A frustrated dad has delighted parents everywhere by inventing an app that will disable your kids’ phone until they stop ignoring you and actually text back. Talk about genius!
- Nick Herbert was sick of his son not answering him. The UK man was regularly ignored by his son Ben, who never texted him back despite the fact that he’d bought the boy a smartphone particularly for that purpose. When repeated requests for Ben to change his behavior yielded no results, he decided to take a different approach.
- The RespondASAP app was born. The purpose of the app is simple: it locks kids’ phones until they reply to their parents. The way it works is just as straightforward: when you send a message to your child, a notification pops up on their screen no matter what they’re doing and makes loud noises even if their phone is on silent. They won’t be able to dismiss the message without replying, and parents receive a confirmation that their message was seen.
- It’s a frustrating issue for sure. “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 I wouldn’t know,” Herbert explains on the website. “As such, when I try and contact him, he rarely answers, either because he doesn’t hear the phone or because (and I’ve finally had to admit this to myself) he may be embarrassed to speak to his dad in front of his friends.” Well, now he doesn’t have a choice!
- Even Herbert’s son thinks the product is a great idea. Herbert says on his website that despite the app being born out of frustration, his son actually appreciates its usefulness in his life and was instrumental in its development. “During the development process, I spoke to Ben and showed him the designs and thinking behind the app and he likes the idea because he will know that if he gets one of these messages then he will always hear it and will know it’s important,” he wrote. “He will also have the ability to send me these messages, so there is a mutual understanding that using ReplyASAP is only for important things and not because he needs new batteries for his Xbox controller.”
- So far, it’s only available for Android. While an iOS app is apparently on the way, at the moment, you’ll only be able to get RespondASAP on Android devices. That being said, you can still send messages TO Apple devices, so even if your child has an iPhone, you can still get through to them. You can even schedule messages to be sent at a later time!
- For the price, it’s a total life-saver. The basic subscription level is about $1.25 USD, a small price to pay for being able to get through to your child if doing so isn’t easy. While you shouldn’t have to get an app just to get your son or daughter’s attention, there’s no sense in denying that sometimes, things like these are necessary.
[H/T Distractify]
