\u201cIt is more than just an app. It becomes the phone as a whole. It becomes the lock screen and the text messaging,\u201d said Robinson.<\/p>\n
The reason Robinson was comfortable giving it to his son is that it runs a local lockdown VPN on the phone, meaning nothing from the outside can get through that firewall, and his son can’t access anything outside the walls, either.<\/p>\n
After testing the software on his son’s phone for a few weeks, Robinson realized it was too good of an idea not to share. So he posted in a local Facebook group to see if there was any interest in the product.<\/p>\n
It turned out other parents had experienced a similar need. So Robinson launched Cardboard Fort publicly on Aug. 28, mere weeks ago, with aspirations of changing the way kids use their first phone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the market is there, and it’s just a matter of going out and getting it,\u201d said Robinson.<\/p>\n
In these early days, there are still some gaps to close. The software currently works only on Android phones. While Robinson has plans to expand, Apple and Android use two different software and coding languages, which would require him to outsource coders or invest significant time in research.<\/p>\n
There will also be software updates in the future as the company grows. Robinson said future updates could include features like an alarm clock or calculator.<\/p>\n
Other phone utilities, like a camera, are currently restricted to only being able to send pictures in-message. The software currently allows access to Life360, the only outside app that can get through the firewall, so parents can track their child, but not vice versa.<\/p>\n
While there will surely be some changes to the software over time, Robinson wants the core of the app to remain as simple and restricted as possible. The whole point of Cardboard Fort is to protect kids and serve as the most basic version of a phone for purely communicative purposes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere’s all sorts of scary things out there on the internet,\u201d said Robinson. \u201cIt’s about protecting childhood as much as possible. I don’t want him to see all the bad in the world. He’s too young for that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt is more than just an app. It becomes the phone as a whole. It becomes the lock…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":851342,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[359699,174,359698,359700,219105,3053,74,20744],"class_list":["post-851341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-internet","tag-cardboard-fort","tag-internet","tag-internet-protection","tag-life360","tag-michael-robinson","tag-smartphones","tag-technology","tag-vpn"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851341","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=851341"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/851341\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/851342"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=851341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=851341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=851341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}