Apps to reduce smartphone use: A review of One Sec.

A couple of weeks ago, I came across a viral tweet from journalist and cartoonist Gabrielle Drolet detailing how she had downloaded an app on her phone that opened her front camera every time she went to look at TikTok. got an app that opens my front camera every time I try to open tiktok and it is so violent pic.twitter.com/DwyUmIPDkF — Gabrielle Drolet May 16, 2024 Ironically, I found, when I looked into this further, that this “violent” app, One Sec, actually promotes a more peaceful method of getting yourself to log off. One Sec’s uniqueness lies in the fact that, in the app’s most basic form, it adds a time delay and suggests you take a deep breath before opening a specific app. I ran into some issues right off the bat: The first, as far as I could tell—though no amount of searching and reading made me sure—is that One Sec’s beta app for Android doesn’t have the feature that opens the front camera. Then, I went into One Sec and told it which apps I wanted it to roadblock for me—to start, Instagram, TikTok, X, and the New York Times Games app.