How a decades-old video game helped me beat doomscroll | games

CQuitting Doomscrolling has to be one of the hardest New Year’s resolutions to keep. Instinctively tapping the usual suspects on your phone’s home screen becomes a reflex, and vast amounts of money and user data have been used specifically to keep you within reach of the phone, infusing it into our work, leisure and social lives. You won’t be ashamed of me if you love your phone and have a healthy relationship with your apps, but I’ve found myself struggling lately.

This year, I’m trying to cut back on my screen time, sort of. I’m replacing the sleek rectangular shape of my smartphone with something a little more mysterious and nostalgic. In an attempt to break my bad habit, I turn off my instant update feeds and instead load up a Game Boy Advance game. I’ve been playing Pokémon FireRed, a remake of the first Pokémon games, which turns 30 years old this month. Even this updated version is more than two decades old.

Improving your digital well-being doesn’t have to mean cutting down on screen time completely. Not all monitors are created equal. I hope swapping one screen for another isn’t like Indiana Jones replacing the golden idol with a big bag of sand, only to be crushed by a booby-trapped rock in the same way.

I haven’t played Pokémon regularly since 2006’s Pokémon Diamond on the Nintendo DS, which was my introduction to the franchise. I dabbled in Pokémon Black on DS and Pokémon Legends: Arceus on Nintendo Switch, but neither stuck. I’ve convinced myself that once you’ve played one Pokemon game, you’ve pretty much played them all. But as Hollywood has profitably realized, 20 years is a long enough gap for something to feel fresh again.

My first steps into Pokemon were in the Sinnoh region, so the prospect of visiting the Kanto region from the first games and catching the original 151 Pokemon was exciting to me. But I couldn’t bring myself to start playing the original Red or Blue on my old Game Boy. Maybe I’m trying to embrace a more analog existence, but playing without color is my line in the sand.

FireRed’s positive effects on my life arrived unexpectedly quickly. It only took a few hours of exploration and encounters with wild Pokemon to make me forget about my phone. He was sitting right next to me, but he no longer called me like Gollum’s ring. My device usually finds its way into my hand during loading times and elaborate cutscenes of modern, narrative-heavy and beautiful PlayStation games.

Perhaps there’s some charm in FireRed’s freer style of story and older, less stimulating graphics. Perhaps those gaps left by implicit details in the design and dialogue leave room for my imagination – which my scrolling habit almost harbored. The world of Pokémon is peaceful and charming, despite the constant battles between trainers and harsh confrontations between gym leaders, and even these stakes are very low. No gaming experience has provided me with such tranquility since I first picked up Animal Crossing. Try as he might, even Tom Nook can’t escape reality.

Oddly enough, this adventure, although new to me, makes me feel nostalgic. I’ve never played with a team consisting solely of monsters from the original Pokédex, but somehow I’m transported back to the late ’90s when it seemed like the world had gone Poké crazy. I even named my competitor after one of my childhood best friends. After all these years, it’s very satisfying to finally fully embrace this canon.

Pokémon isn’t counterculture: it’s the most profitable video game series in history. Pokémon is gearing up to celebrate its 30th anniversary with a McDonald’s Happy Meal promotion, a new theme park, a partnership with the Natural History Museum and a Uniqlo line among many other things — so, if anything, it feels more zeitgeist and ubiquitous than it has in years. However, it seems rebellious to carry around an old Game Boy instead of my phone. It’s a bit wild to disconnect from the internet, just for a little while, to enjoy an old game. I’m able to enjoy technology on my own terms: I’m not forced to make microtransactions, I’m not dependent on the latest, much-needed firmware update, and I’m not endlessly instructed to do so Like, Comment, Subscribe for more.

Filling the natural breaks in my day with an old video game has done me a world of good, even if it’s just evolving my Psyduck while dinner’s in the oven or taking down a gym leader while waiting for a package. My phone screen time has already decreased by three hours per week since the beginning of this adventure. It helps me, in a small way, to stop comparing myself to others and start addressing some of the existential fears that death seems to encourage. Playing Pokémon FireRed in 2026 is completely nourishing, and wonderfully low-risk compared to a social media ecosystem where everything tries to seem equally relevant and important.

If you’re trying to combat overthinking, insecurity, or burnout by committing to the daunting task of using your phone less, take a quick trip to the Kanto region — or another offline gaming world.