You didn't decide to scroll for forty minutes.
You just never encountered a reason to stop. That is by design.
You never hit a clean stopping point
The feed never tells you you're done
A book page ends. A show rolls credits. A bottomless feed politely removes the exit sign and lets your thumb become management.
Stopping cues matter
Books end chapters. Shows roll credits.
Newspapers run out of page. The brain relies on those ending cues to pause and ask whether it still wants more. Infinite scroll deletes that pause.
Aza Raskin invented infinite scrolling in 2006. He later estimated it wastes hundreds of millions of human hours every day because it removes the brain's chance to opt out.
Continuous feeds turn one look into a stretch
You open the app for one check.
There is no chapter end, no credits, no bottom, so the thumb keeps making the next decision by default. That is how five minutes quietly turns into thirty.
Try this
Put the exit back
If the app removed the stopping cue, put one back. Use app limits, grayscale, a timer, or physical distance so continuing requires another conscious choice.
Key idea
What to remember
When there is no ending cue, default behavior takes over. Reinstall the exit before your thumb becomes the decision-maker.