The Algorithm is a Casino: Calculate Your Doomscroll Tax

“Digital detox” advice is a scam.

If you search for ways to stop doomscrolling, you will be hit with a barrage of useless, sanitized productivity hacks: “Turn your phone to grayscale!” “Set a 15-minute app timer!” “Put your phone in another room!”

This advice fails because it fundamentally misunderstands the enemy. You are not fighting a bad habit; you are fighting a trillion-dollar infrastructure. Social media feeds are not chronological updates from your friends. They are hyper-optimized, A/B-tested slot machines designed by thousands of engineers armed with biometric data. Their singular, ruthless objective is to extract your attention and convert it into ad revenue.

To beat a casino, you don’t change the color of the slot machine. You look at exactly how much money is missing from your wallet.

We built the Doomscroll Tax Calculator to strip away the abstraction and show you the exact financial invoice the algorithm is handing you every year.

The Agitation: Why Screen Time Alerts Don’t Work

Apple and Google introduced “Screen Time” and “Digital Wellbeing” alerts years ago, and yet, average daily screen time continues to climb. Why? Because the metrics they use are deliberately abstract.

When your phone gleefully informs you that your screen time is “up 12% this week, for an average of 4 hours a day,” your brain doesn’t know how to process that. The tech giants know this. In a casino, they force you to use plastic chips instead of cash so you lose track of the value. On your phone, they use “minutes” instead of “dollars.”

If you spend an hour swiping through algorithmic slop, you don’t feel the loss. But if the app charged your bank account $45 every time you opened it, you would delete it immediately.

The only way to break the psychological grip of a variable-ratio reward system (the exact psychological mechanism used in both slot machines and TikTok) is to convert the abstract time back into cold, hard currency.

The Weapon: The Doomscroll Tax

We didn’t build this calculator to guilt you. Guilt is an emotion, and algorithms don’t care about your feelings. We built this to do the brutal math.

The secret sauce of our calculator isn’t just tracking the minutes—it’s the Friction Multiplier (0–1). Not all screen time is inherently evil. Sometimes you are actually researching a project, learning a skill, or genuinely enjoying a video. “Friction” represents the pure, unadulterated waste. It is a measurement of cognitive dissonance—the time spent swiping with dead eyes when you actively want to stop but can’t pull away.

• 0.0 Friction: Pure utility. Zero waste.
• 0.6 Friction: You found a few cool things, but mostly you just wasted an hour.
• 0.9 Friction: The algorithmic paralysis. You hated every second of it, but the app wouldn’t let you leave.

Plug in your hourly rate and your friction multiplier. Look at the “Yearly Burn.” That is the billable time the platform has successfully stolen from you to inflate their Average Revenue Per User (ARPU).

The Blueprint: Exposing the Math

At Vibeaxis, we open-source our anti-slop tools because we want you to build your own escape hatches. The logic behind the Doomscroll Tax is incredibly simple. It relies on raw vanilla JavaScript with zero dependencies, zero external libraries, and zero tracking scripts.

Drop this into your own site to scare your own users.

JavaScript

// The core burn calculation. No frameworks, no slop.
function calculateDoomTax(minutes, daysPerMonth, hourlyRate, friction) {
  // Clamp friction between 0 (no waste) and 1 (pure waste)
  const f = Math.max(0, Math.min(1, friction));
  
  // Calculate the raw hours lost to the void
  const hoursPerMonth = (minutes / 60) * daysPerMonth * f;
  const hoursPerYear = (minutes / 60) * 365 * f;
  
  // Convert time back into financial damage
  const burnMonth = hoursPerMonth * hourlyRate;
  const burnYear = burnMonth * 12;
  
  // Translate to a tangible metric: standard 8-hour workdays
  const workdaysLost = hoursPerYear / 8;

  return {
    monthlyBurn: burnMonth.toFixed(2),
    yearlyBurn: burnYear.toFixed(2),
    workdaysLost: workdaysLost.toFixed(1)
  };
}

This math is entirely localized. It runs on your CPU, calculates the damage, and leaves no footprint. It is the exact opposite of the software it is designed to critique.

The Studio Philosophy: Finite Games

We built this tool because we despise the modern attention economy, and that hatred actively dictates how we build our software.

Most AAA game studios have entirely adopted the social media model. They no longer build games; they build live-service ecosystems. They utilize infinite battle passes, daily login rewards, and FOMO-driven seasonal content. They don’t want you to actually beat the game; they want you to live inside of it so they can keep serving you microtransactions. It is doomscrolling with better graphics and a $70 entry fee.

At Vibeaxis, we build finite games.

We believe a game should have a definitive end. You buy it, you engage with the mechanics, you master the system, and then the game ends. You close the tab and you go outside. We don’t want your infinite engagement; we want your focused attention for a set amount of time.

If you are tired of being manipulated by infinite algorithmic loops, go play Divine Orbit. There is no season pass. There are no daily login bonuses. Just you, orbital mechanics, and a 144Hz space fleet.

Or, if you want to experience the exact opposite of a relaxing scroll, try to survive the pure, math-driven anxiety of EJECT! Terminal Drop Simulator.

Play the game. Beat the game. Then turn off the screen. Stop paying the tax.