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Having worked on a product for 3 years that attempts to target this market I can tell you the sad reality, is that nobody really cares. Sure, there are clickbai

Having worked on a product for 3 years that attempts to target this market I can tell you the sad reality, is that nobody really cares. Sure, there are clickbait headlines and companies/parents will feign interest, but when it comes to actually paying for a product or making any tangible change to usage habits, our numbers prove that nobody even tries. For full disclosure our product turns the Internet off until they complete goals like studying, completing quizzes, commiting to GitHub, etc. Our first launch was a DNS only solution which we assumed lacked usage because people had to change their DNS address to one we spun up for them. It lacked usage and we assumed it was because it was "too technical" for parents. Next we create an iOS app that worked out of the box as a VPN without any setup. We don't even ask the users to register in any way or pay anything. Lastly we created a Chrome extension because it's the easiest way for tons of kids with Chromebooks to use. Long story short, after multiple re-launches and trying to get feedback the overall result is that it's an almost impossible task to get parents or kids to change their habits, even if they "want" to. They will make up excuses and quit nearly instantly.

kaffeemitsahne 8y ago
Just because not many people liked your product doesn't mean nobody cares about the problem.
- ddtaylor 8y ago
  I think most of the "caring" is a token effort. Too many businesses benefit from tech/mobile addiction. It's a form of green-washing IMO.
sooheon 8y ago
Maybe the target should be adults getting it for themselves? Think AA more than parental control.
- ddtaylor 8y ago
  Adults are much harder to reach because they can always simply go buy a new computer or phone and circumvent any measures put in place to help them.
  - bachbach 8y ago
    Habits are hard to break but I've also found it surprisingly easy to manipulate yourself by putting an annoying obstacle in the way. For getting work on time I can't snooze-beat the combination of a wake up light and a distantly located mobile alarm. On internet use restriction the best solution so far has been to use a simple electronic plug timer connected to a laptop without a battery. Zap - no internet for you. There ought to be a solution that installs itself into the computer's firmware though. Most of us on HN install new operating systems at a much higher rate than the typical user so having a persistent solution would be huge.
    - nkurz 8y ago
      @bachbach: As you guessed (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18191949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18191949) your account does appear to be banned as of today, your comments are autodead, and vouching for them does not vivify them. As none of your comments seem offensive, and since you don't seem to have been flooding the submissions, it doesn't make sense to me. You should write to 'hn@ycombinator.com' and ask what's up.
graeme 8y ago
I'm interested in this solution, and hadn't even heard of this ios app. Maybe you were reaching wrong markets?
- ddtaylor 8y ago
  StudyCity was the name of the product.
loceng 8y ago
It is difficult to get people that are stuck, and with blocks making them stuck, to change behaviour; this is as much as a human feature - that serves a purpose - as it is a bug/problem. For people to change they must believe and trust everything relating to that change - they must trust at least a little more than they distrust, and/or the reward can help outweigh the distrust and lack of motivation/desire.
mikeleeorg 8y ago
I looked up a bunch of similar products about 5 years ago. Just last month, I looked them up again, and found that many don't exist anymore. It's definitely a tough market. I suspect that it will be the larger corporations with enough revenue that can release such products into the market - and probably even release them as free features of an existing suite of products (e.g. iOS with Downtime, Disney's Circle[1], etc), as opposed to a standalone product. [1] https://meetcircle.com/time-limits https://meetcircle.com/time-limits
- ddtaylor 8y ago
  Two of the big players in the space are Disney and Xfinity, both of which IMO don't have much to gain by actually reducing screen time.
AlexCoventry 8y ago
What's the name of your product?
Paul-ish 8y ago
Maybe your product worked too well, and people don't actually want to change their behavior. They just feel like they should. Same with eating right or exercising.
- kazagistar 8y ago
  In which case the real market is for things that seem like they help. Ideally as a subscription that you can forget about like a gym.
- sien 8y ago
  FWIW apps for doing those things work really well. I've lost weight with a phone app. I never could have done Weightwatchers or something like that before. Also fitness apps are great in gamifying exercise a bit. Again another app has really helped me. Actually gamifying good habits might help more than trying to remove bad habits with an app which might be the issue with apps to try and reduce digital addiction.
paulcole 8y ago
> it's an almost impossible task to get parents or kids to change their habits This has been a known challenge for centuries. How did you address it during design of your product?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
ip26 8y ago
