Smartphones have become so important in our lives that we cannot imagine a day without them. Their excessive use has many negative consequences, such as reduced productivity, slower response rates, and poorer grades for students.
Three friends, Maths Mathisen, Florian Winder and Vinoth Vinaya, decided to tackle this problem while studying at Copenhagen Business School. They created application Hold on, which you rewards if you don't use your phone in a certain time interval. As a reward you will get practical rewards, e.g. Amazon coupons and movie tickets.
The app was released in February 2016 in Norway. Already in the first three months, 50,000 people downloaded it to their phones. Today, as many as 40 % higher education students in this country use it. It has in common 120,000 users.
When you activate the application, you collect 10 points for every 20 minutes, in which you do not use your phone. This applies between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m., every day of the week.
The points you collect then exchanged for goods or services, which the application offers. Hold was supported Costa Coffee, Amazon, Planet Organic, Ugly Drinks, Jabees, Onepiece and FlowMotion. Accordingly, their products will be among the prizes. For example, two free coffees "cost" 300 points, which can be achieved in 10 hours without a phone. Popcorn at the cinema is slightly cheaper. It can be exchanged for 60 points, which is equal to 2 hours without a phone. Students will also be able to exchange points for school books and stationery, donated by a charity Unicef.
The application is intended for now only to students, as the university e-mail address must be provided during registration. Given its success, we can expect it to be available to everyone in the future.
We can definitely see that it pays to cut down on phone usage!
More information:
holdstudent.com
