When children are young, it’s much easier to tell them to ‘get off the iPad’ and they’ll comply, but once they reach pre-teen years it starts to become much harder to have discussions about screen time.
Well, one Greek Australian family are making screen management easier for parents.
Peter Kakris and his wife Stephanie created ScreenCoach when their son was 15 and daughter 10, after they too noticed excessive time playing video games and iPad use.
They had purchased four of the leading solutions on the market, and found that they all had shortcomings, like not supporting every device, technical issues or only working once because kids learn to play offline games or watch movies they have downloaded.
But most of all these solutions didn’t link up with Peter’s philosophy of allowing kids to earn extra screen time.
“I’ve always been big on sticker charts and behavioural rewards and stuff like that,” he told Neos Kosmos.
“Telling kids if you do your homework, do some exercise or eat some fruit, and trying to use screen time as a reward because they love it so much.”
Peter, with his 30+ years of experience as a founder and part owner of several successful IT companies, and Stephanie with a Masters in Sport Psychology, used their expertise to create a unique solution.
“If I, with a computer science degree and a life in technology, can’t solve this technological issue well then what chance does the standard parent have?”
A very real problem
Speaking to parents and even children, he has seen that screen time causes conflict in families.
But he said it’s not just about the conflict.
“All the health professionals agree there are issues loaded with excessive screen time that have mental health and physical health impacts.”
“I was highly motivated and inspired by the cause, because the problem is massive.
“Everywhere you go, you see the problem and you speak to parents and it’s impacting everything.
“I spoke to a PE teacher, and he said even just calculating the speed of kids that are doing 100 metres and how bad that’s dropped off over the years and how kids are just so unfit and they got no coordination because kids aren’t doing sport and stuff anymore, they’re just staying indoors.”
Seeing a gap in the market his company LifeTech Balance created ScreenCoach, but there is more to the app.
ScreenCoach is three systems in one – screen time management for families, behavioural change and pocket money management.
“The key thing for me is to help make a positive difference in the world and to help kids learn good behaviours, self-manage, to teach them that they can earn more,” Peter said.
“All these things are crucial to helping our younger generation go forward and also have a healthier family by removing arguments.
Kids become motivated to earn screentime by doing chores or other activities and they can also earn their own tokens and gems that can go towards pocket money.
“We have a virtual bank balance system, so kids can know at any point what their pocket money is.
“It’s actually teaching kids financial literacy as well.
“What they’re doing is they’re subconsciously learning these new behaviours about being helpful.”
Peter refers to it as using the carrot rather than the stick.
Keeping the app up and running
After three and a half years of development, ScreenCoach recently entered the market as a “soft launch”.
It’s been a long hard journey to get to this point said Peter, with the idea dating back to pre-COVID and pre-inflation.
Back when those startups would find it easier to get investment.
But by the time they created the prototype to show people, the world had changed and people became less likely to invest.
And while they did win two federal government grants, totalling $1million, they raised the rest of the investment from mainly smaller pre-seed investors and themselves, having spent over $3.5m to create the solution.
While they are an Australian startup, and looking to drive growth in Australia, they are looking globally for users, affiliates and investors.
