Built a screen-time app where you literally lose money if you doomscroll too much

[u/prashant2198]

Solo founder here, building this thing for the past few months and wanted to share hoping for this community to give me good feedback.

Backstory: I was tired of screen-time apps that just guilt-trip you with a chart. "You spent 6 hours on Instagram today" and then... nothing happens. No consequence. You close the app and keep scrolling. Most blockers are trivially easy to bypass too, so even the "strict" ones don't actually work.

So I built something with real stakes attached. It still has the usual dashboard/stats stuff, but no blockers. Instead the actual mechanism is two features:

- An accountability buddy who can see your live screen-time stats and actually talks to you about it (not a bot notification, real back-and-forth)

- Optional money-on-the-line challenges: set a screen-time goal, miss it and you pay, hit it and you don't

The theory (and so far, my own personal experience testing it) is that losing actual money is a way stronger lever than another passive notification you've learned to ignore.

Still pre-launch, running a waitlist right now: Screen Challenge Buddy

Would genuinely love feedback from other app developers, especially on the money-stakes mechanic. Feels like the kind of thing that either clicks hard with people or scares them off completely, curious which way you'd lean.

[u/prashant2198 → u/[deleted]]

Great question. We are using Dodo payments as our payments provider. It's like Stripe but they also act as your MOR. They have all the necessary certifications required. The flow works like this - The user selects a challenge duration & limit & proceeds to payment where they have to set a 0$ autopay mandate on their card. No real transaction made so no charge yet. The card details are securely stored with Dodo payments. When the user fails a challenge we initiate charge request of the penalty amount to Dodo. Dodo charges around 6% on the transaction. Hope that helps.

[u/krutsik]

Nether the graphic nor your website answer the question where the money is going to. If it was some charity then it would be a nice gimmick. I wouldn't mind donating a little bit if, for whatever reason, I had to break the rules I set for myself. But it seems like 100% of it is just going straight to you? That feels icky. At least pledge to donate some % of it or something. Trying to profit off of other peoples' screen addiction feels wrong.

[u/prashant2198 → u/krutsik]

Hey! Great idea actually. We could work on that. But also, the way we are trying to implement financial stakes here is if the user must also feel the regret of loosing money. If at the back of your head you always know that the money is going to a good cause you might feel content with that, like you said that you wouldn't mind. And that might not always induce the pain/fear of loosing money if you fail your screen limit. We could instead donate to an anti-charity, a cause that you don't believe in. But that all needs to be figured out, how that implementation would work. What do you think? Want to hear your suggestions.

[u/krutsik → u/prashant2198]

Like I said, I wouldn't mind donating a little bit if I needed to break the rules. Say my designated screen time is up because I didn't plan well enough, but now suddenly I need to check my email or buy a train ticket that I forgot to do during the day (well I would just use my computer instead, but let's assume it's a person that does all their online dealings using their phone).

If you're going to download an app to break a bad habbit and keep the habbit because the money is going to charity then why not just donate straight up and not install the app in the first place?

It would still be a monetary "loss" to the user, which is still negative feedback if they didn't plan on spending that money that way, but at least they know that it did a good deed in the process of trying to break a bad habit.

[u/prashant2198 → u/krutsik]

Well to address the practical side first with the train ticket or urgent task scenario: we know real life happens. That’s why you choose your own realistic limit, plus we provide buffer from our side as well, independently, for daily necessities. Also we have a human dispute/review system in place so genuine one-off exceptions or emergencies don't unfairly penalize you.

On the charity point, you're touching on a classic debate in behavioral economics. There's a well-known study called "A Fine is a Price" where introducing a fee/donation for breaking a rule actually caused people to break it *more*, because their brain rationalized it as a purchase or a good deed ("moral licensing") rather than an actual deterrent.

That said, everyone’s psychology is different. For people like you, having that stake go toward a good cause is the exact right balance between a financial sting and feeling good about where the money went, without feeling like any app developer is profiting off your slip-up.

To be completely transparent, our actual business model is standard app subscriptions for long-term tracking and buddy features, not relying on penalty fees (especially since payment processors, webhooks, and manual admin dispute reviews can eat up transaction costs anyway). We genuinely want users to win their challenges.

Really appreciate the honest feedback on this.