On average, Americans are checking their phones 46 times a day, and much of that screen time is dedicated to social media. But when levels of social media consumption become too high, it can cause users to suffer from more than just FOMO (fear of missing out), and a Chicago-based startup has created a smartphone app to address the problem.
PauseApp, which launched in January on the Google Play store, monitors a person’s usage of Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram, and alerts them to when they have exceeded healthy amounts of time on each and are putting themselves at risk for anxiety and depression.
When users have exceeded healthy usage times, PauseApp will notify them by briefly flashing yellow, meaning “caution,” or red, meaning “excessive,” warning lights. Unlike other apps, it doesn’t block users from continuing to use social media, it just notifies them that their usage levels are too high in a given day. The app resets every 24 hours.
PauseApp was founded by Daniel Floyd, who developed the free app while in a Future Founders cohort, a Chicago-based accelerator program for young entrepreneurs. Floyd said the idea for PauseApp was first sparked when he was a student at Western Michigan University and had a friend who was suffering from depression and anxiety, much of which was caused by the overuse of social media.
“We all love using social media, but when we overuse social media, that’s where the problem lies,” Floyd said. “Social media [can make] you compare your life to the life of your friends or of people you follow. On social media, people tend to portray just the highlights of their lives and not everything else that is going on.”
According to a study by influencer marketing agency Mediakix, the average person spends 35 minutes a day on Facebook, 25 minutes on Snapchat and 15 minutes on Instagram. PauseApp will give users an initial notification for unhealthy usage of Facebook after 35 minutes, of Snapchat after 20 minutes and of Instagram after 10 minutes.
And based on data PauseApp has gathered, the time users spend on social media slows down once they’ve been notified that they have been overusing it. In other words, it works.
“Users are just not aware about how much time they’re actually spending on a social media platform,” Floyd said. “So PauseApp makes the user aware of that. You’ll still have the opportunity to continue, but the most important thing is that you’re now aware.”
PauseApp isn’t alone in the social media tracking space, though. AppDetox also allows users to limit their social media usage, and Social Fever is an app that lets users track and limit the usage of any app on their phone by setting timers.
PauseApp, which currently has a team of five, is only available for Android phones right now, but Floyd said he is working on launching an IOS version soon.
