Advancing Inclusive Digital Well-Being Tools: How Neurodivergent Students Use Distraction Blockers
Marvel Chrismatheo Hariadi, Kevin Chow, Joanna McGrenere · 2026 · Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26) · doi:10.1145/3772318.3790801
Summary
This CHI 2026 paper asks whether digital distraction blockers — Apple Screen Time, Forest, Freedom, StayFocusd, and similar tools — actually serve the neurodivergent post-secondary students who are arguably their most marginal audience, or whether blocker design silently enforces neuronormative assumptions about focus, time, and productivity. The authors conducted hour-long semi-structured remote interviews with 27 neurodivergent students at Canadian and U.S. universities, all self-identifying as having ADHD, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), and/or Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), with 17 holding a formal medical diagnosis. Participants used blockers at least once every three weeks; Apple Screen Time (16/27), Forest (9/27), and Freedom (5/27) were most common, and most students combined multiple tools. Interviews were analyzed via reflexive thematic analysis in NVivo 14, grounded in the neurodiversity paradigm and a strengths-based rather than deficit-based framing. The research team included a neurodivergent member and two active blocker users, and the authors draw on 'body doubling' and other neurodivergent community practices rather than treating ADHD, ASD, and GAD as cognitive deficits to be overcome. Two research questions structure the work: how do neurodivergent students integrate blockers into academic life, and what benefits and challenges emerge? The paper yields three themes and five design opportunities for more inclusive digital well-being tools.
Key findings
Three themes emerged. First, participants adapt blockers to regulate stimulation rather than simply block it — using blockers to establish control and predictability in sensorily overwhelming environments, proactively preventing overstimulation before it happens, and deliberately turning blockers off to engage in 'digital stimming' (familiar, soothing digital content) as a self-regulation strategy that neuronormative 'focus vs. distraction' framings render invisible. 'Rabbit holes' and hyperfocus were often valued states, not failures — P3 spent two hours 'wasting' on a topic she genuinely enjoyed. Second, students embedded blockers into highly personalized focus rituals (environmental prep, specific music, headphones, white noise, timer cues), but rigid, time-boxed blocker designs clashed with non-linear neurodivergent work rhythms. Participants ignored or reset timers when already in flow and abandoned Pomodoro-style cadences because hyperfocus 'is like a lottery' (P10). Third, blockers often reinforced self-stigma by functioning as a 'crutch' rather than a 'scaffold,' surfacing comparisons to neurotypical peers — P6: 'Doesn't everyone struggle with this? But apparently, they don't.' Social validation through shared neurodivergent identity helped normalize blocker use, though social comparison could also amplify shame. The authors propose five design opportunities: support curated digital stimming; frame blockers as scaffolds via positive messaging; use brief daily check-ins for dynamic, context-aware settings; adopt experience-anchored (not clock-based) blocking durations; and integrate social body-doubling features.
Relevance
For practitioners designing productivity, well-being, or assistive software, this paper is a direct challenge to the implicit neurotypicality of most digital self-control tools. Its most actionable contribution is the reframe of 'distraction' — digital stimming is not a failure of willpower but a self-regulation strategy, and blocker designs that pathologize it harm the users they claim to help. The paper also offers a usefully concrete vocabulary (scaffold vs. crutch, neuronormative time, experience-anchored durations, curated stimming) that accessibility teams can translate into product decisions: completion-based rather than time-based blocking rules, integration with LMS progress, configurable rigidity, optional peer body-doubling. Limitations are explicit: the sample is North American, English-speaking, and self-selected toward students already comfortable discussing neurodivergence (likely underrepresenting those with more stigma), and the study does not extend to workplace contexts or non-student adults. Two international participants hinted at culturally specific stigma patterns outside North America. The work is especially relevant to anyone working on cognitive accessibility, student mental-health tools, or neurodiversity-aware productivity software — and to designers who have never questioned whether 'focus time' and 'distracted time' are the right ontology.
Tags: neurodivergence · ADHD · autism spectrum disorder · generalized anxiety disorder · distraction blockers · digital well-being · cognitive accessibility · inclusive design · assistive technology · self-regulation · hyperfocus · higher education · neuronormativity · reflexive thematic analysis · self-stigma