Every day, the average American spends nearly 2.5 hours scrolling through social media. Cats, on the other hand, waste approximately no time on the internet. Which species generally appears less stressed and anxious?
Sure, this may not be the most scientific analysis about mental health and screen time, but it’s never a bad idea to try limiting the amount of idle time wasted in front of a computer or smartphone. And while there are plenty of apps and devices promising to reduce your social media consumption, their results are often uneven and many require costly subscription fees. Knowing this, a developer in Japan released a completely free Chrome browser extension designed to throttle your doomscrolling. Their secret weapon? Cat Gatekeeper.
“You know that cat who always shows up right when you’re trying to work? We’vee recreated that classic cat-owner experience in your browser,” the extension’s creators explain on its description page. “Let’s face it—humans are just servants to their cats. We are powerless against their charm…Let their adorableness heal you while you take a proper break.”
Cat Gatekeeper currently works with some of the most popular timewasters like Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. The timer is customizable, but its default setting allots a (generous) 60 minutes of social media frivolity. After overstepping your time limit, the screen is suddenly hijacked by a very hefty tabby who promptly plops down in front of your browser window for five minutes, preventing you from accessing your feed. After your respite, the digital feline presumably moves on to their next distraction, thus letting you return to posting. Pretty simple stuff.
However, there is some leeway to Cat Gatekeeper. The timer resets if you swap over to another website tab, and it’s exclusively designed for the preset social media platforms. If that sounds like an easy way to cheat the system—well, cats can’t do everything for us, can they?
Cat Gatekeeper looks trustworthy from a security standpoint, too. The free extension doesn’t feature ads, and promises that “no data is collected or transmitted externally.” An independent review on Reddit also provided Cat Gatekeeper’s source code, which only needs local storage permission to track its own settings.
At any rate, it’s worth giving it a shot. Cat Gatekeeper may not solve your social media dependency, but it might at least force you to break up with a brief “cat nap,” so to speak.
