I love TikTok. From viral dances and human fairies frolicking through meadows to reality TV deep dives and ScienceTok, it’s my endless source of entertainment and distraction. But it’s also the toxic friend keeping me up past midnight, searching for the elusive, final dopamine hit that never comes. It’s clear I need boundaries, but setting them is easier said than done. It’s too easy to set the limit on my iPhone and then endlessly ask for 15 more minutes.
Clint Jarvis, co-founder and CEO of the screen time app Roots (available on iOS only), said he’s been battling phone addiction since he got his first flip phone in high school.
“Building an app in the screen-time space was the perfect intersection of passion and experience for me,” Jarvis said.
The app’s features
Roots is designed to gently guide you to offline activities while holding a firm boundary with your app time limits.
“Other screen time apps and built-in features are too easy to ignore or snooze. Roots creates an additional layer of friction that helps you stay accountable to yourself and your goals,” Jarvis said. These are some of the key features:
Set daily screen time limits. You can set specific limits for different apps, preventing endless scrolling.
Schedule downtime or “focus” periods. Want to focus on work without distractions? Roots lets you schedule screen-free periods.
Customize restrictions. It’s not one-size-fits-all; you can block social media during work hours or limit news apps before bedtime.
Reports and analytics. Roots provides usage patterns, helping you see where most of your screen time is going. You will see a personal Balance Score, like a sleep score for your phone usage.
Monk Mode. The feature that sets Roots apart is “Monk Mode,” which blocks apps and can’t be skipped—no sneaky loopholes or overrides.
Scroll replacements. When an app is blocked, Roots will suggest a “scroll replacement,” customized alternative activities you can do offline.
Getting started with Roots
Upon setting up the app, you will estimate your daily screen time and choose activities you’d rather be doing if you weren’t caught in a doomscrolling whirlpool—like reading or taking a walk. Then you choose the app or apps that you find most distracting and want to set a limit for. I, of course, selected TikTok and gave myself a daily limit of 30 minutes.
When Roots cut me off the first day, I thought, “Oh I’ll just tell it to never mind and give me back my TikTok.” I was like, “Where’s the override?” By now you should know there is none.
The next day, I burned through my TikTok allotment early in the morning and wondered what else would amuse me. A week in, I realized sticking to my limits had earned me some “cheat” days (I could do without the diet-culture talk, frankly) in case I ever felt like, “OMG I need TikTok all day.” So far, it’s been 20 days and I haven’t used any of my cheats.
Instead, this is how my TikTok scrolling goes: Before I even open the app, I ask myself if this is the best time to use my precious limited minutes. Sometimes it’s not. When I do decide to scroll, I’m evaluating every video to decide if it’s worth eating up some minutes. When the Roots screen pops up to tell me my scrolling is done, I ask myself, “Was that something that I really couldn’t tear myself away from? Will I care enough to follow up with that video tomorrow?” So far the answer is always no.
One con to the app is that I don’t love it judging/telling me how frequently I pick up my phone (every 13 minutes today) or how much of my time is spent on my phone (12 percent of my waking life). My pro solution is I don’t often open the app to take in those stats. It just works in the background to keep track and shut off the forbidden app.
I do like that Roots give you the option to not count certain apps toward your daily usage. I listen to podcasts or music apps for hours while driving and working. I don’t need those counted against my screen-time balance, so I deactivated them.
The bottom line
You can use Roots for free and get two app limits. To access Monk Mode, cheat day rewards, and more insights, you can try Roots Plus for $9.99/month or $59.99/year.
I had premium access for this trial, but I think the free mode would have been sufficient—I only wanted to limit one app, and I never used any cheat days. For a more complex digital detox, Roots Plus is probably a better bet. Compare the subscription investment to the time you will regain for offline activities.
Another bonus of paid subscription: you’ll receive a “Scroll Stopper,” which is like a silicone bracelet to wrap around your phone.
“The Scroll Stopper idea came from a friend sharing an article with me about tackling phone addiction. One tip suggested using a rubber band around your phone as a physical speed bump to slow scrolling. I tried it and was surprised by how effective it was alongside app-blocking with Roots,” Jarvis said. ”Not only does the Scroll Stopper remind me to think twice before I even pick up my phone, it also makes it pretty annoying to scroll through Instagram. My favorite way to use the Scroll Stopper is to wear it as a wristband throughout the day, and when I hit an app limit, or my phone downtime kicks in, I take off the wristband and put it around my phone.”
You can try this trick with a rubber band or a scrunchie. I put several Scroll Stoppers around my phone to make scrolling as annoying as possible. This is especially useful at bedtime—midnight scrolling is my downfall.
Roots solved my problem, and the free version is worth a try if you have one or two digital addictions inflating your screen time. If you are serious about converting screen time to offline time, the complex features of a premium subscription should save you hours and hours.