I cut myself off time to time in various ways. I canceled home internet for a few months one time, another I switched to a flip phone for a month. I'll frequently remove Chrome from my phone. I have tried the greyscale thing many times. Etc. What makes all this Hard is the plethora of legitimate use. When I canceled home internet, I was unable to log in to work from home (five minutes a day in the evenings helps keep the compute cluster rolling). When I switched to a flip phone I started cooking less- the smartphone had made planning meals & shopping easier. When I remove Chrome, inevitably a week or two later I'm on the road and want to book a hotel or find a campground or check on road construction. When I switch my phone to greyscale, weather charts & maps become impossible to read. Personally, if I was working on code & my goalposts were a commit to GitHub- well, without access to stackoverflow I might never be able to finish. All that said, thank you for your perspective. It is not hard to believe many people do not actually want to change.
- njarboe 8y ago
  A similar situation to eating too much. You have to eat and so many events include food. Eliminating it from your life as a way to stem the over use is not practical.
  - village-idiot 8y ago
    Discover the joy of intermittent fasting.
Avamander 8y ago
I've been one of those people who have had the unfortunate luck to have a computer with parental- or time controls. It pretty much only shifted my screen usage to other devices e.g. TV and got me into cybersec because I wanted a way around those restrictions.
- konschubert 8y ago
  Well, if it got you inti cybersec then it worked exactly as intended!
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
dave_sid 8y ago
It turns the internet off until the child commits to GitHub? Righhhhhht then. Do they get extra internet time after estimating their Jira tasks too?
hndamien 8y ago
Maybe you are just too early. I think I actually know your product and I bookmarked it with the intent of setting it up. The too technical part was kind of true despite me taking on many technical challenges of this nature - Bitcoin in 2011 being one of them. However, the friction here versus the age of my kids requirement didn't line up - but I expect it will in about 3 years when they are a little older. Maybe just keep the wheels turning for a fews years.
viraptor 8y ago
Isn't is partially an issue of oversaturation? If I search for an app/website blocker, I'll find lots of different, free solutions. (Both apps and browser plugins) I'm using the same ones for a few years now. If anyone new joins that segment, how would they get popular?
fbelzile 8y ago
I am fortunate enough to run a lifestyle business in this space. I market it as personal productivity software that lets you pick what to block and for how long, then prevents you from changing the settings until the time is reached. It's freemium and only a one time payment for pro (ie - not investor friendly) but I really enjoy being able to work on improving it every day. I sometimes get nice emails from people which helps motivate me more. My app is called Cold Turkey (https://getcoldturkey.com https://getcoldturkey.com). It's for Windows and macOS only, because of the security restrictions on smart phones. It uses browser extensions (with native messaging) to do the blocking, but if you disable the extensions during a block, Cold Turkey closes your browsers until you re-enable them.
sizzle 8y ago
I think you approached this completely backwards and failed due to bad product market fit. If you did look into research for things like positive reinforcement, and tested your ideas with users before investing resources in building the wrong solution, you have a better chance in uncovering insights into solving the addiction problem. Even looking into alcoholism, gambling addiction, drug addiction etc etc would have yieled better insights for viable products. One insight is that you have to separate yourself from your addiction with minimum effort possible, so getting the addiction enabler, whether phone, bottle of alcohol, masturbation, or drugs, out of your hands is half that battle because it reduces urges when the opportunity to relapse is removed from reach. And since I want to help instead of just criticize, because tech addiction affects me and my loved ones greatly, the only solution that has ever worked for me literally to put my phone face down and on do not disturb mode and tell everyone to leave a message. Also, if you make the equivalent of Self Control for mobile I would happily pay you for it because the UX is dead simple, you don't have to mess with VPN only enter your Mac password and it blocks all websites in a blacklist, even with computer restart and you can't do anything about it until time is over. This is easy to use and dead simple for mass user adoption. https://selfcontrolapp.com https://selfcontrolapp.com Let me know what you think about SelfControl. Thanks for trying to help stop tech addiction, it truly is a problem worthy of solving.
gymshoes 8y ago
Agree. I have seen a lot of the time tracking and other solutions but they only seem to work when the person has the willpower to follow through.
mcat 8y ago
Did you ever try to go directly to insurance companies and pitch to offer your service through them?
kjullien 8y ago
I think that it is simply not the right time. We are starting to see more and more people who realize what society has become and get sad when they enter a room and out of 50 people in it, 48 have their heads bent down, no eyes to be seen, staring at their smartphones. I think the market will 1000% be present in a few years time and in a big way, just not right now...

