Amazon isn't trying to hold your attention the way a feed does — nobody opens it to scroll for fun the way they might open Instagram. The habit here is narrower and more expensive: a specific kind of impulse buying that the app has spent years quietly removing the friction from, one small design decision at a time.
What actually makes Amazon hard to close
One-tap or saved-payment ordering removes a step that used to function as a built-in pause — typing out a card number gave every purchase a small moment to reconsider, and that moment is largely gone now. Personalised "customers also bought" and recommended-item feeds work the same way any recommendation engine does, surfacing more things to consider buying every time you're already looking at one. Prime's bundled "free" shipping changes the felt cost of a small purchase specifically: because shipping is already paid for as part of a subscription, adding one more item to a cart doesn't feel like it's costing anything extra, even when the item itself obviously does. Lightning deals and limited-time countdown offers add urgency on top of all of that, framing an ordinary purchase decision as a closing window rather than something you could just as easily decide on tomorrow.
The built-in iPhone route, and where it gives way
An iOS Screen Time App Limit on Amazon behaves like it does on any app: a warning, a lock screen, one "Ignore Limit for Today" button that clears it in a tap, needing only a Screen Time passcode you set and know yourself. A time-based limit has nothing to say about the actual risk here, which isn't time spent in the app but money spent through it — you can override a limit in five seconds and still complete a purchase in the time it takes to read this sentence.
The built-in Android route, and where it gives way
Digital Wellbeing's App Timer greys out Amazon's icon at your limit and offers more time the moment you tap it, adjustable or removable from Settings whenever you like. Same mismatch as iPhone: the timer measures minutes, and the thing actually worth interrupting here is a purchase decision that can complete in far less time than any limit is built to notice.
What changes when the toll is three questions
Mr. Grummel's toll doesn't try to measure how long you're in the app — it puts three questions in front of opening it at all, restoring roughly the same kind of pause that typing a card number used to provide before one-tap ordering removed it. That's the point: the toll doesn't need to know whether you're about to buy something you need or something you'll regret, it just needs to make opening the app cost real thought again, the way it briefly did before checkout got this frictionless.
A realistic day
Right now: a browsing session that started as "check the price of one thing" ends with three items in a cart and a one-tap checkout that took less time than reading their descriptions did, none of it planned when the app was first opened. With the toll in place: opening Amazon runs into three questions first. A purchase you've actually thought about still happens exactly the same way. What's interrupted is opening the app on a whim, which now costs a few minutes of real thinking before the browsing that leads to buying even starts, restoring roughly the pause that used to exist before checkout got this easy.