Link Counter

In an effort to prevent technology from distracting me from my life, I made this extension to disrupt the addictive nature of web browsing. As of the current release, there are two features to support spending less time on the internet.

The first is a counter that tracks how many pages have been visited on the current domain. For example, while on any page of www.reddit.com, a badge on the toolbar icon will show a count of pages navigated under reddit. If I move to www.pinterest.com, the badge will update to reflect pages visited under pinterest. Any time you would like to reset the clock for tracking links, simply click 'Reset History' from the toolbar menu. This is a great way to maintain awareness of browsing activity, similar to other apps that track screen time.

The second feature is turned off by default. By selecting the checkbox for 'Delay Mode' under the toolbar menu, a 250 millisecond delay is added to all web requests to simulate a minor network slowdown. Research shows that even a small delay will cause users to browse less. According to Harry Shum, computer scientist at Microsoft, "Two hundred fifty milliseconds, either slower or faster, is close to the magic number now for competitive advantage on the Web." Any slower, and a user will visit a website less often (https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/technology/impatient-web-users-flee-slow-loading-sites.html).

By adding a modicum of frustration to the browsing experience, my hope is to make your favorite time waster just a little less addictive.

Repo can be found here: https://github.com/bananasakimbo/chrome-extension-link-counter