A chunky digital cat is here to help you stop doomscrolling
A new Chrome extension called Cat Gatekeeper aims to help users reduce their social media usage by introducing a digital cat that interrupts browsing. After a set time limit, the tabby appears on the screen for a five-minute break, encouraging users to step away from their devices. The extension is free, ad-free, and does not collect user data, making it a secure option for those looking to limit their online time.
- ▪The average American spends nearly 2.5 hours on social media daily.
- ▪Cat Gatekeeper is a free Chrome extension that limits social media usage by introducing a digital cat.
- ▪After exceeding the time limit, a tabby cat appears on the screen for a five-minute break.
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Record
| Original publisher | Popular Science |
| Canonical URL | https://www.popsci.com/technology/stop-doomscrolling-cat-gatekeeper-extension/ |
| Publication time | Tue, 28 Apr 2026 15:00:00 -0400 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-04-28T19:02:29.558Z |
| Last seen | 2026-04-28T19:02:29.558Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | dIe_AY_J-3LD |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
Rights status (four layers)
WeSearch handling by dimension
| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Cat Generator lets a large tabby interrupt your social media time. Credit: ZOKUZOKU Get the Popular Science daily newsletter💡 Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent six days a week. Email address Sign up Thank you! Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. 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.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Popular Science.
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