If you’re a parent, you might understand how absolutely maddening it is to try and communicate with your child or teen via cell phone.
First, you agree to purchase a cell phone for them because you want them to be safe and to be able to call for help or contact you if they ever need to. You also want to make sure that you can contact them at all times.
However, when they finally get the phone that you agreed to purchase for them, it doesn’t quite go that way.
That’s what UK father Nick Herbert found when he would try to reach his 13-year-old son Ben.
“My son started at school a couple of years ago and got a smartphone,” Nick told Metro. “I thought it would make getting hold of him easier, but it doesn’t at all. In fact, he is always playing games and has the phone on silent. It drives me crazy.”
So, Nick decided he would put an end to that by creating an app that would lock his son’s phone and sound an alarm that could only be turned off when his son responded to the message.
That app is now available to parents everywhere.
“I’m hoping the app will make our relationship better,” he said. “It will alleviate the stress when I can’t get hold of him as I will know that he has seen my message.”
The app is called ReplyASAP and is currently available to Android users.
“An alarm will continue to sound until the child presses one or two buttons that are across the screen,” Nick tells ABC News. “In order to carry on with what they’re doing, they have to press one of the buttons that tells the parents that they’ve seen the messages.”
The child can choose to snooze for 3 minutes or cancel and the app will let the parent know which option was chosen. Nick says his app can also be used as a “safety mechanism” for contact elderly family members or work colleagues in urgent scenarios.
Nick hopes to make his app available on iPhone soon.
“As they are teenagers I realize they aren’t going to be massively keen,” he told Metro. “My son hasn’t really said anything negative about the app. It is all about him understanding why it’s there. If I have something important to say I will send an urgent message. Hopefully it will make this easier.”
You can learn all about the app at www.replyasap.co.uk.
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