Apps to distract you from the endless cycle of doom

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, terrible news stories, influencer chatter, and whatever else the algorithm decided to throw at you.

Even though you probably don’t want to keep wasting your time and energy on this mind-numbing content, you do it again the next day.

Doomscrolling, the habit of spending large amounts of time consuming content on social media, has become incredibly widespread. A survey last year found that 64% of Americans say they are doomed to pass.

Researchers have warned that disruptive scrolling can negatively impact several aspects of your health, including your mental health and attention span. Spending long periods of time scrolling can lead to brain fatigue, difficulty concentrating, and disrupted sleep. If much of the content you consume is negative or stressful, it can leave you feeling frustrated, anxious, and emotionally drained.

It’s hard to break the cycle of destructive scrolling, but there are plenty of apps that provide engaging and productive content.

Of course, you can always read a book or go for a walk (we have a guide on how to stop destructive scrolling), but this list is for when you have a few spare minutes and want to do something on your phone that’s not limited to endless scrolling.

Radio Garden

If you still want to feel connected to the world without having to scroll through social media, check out Radio Garden. The app allows you to listen to more than 25,000 live radio stations from all over the world.

Once you open the app, you’ll see green dots marking cities and towns. Click on any point to listen to radio stations broadcasting from that location. You can add favorites or search for radio stations, countries and places.

Radio Garden is free, but it also offers an ad-free premium plan for $2.99 ​​per month. The app is available on both iOS and Android.

to lift

Elevate is an app designed to help improve focus, memory, reading, math skills, and other cognitive abilities. It includes more than 40 games to train different abilities you use in everyday life, from reading faster to comparing prices more efficiently.

You can track training periods and compare your brain’s performance over time.

The app offers a free version with access to three games per day, or a $39.99 annual subscription for unlimited access. It’s available on both iOS and Android.

Vocabulary

Vocabulary is an app that helps you learn new words every day. You can choose your difficulty level and choose categories that interest you, such as emotions, human body, business, and more. 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 for the number of 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’s available on iOS and Android.

Cetera

If you are a geography lover and are looking to test your knowledge or just want to improve your geography skills, Setra is the perfect app for you. The app includes more than 300 different games to test your map skills. You can test your knowledge about world flags; Discover oceans, seas and rivers. Explore mountain ranges and volcanoes around the world.

Setra allows you to track your progress across categories and see the leaderboards of the top scorers in each game.

The app is free and available on both iOS and Android.

New York Times Games

NYT Games offers many word, logic and number games that change every day to exercise your brain. You can play crosswords, try the word guessing game Wordle, piece together words with a common theme in Connections, see how many seven-letter words you can make in Spelling Bee, and more.

The app costs $5.99 per month for unlimited access and archives, but some games like Wordle, Strands, and Mini Crossword are available to play for free.

NYT Games is available on iOS and Android.

drops

If you want to learn a new language but want to try something other than Duolingo, Drops is a good option. The app uses visually engaging mini-games to help you build vocabulary and common phrases in more than 45 languages, with mini-lessons designed to be completed in about five minutes a day.

Drops is designed for both beginners and experts who want to grow their foreign language vocabulary.

The free version of the app offers five-minute lessons daily. You can get unlimited access and premium features for $11.99 per month or $79.99 per year. The app is available on both iOS and Android.