How to Stop Scrolling Before Bed: A Plan You Can Start Tonight

To stop scrolling before bed, pick a cut-off time 30 to 60 minutes before you want to be asleep, charge your phone where you can't reach it from bed, and decide in advance what you'll do instead. Add one written if-then rule for the moment you're most likely to give in. You can set all of it up tonight, and none of it relies on willpower at 11 pm.

Pick a cut-off time and count back from your alarm

Start from the time you have to get up, not from the time you usually drift off. The CDC says adults aged 18 to 60 need 7 or more hours of sleep a night, and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine advises powering down electronics at least 30 to 60 minutes before bed.

The maths is simple. If your alarm goes off at 7 am and you turn the light off at 11 pm, you have eight hours in bed. That puts your phone cut-off somewhere between 10 and 10:30 pm. Write the exact time down. "A bit earlier" is not a plan; "10:15" is.

Then let your iPhone remind you. On iOS 26, the Health app lets you set a sleep schedule with a wind down period that starts anywhere from 15 minutes to 3 hours before bedtime. The Sleep Focus turns on when wind down begins and can filter out notifications and calls, so the evening gets quieter at the same time every night without you having to remember. Set wind down to match your cut-off.

Charge your phone out of reach

This is the change that makes everything else easier. With the phone on the bedside table, every small moment (not sleepy yet, a thought about tomorrow, a glance at the time) becomes a reason to pick it up. With the phone across the room or outside the bedroom, picking it up means getting out of bed, and most nights you won't bother.

• Move the charger today. The hallway, the kitchen, a shelf by the door: somewhere you pass on the way to bed, so plugging in becomes part of going to bed.
• Sort out the alarm. A basic alarm clock removes the main excuse for keeping the phone close. If you'd rather keep using the phone, leave it on the far side of the room. Having to get up to switch it off helps in the morning too.
• Decide who can reach you. If you worry about missing an emergency, set the Sleep Focus to allow interruptions from the people who matter most. The phone can then stay out of reach without cutting you off.

Write one if-then rule

"I'll use my phone less at night" rarely survives the second evening, because it leaves the real decision for later, when you're tired. An if-then plan makes the decision in advance: when this happens, I do that. A meta-analysis of 94 tests found that these plans, which psychologists call implementation intentions, had a medium-to-large positive effect on reaching goals.

Write yours down. A few that work at bedtime:

• If it's 10:15 pm, then I plug the phone in by the door and leave it there.
• If I get into bed, then I pick up my book, not my phone.
• If I remember something for tomorrow, then I write it on the notepad by the bed.
• If I wake up in the night, then I leave the phone where it is and turn over.

Start with one rule: the one for the moment you usually slip. Stick it on a note next to the charger.

Plan what to do instead

The last half hour of the day is often the only quiet time you get, and the phone fills it because it's the easiest thing within reach. Take it away without a replacement and the urge just looks for another way back in. Have something ready that's easy to start and easy to stop:

• A paper book or magazine on the bedside table, where the phone used to be.
• Something to listen to with a sleep timer, started before you get into bed, so the screen stays off and out of reach.
• A notepad for tomorrow's to-do list, so worries have somewhere to go that isn't your inbox.
• Small things that close the day: laying out clothes, packing tomorrow's lunch, a shower, dimmer lights.

It doesn't have to be a perfect routine. The point is that at 10:15 pm, the easiest option is no longer the phone.

Make "five more minutes" cost something

The hard moment usually isn't the cut-off itself. It's 11:20 pm, when you've already bent the rule once and "five more minutes" costs nothing. The fix is to give those minutes a small price.

On iOS 26, Screen Time can do part of the job, with a catch: by default, its limits can be ignored once you reach them. For a firmer bedtime block, go to Settings › Screen Time › Downtime, tap Scheduled and set your hours, then turn on Block at Downtime, which requires a Screen Time passcode (if you set the passcode yourself, you'll also know how to get around it). On iOS 27, the closest equivalent is a Screen Time Schedule with an evening time window in which you choose which app categories stay available. Our guide on how to block apps on iPhone walks through both.

Playlock sits between "ignore" and "locked until morning". Set a bedtime schedule and the apps you scroll are covered from your cut-off time; the free version includes one schedule, which is all this needs. From then on, five more minutes means beating a quick mini-game first (some mental math, a memory sequence or a few targets to tap), and each extra round that day is harder than the last, up to three games in a row plus a short written reflection. At 11 pm, that small effort is often enough to make you ask whether you really want the next video.

If you slip

Some nights you'll scroll anyway. That's normal, and it doesn't undo the plan. The next morning, look at what happened rather than how long you scrolled: was the phone within reach, did the evening have no clear end, did a notification pull you back in? Change that one thing and try again that night.

If you want to know what late-night phone use actually does to sleep, and how strong the evidence is, read is using your phone before bed really that bad? And if you keep sleeping badly for weeks even with the phone out of the room, talk to a doctor: persistent sleep problems deserve a professional look.