“Go contact grass,” which implies to go exterior and take a stroll, has turn into a quippy suggestion ― or a comeback ― meant to encourage individuals to sign off from the web (and possibly get a actuality test).
Now, a brand new productiveness app is making individuals really do it.
If you end up reaching on your cellphone earlier than your eyes totally open or sense that you just’re getting too fired up by feedback on social media, there’s a brand new app that goals to curb your obsessive have to scroll: Touch Grass.
Obtainable for iOS 17 units or later, the brand new Contact Grass app, which guarantees to “end the doomscrolling,” requires you to take an image of your self touching grass earlier than you may regain entry to your apps. Within the app’s free “grass detection system,” you may choose as much as two time-wasting apps for Contact Grass to watch.
App blocking packages will not be new. Each iPhones and Androids have built-in choices to restrict entry to apps at set occasions of the day. On iOS units, it’s by means of the Screen Time setting. And on Androids, it’s by means of the Digital Wellbeing settings.
However what makes Contact Grass completely different is the way it requires you to take motion and supply proof you walked exterior and disconnected from the shackles of social media. When you hit your time restrict in your chosen app, Contact Grass would require you to submit a photograph of grass earlier than you may proceed to scroll to your coronary heart’s content material.
If operating exterior to the touch grass will not be an possibility, the app permits you to select to “skip” the touch-grass requirement as soon as a month without cost after which for at the very least 0.99 cents thereafter.
The app’s web site said it makes use of “laptop imaginative and prescient to confirm it’s actual grass in real-time.”
Sounds nice in idea. However based mostly alone (unofficial) testing, the caveat to utilizing this app as your new display screen time surveillance is that it seems to have a strict definition of what qualifies as grass.
I dwell in New York Metropolis, and my avenue nook remains to be rising from winter’s hibernation. There isn’t a actual grass but, however there are a couple of spring flowers and a bush close by. However “Contact grass” discounted each of my makes an attempt to attach with nature to regain entry to TikTok.
HuffPost/”Contact Grass” app
“Good attempt, however we haven’t detected any grass!” the app scolded me. In different phrases, your mileage for the way helpful this app is might rely in your proximity to grasslands. (So good luck if the bottom is roofed in snow?)
Proper now, Contact Grass is simply out there on later variations of iOS, however its developer has said an Android possibility is coming sooner or later.
To make Contact Grass greater than a enjoyable gimmick, you’ll want to do extra than simply take pics.
Staying on our telephones for longer than we wish is an actual downside many people cope with, together with Contact Grass’ app developer.
Rhys Kentish, the U.Ok. developer behind the app, instructed CNET that he bought the thought for the app after realizing his first impulse every morning was to start out scrolling on his cellphone.
“I knew this wasn’t wholesome and on high of that, I wanted an incentive to get exterior extra particularly within the winter months.” Kentish said. “I additionally love apps that merge the digital world with the actual world and I discovered the idea of touching grass humorous, so I assumed, why not create an app that forces me to take action?”
A mindfulness observe can assist us fight our urge to scroll by regulating our nervous system and instructing us how you can settle for ideas and bodily sensations. And if an app is your gateway to doing this, that might be useful, stated Alicia Velez, a licensed medical social employee.
Nonetheless, Velez stated, to make the Contact Grass app most useful, you’ll want to transcend simply, nicely, bodily touching a blade of grass.
“The important thing right here is doing one thing deliberately, purposefully and mindfully,” she stated. “Should you’re not interacting with the grass, with its colours, its bristles, the sensations in your hand, its texture, its odor, then you’re defeating the purpose of getting a aware second.”
In different phrases, it shouldn’t really feel like a chore to go discover grass; it ought to really feel like a break out of your on a regular basis routine.
“Your mileage for the way helpful this app is might rely in your proximity to grasslands.”
It is usually attainable to reset your display screen time habits with out downloading a brand new app.
You may attempt curating what you see with out totally blocking your self from utilizing an app, really useful Stacy Thiry, a licensed therapist at Develop Remedy.
As a substitute of scrolling endlessly on TikTok and Instagram, “concentrate on a couple of dependable sources that present balanced, factual data,” Thiry stated. “This helps stop the sensation of being pulled in several instructions by conflicting studies and opinions.”
Velez additionally really useful the recommendation of Catherine Value, the writer of “How to Break Up With Your Phone.” Within the guide, Value recommends asking your self three questions earlier than you choose up your cellphone to scroll: “What for? Why now? What else?”
“Asking your self these questions helps to create some intentionality as a substitute of mindlessly reaching for one thing that will really trigger you extra hurt,” Velez defined.
The excellent news is that following Value’s recommendation doesn’t require you to obtain a brand new app; it simply requires you to shift your mind-set, which can be a lot tougher for brains like mine which have turn into fried from the short dopamine hits that TikTok scrolling rewards.
“The issue will not be the cellphone, it’s extra so how we work together with the cellphone,” Velez stated.
So be happy to take footage of grass if it conjures up you to cease doomscrolling, however know that the true work of constructing a greater relationship together with your cellphone goes to take longer than a couple of nature footage.
