Does deleting social media help you quit porn?

It can help, because a feed is where many accounts of a bad night start. In the posts we read, a feed or scrolling comes up about twelve times as often as a porn site. Deleting works when it adds a step before the scrolling starts, and other kinds of friction do the same job.

How often does social media come up before a relapse?

Across 4,876 first-hand accounts from a recovery community, 211 mention a social feed or the act of scrolling and 17 name a porn site. That counts what people mention when they tell the story. It does not measure what causes what, and it comes from one community that skews young and male. The method and its four limits are in it usually starts on a feed.

Why do people reinstall the app after deleting it?

The app was filling a gap, and deleting it leaves the gap. The behaviour is attached to twenty empty minutes at 11pm, not to the icon. Remove one app and 11pm is still there, with something else already on the phone. Reinstalling the same app four times in a month follows from this.

Deleting does one job: it makes the first four minutes cost something. Any change that does that job counts.

What works instead of deleting social media?

Friction that stays in place:

• A time limit on whichever app you open first.
• The phone charging somewhere you have to stand up to reach.
• Logging out, so getting back in needs a password you have to fetch.

Each one adds a step, and a step buys a minute. For the minute after that, when the urge has already arrived, see the first sixty seconds of an urge.