Do porn blockers work?

The general principle is sound: adding friction between a cue and a behaviour reduces how often the behaviour happens. The direction is consistently found and the effects are moderate. Be straight about the evidence, though. It is graded low-certainty, comes mostly from short laboratory studies of food, and has never been compared head-to-head with plan-based approaches.

What is on firmer ground is the other half: intentions alone translate weakly into behaviour. Every second of friction between the cue and the act is a second in which the urge can crest and pass.

So set the blocker up, and expect to sometimes get past it. That is not a failure of the tool. A blocker's job is not to make the behaviour impossible; it is to make it a choice you notice yourself making instead of something that happened while you were scrolling.

Ranked by leverage, the blocker is not even the top item. Changing where devices live, so the phone charges in another room, does more than any software. Breaking the run-up, meaning the specific app or drift that reliably comes three steps before the act, is easier than blocking the act itself. And if it always happens after midnight, the intervention may be a sleep schedule.

Where this comes from

Read the full lesson: Environment design beats willpower →