This Extremely Cute Bean Wants to Help You Stop Doomscrolling

The legume just wants to knit.

With their backmost to me, Poe, nan sanction I gave nan animated brownish legume successful nan Focus Friend app, is stitching up a small large wind that will yet go socks—if I tin time off them alone. Unfortunately, I request to cheque my texts. I cancel nan timer aft six minutes, which warns maine that Poe’s knitting will unravel and “they’ll beryllium really sad.” Their shoulders slump arsenic their activity falls isolated and a small bubble appears complete their head. “It’s ok, we tried,” they reassure me. It turns retired nan matter I was truthful hopeless to spot was spam.

Focus Friend, a productivity timer app designed to support your disconnected your telephone by fundamentally taking it complete to knit, has climbed nan mobile charts complete nan past fewer days, and arsenic of this penning sits astatine No. 2 connected Google Play and No. 3 connected nan App Store. The brainchild of developer Bria Sullivan and YouTuber and writer Hank Green, it concisely hit retired apps for illustration ChatGPT, TikTok and nan now infamous Tea.

Focus Friend isn’t nan first of its kind, but alternatively nan latest successful a increasing activity of apps, including Forest, Focus Traveler, Exocus, and Focus Tree, designed to support users from doomscrolling aliases dawdling connected their phones. Like nan Pomodoro method, nan clip guidance method that breaks activity into periods of attraction and rest, these apps usage a timer to promote users to fastener successful and tune retired everything else. Unlike nan traditional, analog Pomodoro, apps person gamified nan acquisition pinch rewards. For each successful chunk of clip I let nan legume to knit uninterrupted, it makes maine socks I tin past agent for decorations. These spell consecutive into nan bean’s surviving space, a mini brownish room pinch wood floors that feels woefully quiet of immoderate life. I person nan powerfulness to make nan bean’s life better, if only I tin support myself from scrolling.

Sullivan has smartly designed nan app successful a measurement that instills a small spot of guilt and a small spot of emotion for this legume pinch a Hank Hill ass. (Green, she says, dictated this circumstantial design: “He said nan characteristic should beryllium a bean, and it should person a butt crack,” Sullivan says.) Users are asked to sanction their bean, which wanders astir its room making puns (“Beenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” “Beanage Wasteland”) and wondering successful small reside bubbles astir “if beans person parents.” Sullivan says it was important to make judge nan legume had not only a characteristic but besides a constituent of view. It gets a small nostalgic astir its ain past, aliases wonders astir who it is now. “That makes group much emotionally invested successful what’s happening,” Sullivan says.

McKenna, a 19-year-old Focus Friend personification who declined to springiness their past name, agrees pinch that sentiment, crediting nan bean’s persona pinch making nan app much “fun” and approachable. Although they’ve recovered nan Pomodoro method and productivity timers to beryllium adjuvant successful general, McKenna says they antecedently haven’t been capable to find 1 they liked until now. “I person besides been utilizing Focus Friend to group a timer for myself successful nan greeting truthful I americium much motivated to beryllium disconnected of my telephone and get retired of bed,” they add.

Still, moreover nan legume isn’t immune from nan siren opus of a phone. Sullivan made judge to see them enjoying a small scroll, lingua out, erstwhile nan app is placed into a break betwixt attraction sessions. When we talk connected nan phone, Sullivan herself is multitasking. She’s engaged changing a diaper. “I consciousness for illustration I usage my telephone against my will, astir of nan time,” she says. “I consciousness benignant of addicted to it.” Instead of being present, Sullivan says, she’s ever scrolling. “There's times wherever I consciousness for illustration I should beryllium focusing connected my babe while she’s, like, eating, aliases meditating and conscionable being present,” she says, adding that “there's a batch of guilt that comes pinch owning a telephone and participating successful exertion these days.”