kaffeemitsahne 8y ago

Just because not many people liked your product doesn't mean nobody cares about the problem.

ddtaylor 8y ago
I think most of the "caring" is a token effort. Too many businesses benefit from tech/mobile addiction. It's a form of green-washing IMO.

sooheon 8y ago

Maybe the target should be adults getting it for themselves? Think AA more than parental control.

ddtaylor 8y ago
Adults are much harder to reach because they can always simply go buy a new computer or phone and circumvent any measures put in place to help them.
- bachbach 8y ago
  Habits are hard to break but I've also found it surprisingly easy to manipulate yourself by putting an annoying obstacle in the way. For getting work on time I can't snooze-beat the combination of a wake up light and a distantly located mobile alarm. On internet use restriction the best solution so far has been to use a simple electronic plug timer connected to a laptop without a battery. Zap - no internet for you. There ought to be a solution that installs itself into the computer's firmware though. Most of us on HN install new operating systems at a much higher rate than the typical user so having a persistent solution would be huge.
  - nkurz 8y ago
    @bachbach: As you guessed (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18191949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18191949) your account does appear to be banned as of today, your comments are autodead, and vouching for them does not vivify them. As none of your comments seem offensive, and since you don't seem to have been flooding the submissions, it doesn't make sense to me. You should write to 'hn@ycombinator.com' and ask what's up.

graeme 8y ago

I'm interested in this solution, and hadn't even heard of this ios app. Maybe you were reaching wrong markets?

ddtaylor 8y ago
StudyCity was the name of the product.

loceng 8y ago

It is difficult to get people that are stuck, and with blocks making them stuck, to change behaviour; this is as much as a human feature - that serves a purpose - as it is a bug/problem. For people to change they must believe and trust everything relating to that change - they must trust at least a little more than they distrust, and/or the reward can help outweigh the distrust and lack of motivation/desire.

mikeleeorg 8y ago

I looked up a bunch of similar products about 5 years ago. Just last month, I looked them up again, and found that many don't exist anymore. It's definitely a tough market. I suspect that it will be the larger corporations with enough revenue that can release such products into the market - and probably even release them as free features of an existing suite of products (e.g. iOS with Downtime, Disney's Circle[1], etc), as opposed to a standalone product. [1] https://meetcircle.com/time-limits https://meetcircle.com/time-limits

ddtaylor 8y ago
Two of the big players in the space are Disney and Xfinity, both of which IMO don't have much to gain by actually reducing screen time.

AlexCoventry 8y ago

What's the name of your product?

Paul-ish 8y ago

Maybe your product worked too well, and people don't actually want to change their behavior. They just feel like they should. Same with eating right or exercising.

kazagistar 8y ago
In which case the real market is for things that seem like they help. Ideally as a subscription that you can forget about like a gym.
sien 8y ago
FWIW apps for doing those things work really well. I've lost weight with a phone app. I never could have done Weightwatchers or something like that before. Also fitness apps are great in gamifying exercise a bit. Again another app has really helped me. Actually gamifying good habits might help more than trying to remove bad habits with an app which might be the issue with apps to try and reduce digital addiction.

paulcole 8y ago

> it's an almost impossible task to get parents or kids to change their habits This has been a known challenge for centuries. How did you address it during design of your product?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

ip26 8y ago

I cut myself off time to time in various ways. I canceled home internet for a few months one time, another I switched to a flip phone for a month. I'll frequently remove Chrome from my phone. I have tried the greyscale thing many times. Etc. What makes all this Hard is the plethora of legitimate use. When I canceled home internet, I was unable to log in to work from home (five minutes a day in the evenings helps keep the compute cluster rolling). When I switched to a flip phone I started cooking less- the smartphone had made planning meals & shopping easier. When I remove Chrome, inevitably a week or two later I'm on the road and want to book a hotel or find a campground or check on road construction. When I switch my phone to greyscale, weather charts & maps become impossible to read. Personally, if I was working on code & my goalposts were a commit to GitHub- well, without access to stackoverflow I might never be able to finish. All that said, thank you for your perspective. It is not hard to believe many people do not actually want to change.

