Earn Your Screen Time With Exercise: How It Works

Here is why that structure makes sense, how Doomreps implements it, and where its limits are.

The problem it tries to solve

Most phone habits run on low friction and variable rewards (Ferster & Skinner, 1957). Habits are triggered by cues and then fire with little thought (Wood & Neal, 2007), and the built-in limits on your phone usually come with a one-tap “ignore” button. We cover why in Why Screen Time Limits Fail.

If the problem is easy access and no cost, one fix is to make access depend on something you value. That’s where exercise comes in.

Three mechanisms behind the idea

1. Temptation bundling

Milkman, Minson and Volpp (2014) tested temptation bundling by giving people access to captivating audiobooks only while they were at the gym. The bundled group visited the gym more than people without the restriction. The crucial piece is exclusivity: the treat is available only alongside the good behavior.

Earning screen time applies the same logic in reverse. The treat, your apps, is accessible only after the good behavior, movement. Instead of adding a reward to exercise, you attach exercise to a reward you already crave.

2. Precommitment

Ariely and Wertenbroch (2002) found that people often set deadlines for themselves to manage procrastination, and that self-imposed constraints improved performance, though not as well as ideal externally set ones. Locking your apps ahead of time is a self-imposed constraint. You make the decision when you’re calm, and your later, more tempted self has to deal with it.

Gollwitzer (1999) found that specific if-then plans can strongly improve follow-through. A lock gives you a built-in one: if I want to open this app, then I first earn the minutes.

3. A replacement behavior

A habit that’s removed leaves a gap. If boredom or stress is the cue, the urge doesn’t evaporate. Giving the urge a different outlet, here, movement, addresses the cause of the cue and not just the symptom.

That outlet also happens to be good for you. Singh and colleagues (2023) found, in an umbrella review, that physical activity substantially helps symptoms of depression, anxiety and distress, and Basso and Suzuki (2017) reviewed evidence that even a single bout of exercise can improve mood. See Exercise vs Scrolling for what that evidence does and doesn’t show.

How Doomreps implements it

Doomreps is an iPhone app built around those mechanisms. Here is how it works.

The lock

You choose the apps to lock, and Doomreps uses Apple Screen Time to lock them. The free plan locks one app. Pro, at $4.99 a week (with a 3-day trial) or $39.99 a year, lets you lock more.

Earning at home

At home you earn unlock minutes by playing a game controlled by your body. Push-ups or squats are tracked on your device using the front camera, and each rep flaps a pixel bird. Score 5 or more and you bank minutes. The tracking happens on-device.

Earning out and about

Away from home, or at the gym, earning is automatic:

• Steps earn 5 minutes per 1,000.
• Workouts from Apple Health earn 1 minute for every 2 minutes of workout.
• Together these can earn up to 45 minutes per day.

Spending

You spend your banked minutes to unlock your apps. When time’s up, the apps lock again.

Escape valves

A strict system without a way out gets abandoned, so Doomreps includes some:

• Can’t do reps now? You can borrow 15 minutes and repay it later.
• Emergency unlocks: 3 per week.

Extras for staying engaged

There’s a daily challenge with a global leaderboard, streaks, a weekly recap, a weekly challenge, and unlockable birds. These are there to keep the habit fun to repeat, since habits take time to settle. Lally and colleagues (2010) found a median of 66 days for habit automaticity, with wide variation, so anything that helps you keep going matters.

What a typical day might look like

• You wake up and your locked apps are, well, locked. You do a quick set of squats while the kettle boils and bank a few minutes.
• At lunch, a walk adds steps, which convert to minutes automatically.
• In the evening you spend some of what you’ve earned on the app you wanted, and when the minutes run out, it locks again.
• On a day you’re stuck on a train and can’t do reps, you borrow 15 minutes and repay it later.

The point is not to turn your phone into a punishment. It’s to put a little movement between you and the feed.

Honest limits

It’s worth being straight about what this approach can and can’t do.

• It’s a tool, not a cure. It changes your environment and your incentives. It doesn’t change your underlying reasons for scrolling, such as stress or loneliness. If your phone use is seriously affecting your life or mood, talk to a doctor or mental health professional.
• We can’t cite a trial of this exact setup. The design draws on well-studied mechanisms (bundling, precommitment, habit formation, the benefits of activity), but that is not the same as having proof that this particular app works for you. Don’t take it as clinically proven.
• You can still get around it if you really try. Any system you control can be bypassed by someone determined. The idea is to add enough friction and meaning that you usually don’t.
• It isn’t for everyone. If you can’t exercise because of a health condition or injury, the step and workout routes, borrowing time and emergency unlocks exist for a reason, and you should do only what’s safe for you.
• The benefits of cutting back are modest. Studies that limit social media, such as Hunt and colleagues (2018) with a small student sample and Allcott and colleagues (2020) with a four-week Facebook deactivation, report modest improvements in well-being. Set your expectations accordingly.

Who it suits

Earning screen time tends to suit people who:

• know they want to use their phone less but keep overriding simple limits,
• already want more movement in their day,
• respond well to a bit of game and structure.

If that’s you, pair the app with the broader plan in How to Break the Phone Habit. Structure helps most when it comes with a clear idea of what you’re replacing and why.

Try it

If you want to see how it feels, you can start with the free plan, which locks one app, and see whether the idea fits. Visit the home page to learn more about the app.

The bottom line

Making screen time something you earn is a simple restructuring: bundle the treat with movement, lock it in advance, give the urge a replacement and keep a fair way out. It won’t fix everything, but it moves some of the minutes you’d have lost into minutes that do you good.

Sources

• Ferster, C. B., & Skinner, B. F. (1957). Schedules of Reinforcement. Appleton-Century-Crofts.
• Wood, W., & Neal, D. T. (2007). A new look at habits and the habit–goal interface. Psychological Review, 114(4), 843–863.
• Milkman, K. L., Minson, J. A., & Volpp, K. G. M. (2014). Holding the Hunger Games hostage at the gym: An evaluation of temptation bundling. Management Science, 60(2), 283–299.
• Ariely, D., & Wertenbroch, K. (2002). Procrastination, deadlines, and performance: Self-control by precommitment. Psychological Science, 13(3), 219–224.
• Gollwitzer, P. M. (1999). Implementation intentions: Strong effects of simple plans. American Psychologist, 54(7), 493–503.
• Singh, B., et al. (2023). Effectiveness of physical activity interventions for improving depression, anxiety and distress: an overview of systematic reviews. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 57(18), 1203–1209.
• Basso, J. C., & Suzuki, W. A. (2017). The effects of acute exercise on mood, cognition, neurophysiology, and neurochemical pathways: A review. Brain Plasticity, 2(2), 127–152.
• Lally, P., van Jaarsveld, C. H. M., Potts, H. W. W., & Wardle, J. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology, 40(6), 998–1009. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.674
• Hunt, M. G., Marx, R., Lipson, C., & Young, J. (2018). No more FOMO: Limiting social media decreases loneliness and depression. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 37(10), 751–768. https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2018.37.10.751
• Allcott, H., Braghieri, L., Eichmeyer, S., & Gentzkow, M. (2020). The welfare effects of social media. American Economic Review, 110(3), 629–676.

This article is for general information and isn’t medical advice. If phone use is seriously affecting your life or mood, talk to a doctor or mental health professional.