Kids these days learn how to use a smartphone before they learn how to walk. Well, pretty much. Parents supply kids with phones as early as four years old! Some parents give smartphones to kids so they can stay occupied by playing games or roaming the internet, while some want to be able to communicate with them. However, most of the time, the parents have a more difficult time to contact them than before they had the phone.
Nick Herbert, a dad from the UK, was one of the many parents who have difficulties getting their kid to respond to them. He came up with an ingenious plan – an app that will lock a child’s phone until they reply. Herbert named the app RespondASAP, the app’s website explains why he needed to build the phone-blocking app, and why it’s essential to have it.
The ironic part about Herbert’s story is that he originally bought the phone, hoping for better communication with his son, but it ended up being a distraction instead.
He came to realize there were three main reasons why his son didn’t respond to him:
- He was spending more time playing games and watching videos.
- He would keep the phone on silent, missing his father’s texts or calls.
- He was embarrassed to talk to his father when friends were around.
Herbert wrote:
What I thought was a solution turned into a different problem. Because the phone was ‘smart,’ he could play games and watch videos on it. So invariably, he keeps his phone on silent so that I wouldn’t know.
The message apps inform us if a message has been seen or not. However, the seen message can be ignored, so Herbert brewed up a solution of RespondASAP.
The app provides several features that could be very useful to the parent:
- Option to either send or schedule future messages.
- All the parents’ messages are audible even when the recipient’s phone is on silent.
- Notifications continue until the message is acknowledged.
- No matter what program the phone is running, the app will block the display until the message has been replied.
- The app can share the kids’ location to the parent.
After Herbert developed the app, he showed the designs to his son Ben. He explained to him how the app worked, and Ben agreed it’s a good idea. Ben acknowledged that the app would help him reply because it would help him understand which are the urgent messages.
Additionally, the app goes both ways. Ben could also use ReplyASAP on his father. So, if tables turned and his dad wasn’t responding to his messages, he can send urgent messages to him too.
Currently, the parent app is only available on Android phones but will soon be available for iOS devices too. RespondASAP only costs £0.99 ($1.29) to connect to one other person.
