Escaping the Infinite Scroll: We're Hooked on Social Media. This Diwali, Let's Clean Up

Every year before Diwali, we do the same thing.

We clean. Properly clean. Cupboards emptied, fans wiped, that one drawer of old wires finally sorted. The logic is old and beautiful: you clear out the clutter so Lakshmi has somewhere to arrive.

But there's one place almost nobody cleans before Diwali. It's in your pocket right now. And you've probably picked it up a few times since you started reading this.

Let's talk about the infinite scroll.

First, the numbers

I want to start with data, because "we're addicted to our phones" is easy to say and easy to ignore. Numbers are harder to ignore.

• About 5 hours a day. EY estimates that Indians spent roughly 1.1 trillion hours on smartphones in 2024, which works out to around five hours per person per day.

• Nearly 70% of that time went to social media, gaming and video.

• 500 million. That's roughly how many social media users India has, about 34% of the population, according to both DataReportal and the FICCI-EY media report.

• 880 billion hours. That's how long Indians spent on social media apps in 2025, according to FICCI-EY, up 10% from the year before.

• 46%. The share of content consumed on Instagram in India that was short video.

Five hours a day is nearly a third of your waking life. Over a year, it adds up to roughly 76 full days. More than two months, every year, spent looking at a glass rectangle.

I'm not saying all of that is wasted. Some of it is work, some is calls with family, some is learning. But a lot of it is something else. It's the scroll.

The design that never ends

Here's something most people don't know. The infinite scroll was invented.

In 2006, a designer named Aza Raskin created the idea of a page that simply keeps loading as you move down it. No "next page" button. No natural end. Before that, the internet had stopping points. You reached the bottom of a page and had to decide whether to go on.

The infinite scroll removed the decision. And Raskin himself has since said publicly that he regrets how it changed the way people use their time online.

Think about that. A bowl of popcorn has a bottom. A book has a last page. A film has credits. Your feed has none of those. It's designed so that there is never a natural moment to stop.

Why our brains fall for it

The feed works a bit like a slot machine. You pull (scroll), and sometimes you get something great: a funny reel, a message, a like. Sometimes you get nothing. Because you never know which one is coming, you keep pulling. Psychologists call this kind of unpredictable reward a variable reward, and it is one of the most powerful ways to build a habit.

It's also changing how long we can focus. The researcher Gloria Mark at the University of California, Irvine, has spent years measuring attention on screens. In her book Attention Span, she reports that people now stay on a single screen for an average of about 47 seconds before switching.

Forty-seven seconds. Less than a minute before our attention jumps somewhere else.

Does stepping away actually help?

This is where it gets interesting. In one of the largest experiments on this, published in the American Economic Review in 2020, researchers paid people to deactivate Facebook for four weeks.

What happened? The people who stepped away gained back roughly an hour a day, spent more time offline with friends and family, and reported small but real improvements in their wellbeing. And here's the bit I love: many of them kept using Facebook less even after the experiment ended. Once they'd stepped out, they didn't want to go all the way back in.

The lesson isn't "delete everything and move to the Himalayas". It's that a break shows you how much of the habit was the app, and how little of it was you.

The Diwali digital clean-up

So here's my proposal. This Diwali, do a digital safai alongside the real one. Same logic: clear the clutter so something better has room to arrive.

1. Check the damage

Open your phone's screen time settings and look at last week's number honestly. You can't clean what you haven't looked at.

2. Throw out what you don't use

Just like that drawer of old wires. Delete the apps you open out of boredom, not need. If deleting feels too scary, just log out. That one extra step of logging in is often enough to break the reflex.

3. Silence the doorbell

Notifications are people ringing your doorbell all day. Turn off everything that isn't from a real human you care about.

4. Unfollow the clutter

If an account makes you feel worse about your body, your bank balance or your life, unfollow it. Your feed is your home. Choose who gets to walk in.

5. Make phone-less zones

During puja. During dinner. When the family is lighting diyas. Put the phone in another room. You'll remember the moment better if you're not busy recording it.

6. Put friction back

Move social apps off your home screen. Set app timers. Bring back the "next page" button that the infinite scroll took away, in your own way.

My take

I'm not writing this from some perfect place. I run a pop culture platform. My job lives on these apps, and I spend more time on them than I'd like to admit.

But that's exactly why I think it matters. Social media isn't evil. It gave AltBollywood a voice. It connects families across cities and countries. The problem isn't the tool. It's the design that never lets you put it down.

So this Diwali, when you've cleaned every corner of the house, clean your phone too. Light the diya. Leave the reel. Look at the faces around you, not at the screen.

The feed will still be there tomorrow. This Diwali won't.

Need something better to do with that extra hour? Read why everything cool was cringe first, then go make something of your own. Or put on our list of the best Bollywood Diwali songs and actually dance.

Frequently asked questions

How much time do Indians spend on their phones?

EY estimates that Indians spent about 1.1 trillion hours on smartphones in 2024, roughly five hours per person per day, with nearly 70% of that on social media, gaming and video.

How many Indians use social media?

DataReportal and the FICCI-EY report both put India at about 500 million social media users, around 34% of the population.

Who invented the infinite scroll?

The designer Aza Raskin is widely credited with creating infinite scroll in 2006. He has since spoken publicly about regretting its effect on how much time people spend online.

Does taking a break from social media help?

A large 2020 study in the American Economic Review found that people who deactivated Facebook for four weeks spent about an hour a day more offline and reported small improvements in wellbeing.

How can I do a digital clean-up for Diwali?

Audit your screen time, delete or log out of the apps you open without thinking, turn off non-essential notifications, unfollow accounts that make you feel worse, and keep the phone out of the room during puja and family meals.

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Vishal Waghela is the Co-Founder of AltBollywood and a proud neo-generalist who refuses to pick a lane. Film, music, memes, fashion, AI, internet subcultures: if pop culture touches it, he's already three rabbit holes deep. He writes the way he lives online, loud, emotional, a little chaotic and always honest about why culture makes us feel things. Come argue with him on Instagram at @vishal.waghe1a.