Firefox tends to attract a specific kind of user — someone who chose it deliberately, often for privacy or customisation reasons, rather than just sticking with whatever came installed. That deliberateness shows up in a specific habit: Firefox users, more than most, tend to keep large numbers of tabs open at once, each one representing something meant to be read "later." The habit here isn't a feed pulling you in — it's an ever-growing pile of open tabs functioning as a reading list that rarely gets emptied.
What actually makes Firefox hard to close
Keeping dozens of tabs open rather than closing or bookmarking them creates a visible, ever-present backlog similar to Medium's unread reading list, except sitting directly in the tab switcher rather than tucked away in a separate section, which makes the backlog itself a source of low background guilt every time the browser opens. Opening "just one more" tab to check something related to what you're already reading is easy to justify in the moment, and rarely gets undone by actually closing the tab once the check is done. Sync across devices means a tab opened on a desktop browser shows up on the phone too, so the backlog isn't confined to one device — it follows you, showing the same unresolved pile everywhere you look.
The built-in iPhone route, and where it gives way
An iOS Screen Time App Limit on Firefox 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 limit doesn't address the tab pile at all — someone could hit their daily limit having spent the whole session opening more tabs rather than closing any of the existing ones, with the backlog exactly as large as when they started.
The built-in Android route, and where it gives way
Digital Wellbeing's App Timer greys out Firefox's icon at your limit and offers more time the moment you tap it, adjustable or removable from Settings whenever you like. Same gap as iPhone: the timer manages minutes spent, not the accumulating tab count that's the actual thing driving repeated opens.
What changes when the toll is three questions
Mr. Grummel's toll costs the same few minutes of real thought whether the tab count is at five or fifty — it doesn't get longer as the backlog grows, which is useful specifically because the backlog's size is exactly what makes each new open feel harmless: what's one more tab, when there are already forty. A question placed before the browser opens is a chance to ask whether this open is about actually reading something, or just adding to a pile that's stopped meaning anything as a reading list and started functioning as clutter instead.
A realistic day
Right now: opening Firefox to look something up leaves three new tabs behind by the time the original question is answered, on top of the thirty-odd already sitting there from the week before. With the toll in place: opening Firefox runs into three questions first. The specific thing you came to look up still gets looked up and, ideally, closed once it's done. What's interrupted is the reflexive tab-hoarding that treats "later" as a substitute for actually reading something now, which now costs a few minutes of real thinking before the browser opens, not after three more tabs have joined the pile.