This app makes you literally touch grass before you can use social media

If you’re an avid doomscroller, you’ve likely been told to touch grass.

According to a 2024 report, about 1 in 2 adults in the U.S. are exposed to “excessive” screen time — which is defined as seven or more hours per day — and about 30% of adults reach that point just from recreational activity, not from work.

It’s important for those who are spending seven hours per day on their screens to go “touch grass,” a popular internet slang term that means participating in activities in the real world as opposed to online experiences and interactions.

Now there’s an app that will quite literally make you touch grass before you can scroll again.

The viral app, called Touch Grass, of course, will ask you to select two apps that you find to be the most distracting or the most time-consuming, and the app will block them.

The only way to unlock your apps is to take a picture of yourself outside literally touching grass and uploading it to Touch Grass. You’ll then be able to choose how much time you can have on each app.

While some people use an app timer, which kicks you off of an app after a certain amount of time on it, Touch Grass forces the user to go outside — and you can’t use the app at all until you do so.

The app was created by British app developer Rhys Kentish when he noticed he was spending too much time on his phone and decided he didn’t want to be part of a statistic.

“My reflex in the morning was to reach over, grab my phone and start scrolling. I knew this wasn’t healthy and on top of that, I needed an incentive to get outside more, especially in the winter months,” Kentish told CNET.

“I also love apps that merge the digital world with the real world and I found the concept of touching grass funny, so I thought, why not create an app that forces me to do so?”

Touch Grass will be available in the App Store for iPhone users on Friday, March 14, and it’s available for pre-order now. The app is free, though upgrading will cost $6 per month or $50 annually.

Upgrading to the pro tier will allow the user to block an unlimited number of apps rather than just two and will give more detailed screen time reports. Users can also get one free skip per month where they can unlock their apps without going outside, but any more skips will need to be purchased.

Kentish knows the idea is silly, but he believes there’s also a genuine end goal.

“I hope it first gives [users] a good laugh, but more importantly I hope it offers them a chance to disconnect from the shackles of the digital world and allow them to connect with nature more,” he told CNET.