New Delhi, Sept. 5 -- Shagun Ohri likes to "doomscroll" on Blinkit-and she's not proud of it. It should take roughly five minutes to order groceries from the quick commerce platform. "But I'm spending another 30 just to see what else is there on the app," says the 31-year-old marketing director at a VC fund in Bengaluru. "It's like scrolling through Instagram.half an hour disappears before you know it."

Ohri is experiencing the "30-minute ick factor". Coined by Alexis Hiniker, a computer researcher at the University of Washington, US, the phrase describes the "wave of disgust or disappointment people feel when they realise they've spent over half an hour on a platform they meant to check only briefly". It's a classic symptom of "time-los...