglecting their assignments. Doomscrolling contributes to the phenomenon of “brain rot”, which refers to the cognitive decline and mental exhaustion experienced by adolescents and young adults especially, due to overexposure to low-quality online content. The behaviour is driven by dopamine feedback loops, exacerbating the negative effects on memory, planning, and decision making, and making it hard to escape.

Based on our personal experiences, most mental wellness reminder apps and extensions are far too gentle, and therefore ineffective in stopping the pervasive act of doomscrolling. Therefore, we hope to make a chrome extension that bullies you (lovingly) out of doomscrolling.

What it does

This is a chrome extension that helps terminate your “doomscrolling” on popular social media websites such as Youtube, Instagram, Reddit, X, etc. Some of the features include 4 different levels of reminders that will appear on your page, roasting your doomscrolling behaviour after a certain amount of time scrolling.

Level 1 will cause a small notification with a cute blob, gently reminding you to stop your scrolling. Level 2 is a bit more reprimanding, with a large red pop-up and a slightly less cuter blob. Level 3 will start shrinking the items on your screen, until it becomes more difficult to see... and then for Level 4, a terrifying gremlin will jump onto your screen and will stay on your screen until you close your tab, force-ending your doomscrolling. We really tried to visualize the process of “brain rot” with the progression of the avatar, encouraging students to stop doomscrolling.

How we built it

We started by discussing what we wanted the general idea of the project to be. Once we decided on a chrome extension to stop doomscrolling, we came up with mock ups of how the we wanted the extension to look and function. Then we divided all the functionality we needed to implement into modular tasks so we could split up and work in sections. Some of us worked to implement the program and others worked to create all the assets we needed to use. With some grinding and teamwork, our doomscroll terminator was born :)

For the code, we used javascript to program most of the data structure and logic to keep track of how many times and how long users spent doomscrolling, as well as determining which stage/ notification should be used. We also used it to shrink the screen in stage 3.

We used html and css to create and style the overlays used for stage 1, 2 and 4 that block the screen. This also gave us access to buttons and text that would be applied over the social media site instead of altering it directly.

For the design, we brainstormed personas that would be the most effective in convincing the user to stop doomscrolling, and developed their character designs. The gremlin design was the most intricate, requiring extensive research in what would be the best character design to stop the doom scrolling.

Challenges we ran into

No one in the team had made a chrome extension before, and we didn’t have any experience in javascript, html or css. It was a steep learning curve at the beginning to figure out how to build one from scratch. Understanding how the background service worker and the content.js file interacts with each other and the current web-page took some time too. Luckily google chrome had some good resources for beginners explaining all the basics of how to build a chrome extension, and with the help of some mentors, we were able to quickly pick up the new languages and different syntax.

Another problem we faced is that our original shrink function applied to the entire web page, which interfered with the overlays used to block the screen. With some help from a mentor, we were able to find the reason for the error, and we were able to target the problem by shrinking a specific element on the page rather than the entire page.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Creating some humorous assets!
Creating a chrome extension that many students are in need of, just in time before finals season.
Learning how to use new development in a short period of time.

What we learned

Our programmers learned how to use Javascript! Our designers learned the art of designing characters that create a motivation for action within the user.

What's next for Doomscroll Terminator

Mobile app version

Although a lot of people use social media on their computers and web pages, the predominant toxic features of social media such as short videos and rewarding notifications (ex) likes and comments) exist on the mobile application version. Therefore, we would like to expand our product to a mobile application version in the future with other social media platforms that only exists as a mobile application.

Connect to other external applications (Google Calendar)

To make the users’ experience more personalized we would like to be able to create personalized reminders, through connecting to the user's Google Calendar application, therefore making the DoomScroll Terminator even more effective.

Add AI voice over

There were many elements that we wanted to add but unfortunately did not have the time to do so. For example, one of the elements we wanted to add was to include an AI voice over so that the avatars would not only produce a speech bubble, but also speak it out loud, causing the extension to have a greater and more effective reprimanding effect. We wanted to additionally modify each AI voice to match its avatar, for example having the Snape blob speak in a Snape voice.

Add more themes and roasts

Also, we hope to add more themes and creative roasting phrases in the future. For example, Canvas is a common application that universities use to regulate assignments and grading, and a Canvas themed pop-up will therefore help push students towards leaving doomscrolling behind and move on to completing the assignments that they may be putting off. To make the avatars even cuter, a cat/dog theme was also something that we were thinking of creating.