"Just five more minutes."

It's the most dangerous sentence in your vocabulary. It sounds reasonable. It sounds manageable. Five minutes is nothing, right?

But it's never five minutes. And you know it even as you say it.

The Five-Minute Trap

Here's how the lie works:

You've been scrolling for a while. Some part of your brain says it's time to stop—you have things to do, or you should sleep, or you're just aware that this has gone on too long.

But stopping feels hard. The content is still coming. The next video might be good. You're in the middle of something (even though you're always in the middle of something on an infinite feed).

So you negotiate with yourself: "Just five more minutes, then I'll stop."

This feels like discipline. It feels like you're taking control. You're not just mindlessly scrolling—you're making a conscious decision to scroll for a defined period.

Except you're not.

Why Five Minutes Never Ends

Five minutes from now, you'll face the exact same choice. And you'll be even more depleted, even more sucked in, even less capable of stopping.

The negotiation repeats: "Okay, five more minutes." Then five more. Then five more.

Each "five minutes" feels like a fresh decision. But it's the same decision, made worse each time by the accumulating momentum of the scroll.

An hour later, you've made twelve "five minute" decisions, each one feeling reasonable in isolation, adding up to something you never would have consciously chosen.

The Design Is Intentional

Social media platforms are engineered to prevent natural stopping points. Old media had endings—the show ended, the magazine ran out of pages, the newspaper had a back cover.

Infinite scroll has no end. There's never a moment where the content says "that's all, time to go." You have to create that moment yourself, against the full force of billion-dollar engagement algorithms.

"Just five more minutes" is you trying to create an artificial ending in a system designed to have none.

The Negotiator Isn't Your Friend

The voice that says "five more minutes" isn't your rational self making a measured decision. It's the addicted part of your brain bargaining for another hit.

It knows you won't accept "I'm going to scroll for another hour." That's obviously too much. But five minutes? Five minutes is nothing. Five minutes is reasonable.

It's a trick. The same trick every time. And it works because in the moment, you want to believe it.

The Only Way Out

You can't negotiate with an infinite feed. You can't find the "right" stopping point because there isn't one.

The only winning move is to stop negotiating. Not "five more minutes." Just stop.

It feels abrupt. It feels unsatisfying. Good. It's supposed to. The feed was never going to give you a satisfying ending—you have to take one.

"Five more minutes" is how hours disappear. The lie is small so it can be repeated infinitely.