njarboe 8y ago
A similar situation to eating too much. You have to eat and so many events include food. Eliminating it from your life as a way to stem the over use is not practical.
- village-idiot 8y ago
  Discover the joy of intermittent fasting.

Avamander 8y ago

I've been one of those people who have had the unfortunate luck to have a computer with parental- or time controls. It pretty much only shifted my screen usage to other devices e.g. TV and got me into cybersec because I wanted a way around those restrictions.

konschubert 8y ago
Well, if it got you inti cybersec then it worked exactly as intended!
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]

dave_sid 8y ago

It turns the internet off until the child commits to GitHub? Righhhhhht then. Do they get extra internet time after estimating their Jira tasks too?

hndamien 8y ago

Maybe you are just too early. I think I actually know your product and I bookmarked it with the intent of setting it up. The too technical part was kind of true despite me taking on many technical challenges of this nature - Bitcoin in 2011 being one of them. However, the friction here versus the age of my kids requirement didn't line up - but I expect it will in about 3 years when they are a little older. Maybe just keep the wheels turning for a fews years.

viraptor 8y ago

Isn't is partially an issue of oversaturation? If I search for an app/website blocker, I'll find lots of different, free solutions. (Both apps and browser plugins) I'm using the same ones for a few years now. If anyone new joins that segment, how would they get popular?

fbelzile 8y ago

I am fortunate enough to run a lifestyle business in this space. I market it as personal productivity software that lets you pick what to block and for how long, then prevents you from changing the settings until the time is reached. It's freemium and only a one time payment for pro (ie - not investor friendly) but I really enjoy being able to work on improving it every day. I sometimes get nice emails from people which helps motivate me more. My app is called Cold Turkey (https://getcoldturkey.com https://getcoldturkey.com). It's for Windows and macOS only, because of the security restrictions on smart phones. It uses browser extensions (with native messaging) to do the blocking, but if you disable the extensions during a block, Cold Turkey closes your browsers until you re-enable them.

sizzle 8y ago

I think you approached this completely backwards and failed due to bad product market fit. If you did look into research for things like positive reinforcement, and tested your ideas with users before investing resources in building the wrong solution, you have a better chance in uncovering insights into solving the addiction problem. Even looking into alcoholism, gambling addiction, drug addiction etc etc would have yieled better insights for viable products. One insight is that you have to separate yourself from your addiction with minimum effort possible, so getting the addiction enabler, whether phone, bottle of alcohol, masturbation, or drugs, out of your hands is half that battle because it reduces urges when the opportunity to relapse is removed from reach. And since I want to help instead of just criticize, because tech addiction affects me and my loved ones greatly, the only solution that has ever worked for me literally to put my phone face down and on do not disturb mode and tell everyone to leave a message. Also, if you make the equivalent of Self Control for mobile I would happily pay you for it because the UX is dead simple, you don't have to mess with VPN only enter your Mac password and it blocks all websites in a blacklist, even with computer restart and you can't do anything about it until time is over. This is easy to use and dead simple for mass user adoption. https://selfcontrolapp.com https://selfcontrolapp.com Let me know what you think about SelfControl. Thanks for trying to help stop tech addiction, it truly is a problem worthy of solving.

gymshoes 8y ago

Agree. I have seen a lot of the time tracking and other solutions but they only seem to work when the person has the willpower to follow through.

mcat 8y ago

Did you ever try to go directly to insurance companies and pitch to offer your service through them?

kjullien 8y ago

I think that it is simply not the right time. We are starting to see more and more people who realize what society has become and get sad when they enter a room and out of 50 people in it, 48 have their heads bent down, no eyes to be seen, staring at their smartphones. I think the market will 1000% be present in a few years time and in a big way, just not right now...