I suggest blocking all platforms that provide short-form video and firmly deciding not to consume such content for a set period of time (e.g., 2 weeks). For me, this is the only way to stop once I fall back into the habit.

Doing this enabled me to spend more time developing and pursuing my own ideas, which is invigorating.

It's funny, I signed up for tiktok when I was curious about the hype, explored a bit for the science / history / educational content I normally watch on youtube and found there was almost nothing, and what little there was was of much lower quality.

I deleted my account after about 15m of looking, and hilariously enough, a tiktok researcher reached out, and actually paid me ~ $200 to understand why I bounced off the platform.

Short form video is disturbingly addictive.

I generally refuse to engage with it. A while back I started scrolling some YouTube shorts. Hours later my brain felt fried and… it was hours later? It was kind of shocking and frightening. It felt like I had no memory of the past three hours, like it was a true state of hypnosis.

Have you also run into the attention deficit effect of all these short forms of media? Overriding my brain's desire to put a book down after a couple pages is certainly not my favorite pastime.

The Brick has been helping me with phone overuse. getbrick.com (I have no association with the company)

On your laptop, route those sites to localhost.