About a year and a half ago, a friend of mine told me about an app she\u2019d downloaded to help curb her smartphone use.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt turns on a camera, and watches me, and I have to do either push-ups or squats for every minute of free use of the apps that I’ve chosen to lock,\u201d said Hannah Palma, a 31-year-old software engineer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The app is called Clearspace<\/a>. You can tell it how much you want to use distracting apps and it will prompt you to do an exercise or take a deep breath each time you open them. Oh \u2014 and it costs $49.99 a year.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI realize it\u2019s kind of silly that I\u2019m paying monthly for my phone and then I’m paying yearly to not use it, but I think that’s the best way that I’ve stayed healthy in managing my screen time,\u201d Palma said.<\/p>\n Clearspace is just one of dozens of companies that have popped up in recent years that are in the business of screentime reduction. Market researchers have estimated<\/a> that the so-called digital detox industry could swell to $19.44 billion by 2032.\u00a0<\/p>\n It includes apps like ScreenZen<\/a> and One Sec<\/a>, which force you to take a pause before using social media. Others, such as BePresent<\/a>, allow you to add friends and earn rewards and some have even more gamified features, like the Forest app<\/a>, in which users plant and grow a virtual \u201ctree\u201d by abstaining from distractions.<\/p>\n After hearing Hannah talk about Clearspace, I signed up too. For a while, it kinda worked. I found that just taking a pause before opening TikTok at least helped me become more conscious of my scrolling. Like a lot of these apps, it has a dashboard where I could track my progress.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s fascinating, isn’t it? Don’t use your phone, but like, come to this dashboard, which will show you how much you’ve not used your phone,\u201d said Zoetanya Sujon, a reader and program director in communications and social technologies at the London College of Communication.<\/p>\n She says those gamified features, including stats tracking, streaks, and the ability to add friends, are the same techniques that social media companies use to make their platforms so sticky in the first place.<\/p>\n \u201cThese apps are trying to give people, well, weirdly, using the same systems and tools to try to give people a sense of control over very pervasive interfaces and technologies,\u201d said Sujon.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some startups, including Brick<\/a>, Bloom<\/a>, and Blok<\/a> \u2014 yes, that\u2019s three separate companies \u2014 sell physical devices that restrict apps when you tap your phone to them. They\u2019re priced between $30 and $60, sometimes with an additional monthly subscription fee.<\/p>\n \u201cI’ve used all of them \u2014 the lockbox phone case, Brick, Freedom software, like lots of different things,\u201d said Benjamin Goldhirsh, co-founder of another mental health tech company called Matter Neuroscience<\/a>.\u00a0 \u201cI think the challenge is the magnetism of the phone is strong, and the functional use of the phone is strong.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n To get around that, Goldhirsh developed his own, home-made screen-limiting solution, which he (somewhat jokingly) refers to as \u201cthe staff of destiny.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a big walking stick \u2014 he picked it up while camping in Alaska \u2014 that he screwed a phone case into. \u201cIt was super embarrassing to walk through the airport with your phone on a stick,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it did have kind of a wizard vibe?\u201d<\/p>\n