ourglass

Inspiration

You've been there: you set yourself a screen time limit on some app only to hit "ignore" as soon as it goes off. You've been there: you spent the last hour scrolling your social media only to feel more stressed than when you opened the app. You've been there: you look at your screen time and then decide that sometimes, ignorance is bliss.

We all know we probably spend more time on social media than is good for our mental health. But it's so hard to stop! The apps are designed to be addictive, and we're usually no match for them.

But what if you could pair up with someone and hold them accountable? Studies have shown that a buddy approach can help lead to more effective programs for quitting smoking and weight loss. Why not take the same approach to curb social media usage?

We speculate that if your friends can see that you spent 5 hours on Instagram yesterday, you'll be less likely to do it again out of peer pressure.

What it does

(Note: our app doesn't do this yet. We didn't have time to properly implement). The app connects to your screen time and notifies your friends on the app when you go over your goal. If desired, you and your friends can set up a system where you have to pay out small amounts of money each time you go over.

How we built it

We prototyped on Figma and then created a simple version on React Native. It doesn't yet sync to screen time or to friends--it's basically just a display of the initial idea in app form.

Challenges we ran into

Time was the biggest one. We would love to make this a real working app in the future, but 12 hours simply wasn't enough. Also, only one of us had working knowledge of React Native / front-end development, so a large portion of time was spent just getting us all up to speed.