Hi, I’m Alex, dad of an addicted teen to his phone, for a year, I’m working on a projet to limit teen phone overexposure : I’ve created POZZZ, a smart pouch similar to the cookie box in The Social Dilemma except that your child is involved in a positive manner, let me explain…
My son is spending hours on his smartphone, often it’s creating friction and conflict comes in. I tried to regulate his screen time by confiscating his phone, turning off the wifi, and also setting up a parental control, nothing is working very well so far. Since I’m running a company in smart textile, a year ago, I decided to create a smart pouch with an app to put my kid’s phone hidden from him with rewards and gamification for every phone pause, POZZZ was born.
Every 15 min the phone is in the pouch is rewarded via a zipper / Bluetooth activated points system. POZZZ also has a night mode to preserve teens sleep which is very precious. POZZZ works as well for adults.
We are on Kickstarter for 3 days and we need the help of a larger community.
So if you are curious and if you want to back the project, it’s here : https://pozzz.kckb.st/51d41139
Thank you so much, best,
Alexandre
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Thanks for posting this, @Alexandre. Pozzz looks to be very interesting and addressing of a real need. The execution on kickstarter looks well thought-out, and you have a large team behind the initiative.
What I am most curious about in terms of humane technology is the app you provide. It uses strong elements of gamification in its habit tracker. Many people are very critical of gamification. I don’t share that criticism as long as the gamification is done well and has no deceptive elements in it (“dark patterns” or better deception patterns). I.e. as a game that parents and their children agree to play, and are completely aware of the rules of the game.
Something that is worrying overall is the behavioral targeting that’s described in your privacy policy, and is present on your website (with 10 trackers on it) and - I deduce - in your app as well. I am strongly against this form of advertising. In this case very sensitive information is handed over to the Wild West data markets as input to surveillance capitalism.
I’d urge you to consider take aspects of health and well-being further than the physical / addictive elements related to smartphone use. If doing so, I am convinced you can develop the additional measures you take as USP’s for your company. Consider Ethical Advertising, defend collected PII “with your life” (Privacy USP), and be radically open and transparent on the ways you conduct business. In other words: Strive to become a Sustainable Business.
One thing I currently note, for instance, is that make no guarantees how you protect your customers, or whether - with your ad-model in place - the buyers are even your customers or that once again “they are the product”. It is not clear what your revenue model is, and if e.g. you intend to have In-App Purchases 3rd-party integrations. With the low price point of the pouch this seems something you might well intend to have.
Wishing you all the best developing this to something great, and worthy for the new, modern society where consumers matter again beyond their purchasing power 
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Hi Arnold,
Thank you very much for your feedbacks, they are precious to improve our web site policies.
Regarding the core product itself, we do respect PII, there is no dark pattern, our core and goal is to help families with a new tool to deal with their teens phone over-exposure.
Thank you again! Alexandre
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Glad you mentioned “Social Dilemma”, cos I immediately thought of that.
As I set out in my review, the Mom in that was overoptimistic that the cookie jar alone would work, so I really rate this solution: a smart cookie jar to gamify putting phone to sleep: nice.
I agree with Arnold’s scepticism though: it’s really hard to convince people you’re not just another gamified digital product tryna play THEM !
Here’s a nice tool to check what’s in your site: Blacklight – The Markup
For apps there’s Exodus Privacy (even when you’re not consciously adding trackers, they can come with a framework you’re using).
Thank you guys for the links and for your feedbacks.
We are going to improve, we are doing our best in that direction.
Thanks again
Hi Alexandre,
I have just translated your message in italian language and posted it on my FB page Humane Tech for Education - Italy.
All the best!
Luigi