Social Balance: A Social Media Timer and Game
A browser extension to help limit time on social media
What is Social Balance?
Social Balance is a Chrome and Firefox browser extension that acts as a social media timer. It uses gamification — giving you health points, a session time limit, and levels — to help you reduce doomscrolling and limit social media use while still allowing intentional access for marketing or social connection.
Who Is This For?
This is for anyone looking to limit or control their time on social media while still allowing its use. This includes:
- Entrepreneurs doing social marketing
- Content Creators who need to post but need help limiting scrolling
- Professionals who use social media for marketing or social connection
- Anyone who wants to reduce their doomscrolling and social media use but still needs or wants to use it intentionally
Why did I make this?
When I started my business and started to learn about marketing, I found myself spending too much time on social media and not enough time building. I've always enjoyed games so I thought, why not turn it into a game? So I gave myself some health, a time limit, and the ability to set my own goals. It has effectively helped me control my time on social media while still doing the marketing that I need to do. My hope is that it will help others as well.
What Does It Do?
Social Balance turns you into an adventurer in a sense. You need to set your goals, choose which site you want the extension to appear on, and give yourself a time limit. Once that is done, your timer starts and your goal is to level up by completing actions. If you continue to perform actions or just doom scroll on the site after the timer is done, you will take damage. If you do this 5 times, you "die" and you can't use the site for the rest of the day and your level will decrease by 1.
How Does It Work?
Setup is very easy. All you need to do is:
- Install the extension on Chrome or Firefox (links below)
- Choose which sites you want the extension to work on
- Set your goals for those sites (what actions you want to take to level up)
- Set a time limit for how long you want to be on the site before you start taking damage
Real Outcomes
Before I built this, I could easily spend 2 hours on social media without realizing it. Sometimes it was productive, but other times it was just doomscrolling. Since building and using this extension, I've been more intentional with not only my time but the actions I take. I don't post on social media easily but need to for work. This addon helps me stay in that middle ground. I hope it does the same for you!
Privacy and Permissions
This app doesn't collect any data at all. It is client side only and doesn't send any data or usage information anywhere. It only needs permissions to load on the enabled sites, the ability to store settings in storage, and it reads clicks and scrolls on enabled sites so it can take appropriate actions. Thats it. We prioritize privacy and this extension is no exception!
What Did I Learn?
Chrome extensions and programming in raw javascript are more complex than you really think. You have to worry about script permissions, what data you really need, etc. I also hadn't programmed in raw javascript for many years so it was a fun and good reintroduction to doing so while learning about web extensions.
Try It Out
If you think this could be helpful to you, give it a try! It's free and available on both the Chrome Web Store and Firefox Add-Ons store. If you do install and use it, I'd love to hear from you so please be sure to get in contact!