Turn Off Towers

Are we becoming more and more addicted to our phones? Is the amount of time we spend staring at screens having detrimental effects on our lives? I designed ‘Turn Off Towers’ which is a mobile phone app that encourages teenagers to use their phones less with the aim to help improve academic skills, develop better social skills as well as exposing them to less cyber bullying/online hate, hopefully avoiding many mental health issues we see evolving from the use of social media in the long run as well as physical screen-related health complications. So how can an app that you use on your phone encourage you to spend less time on it? Turn Off Towers is a game you play by not actually playing it at all. Whenever the user is not active on their phone, their city grows (the idea here being that whilst this expands, so does their real life through spending less time glued to their device) and when they are using their phone, this simulation pauses. You can then compare with others how long you have spent on your phone that day and show off your creation.