You will agree that it is almost impossible for most smartphone users to focus on work or study without the urge of wanting to be connected to their phones, which often is a distraction triggered by social media.
On a global scale, research has it that 75.4% of smartphone users are experiencing the irrational fear of being without their smartphones, scientifically known as ‘Nomophobia’.
Applatch’s CEO Opaleye Olabamiji Samson as well as Bolakale Mallick, the COO (and Head of Legal & Compliance) were both victims of smartphone and social media addiction and in searching for a solution, ‘Applatch’ was founded, which is simply a mobile app that helps you lock addictive apps on your phone for a period of time in order for you to be more productive and maintain sound mental health.
We know what you’re thinking, “I can simply just unlock the app”.
No you can’t – it’s really not that simple.
Your chosen accountability partner will have to grant you permission by giving you a code to pause or end the ongoing locked session. Also for every complete locked session, you will be helping an African child who is in need through school. Applatch is currently available here only on Google Play Store for now, but it will be available on iOS in the near future.
It’s evident the world is going through an intense phase of smartphone addiction which increased rapidly since the inception of the COVID-19 pandemic. The key problems associated with social media addiction are loss of valuable time, low productivity rate, lack of parental control and high depression rate.
The founders at Applatch decided to design the product as a true solution to battling these problems. This challenge led the two friends and co-founders to engage Adekola Akano as the third co-founder and CTO who is an expert in developing android and iOS mobile apps for startups in various industries.
Before Applatch was designed, the co-founders embarked on on-ground user acceptance research, engaging Millennials and GenZs, then infusing their feedback into the product design phase. Also, the co-founders read through hundreds of complaints from users of existing products, they also did social listening in order to understand how people are struggling with app addiction and what they will consider a true solution.
The data analysis conclusion from the research helped in deciding the features for Applatch’s MVP which currently has 3 lock features; ‘Lock now’, ‘Lock by daily limit’, and ‘Schedule Lock’. It also has a feature that allows users to track their overall phone usage analysis.
Users who wish to lock distracting apps immediately for a period of time use the ‘Lock now’ feature. A user who uses the ‘Lock by daily limit’ wants a particular app or a set of distracting apps to lock after using it for a fixed specific number of hours per day, for example, you want Snapchat to lock after you have used it for 2 hours in a day, then your daily limit will be 2 hrs and you will no longer have access to it for the rest of the day.
If you are big on productivity and you live a routine-based life, you are probably going to use more of the ‘Schedule Lock’ feature, it allows you to schedule lock sessions into the future, and you get to set the day and time a lock session should start and end, you can decide the session should repeat every day or select a few days of the week if that’s your preference.
Applatch has a feature that allows the user to track overall phone usage analysis, shows the total number of times you unlock your phone, average daily screen time, the apps you spend the most time on and shows average time duration, as well as the time of the day you spend the most time on a particular app.
The social cause tied to complete locked sessions is funded by international foundations that are big on education and mental health. The grants from these foundations are used to support the education of African children who are in need. The vision of the CEO Samson Opaleye is to ensure a minimum of 500 African children who are less privileged will be sponsored through school from primary to tertiary level. Users get to lock addictive apps, get more productive and indirectly help the sponsorship of a child in need through school. You can follow Applatch’s journey by checking via their social media @getapplatch or visit their website www.applatch.com