This Chrome extension blocks social media until you scream (literally) in agony
“I am a loser.” Yeah, that’s what you need to yell to unlock a few minutes of social browsing time.
Nadeem Sarwar / DigitalTrends
The ills of social media are pretty well-known, and the impacts are so well-documented that Meta, YouTube, and TikTok are now facing a lawsuit for making their platforms addictive. Australia has already banned social media for teens under 16 years of age, and multiple other countries are considering similar restrictions. And let’s face it: social media can lead you into a doomscrolling spiral that is an utter waste of time and energy.
Enter Pankaj Tanwar, a developer who just created a Chrome extension that will make you scream at your computer in order to unblock social media sites. “A productivity tool that blocks social media websites and makes you say embarrassing things to unlock them,” says the extension’s description on Google’s web store. But screaming at your PC or Mac is not the whole solution.
This is pretty cool
First, you must hit the loudness threshold while screaming, “I am a loser.” Next, you must increase the tempo of your embarrassing scream to unlock the time for which a blocklisted site becomes accessible. Based on how desperately loud you are, you might unlock a few seconds or minutes worth of social media surfing time.
I tried. I failed.
The open-source tool is aimed at students, at-home workers, and basically any person with a computer who gets distracted quickly and ends up losing valuable time to mindless X or Instagram browsing. By default, the extension blocks X, Instagram, and Facebook. However, if you have other digital vices, ahem, you can simply add the URL and block those sites, too.
I desperately needed it
Once you set up the extension, which also works well in other Chromium-based browsers such as ChatGPT Atlas, you will run into a full-screen blocker every time you try to visit the distracting sites. There’s even a visualizer where you can see the loudness levels of your screen, and a timer underneath that shows you the duration for which the sites will be unlocked.
This won’t be the first project of its kind. Rhys Kentish, a software engineer at a UK-based company, developed an app called Touch Grass that will require you to go out, literally touch grass, and click a snapshot as evidence to unlock distracting apps on your phone.
As far as the “Scream to Unlock” browser extension goes, well, I desperately needed a solution like this. I visit X and Reddit for research and news gathering, but often end up wasting too much time getting distracted by random posts and rabbit holes. Thankfully, the little honor that I have left stops me from shouting at my PC and waking up my cat.
Nadeem is a technology and science reporter at Digital Trends.
The “micro” build: why your next PC should fit in a shoebox
For decades, PC gaming meant owning a monolith: a massive, flashing tower that dominated your floor space. But in 2026, the era of the giant box is over. Components have become efficient enough that you no longer need 60 liters of air to cool them. The “Small Form Factor” (SFF) movement’s gone mainstream, proving that you can fit an RTX 5080 and a top-tier CPU into a case the size of a shoebox.
It’s minimal, it’s sophisticated, and it looks a lot better on a desk than a plastic tower. If you’re ready to downsize without downgrading performance, this is where you should start.
Apple might soon allow Gemini and ChatGPT on CarPlay for voice control
Say hello to smarter AI apps for CarPlay, but voice activation will remain exclusive to Siri, it seems.
Apple AI foundations are opening across its entire portfolio. Thanks in no part to the slow development of Siri, Apple had to piggyback atop ChatGPT for Apple Intelligence. A few weeks ago, the company announced that it would use the same foundations as Gemini to power the next-gen version of Siri.
What’s changing?
Nvidia’s gaming GPU roadmap just hit a weird speed bump
Memory shortages and booming AI demand are reshuffling RTX plans for 2026 and beyond.
NVIDIA is reportedly set to skip releasing any new gaming graphics chips in 2026, a rare and unexpected twist in an industry where new GPUs traditionally roll out annually. According to a report in The Information, supply constraints in the global memory market, driven largely by booming demand for AI accelerators and data-center memory, have left Nvidia with too little memory to go around, forcing the company to delay its planned RTX 50 Super refresh and to effectively deprioritize gaming GPUs this year.
That situation could create an unusual gap in Nvidia’s product cycle. Even the next generation of flagship GPUs, the much-anticipated RTX 60 series, is now expected to be delayed beyond what gamers had hoped, with production potentially pushed into 2028 as memory shortages persist. Reports indicate Nvidia has even cut production of some existing RTX 50 series cards to free up memory for AI-focused chips.
