Students: Stop texting so freaking much

A recent survey of eighth and eleventh grade students revealed that 12 percent of girls and 3 percent of boys are compulsive texters, sending over 100 messages per day. The survey did not include making posts or sending photos through Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, or other social networks.

Compulsive texters have little to no ability to control when or how often they check and send text messages. They often try to cut back on texting and become defensive and frustrated when they can’t change their behavior. Like adult addictions of drugs, alcohol, or gambling, texting is an addiction that an alarming number of high school and college students just can’t kick.

So what if students are texting all the time? Does it negatively impact their lives? You bet. Compulsive texting is being increasingly linked to depression, anxiety, lower productivity, lower grades, sleep deprivation, and other psychological problems.

The inability to control impulses to check, send, and post messages and photos through social apps is becoming one of the biggest threats to the ambition, success, and happiness of the young generation.

Using a little app to send a message or to snap and post a photo seems harmless enough, but the big app companies are extremely sophisticated, worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and have hired armies of “attention engineers” to increase their number of users and the time users spend in their app. They use cognitive tricks to hijack the young, developing minds of students and reinforce their compulsive behaviors.

More users and more time spent in their app means more ad revenue for the big social media companies. Students have effectively become pawns in the war for serving ads. Started in 2004, Facebook is now worth $362 billion. Started in 2011, Snapchat is rumored to be going public soon at a value of around $25 billion. Cha-ching.

Don’t get me wrong, social apps have value because they allow information to be shared much faster and more broadly. But the time absorbed by checking, sending, posting, and surfing is now causing these addictive apps to take more value from their users than they are giving back.

Is there a good social app out there? One that will help students restore their ambitions, boost their productivity and self-esteem, and focus on quality over quantity of relationships?
Yes. It was just launched and it’s called AZHA.

Azha is a powerful, social to-do list and calendar app that has retooled many of the addictive features used by the big social apps to incentive accomplishment and building stronger relationships with your closest family and friends.

Azha still lets you spy on what people are up to, take silly photos, draw squiggles, add captions, and send messages, but only when you and your friends get things done.

Right…a to-do list app that will make me feel good, and I’ll like it as much as Snapchat? LOL, ROFL.

OMG, hang on, I have a text from my bff!

Download Azha free on the App Store:

Students: increased cell phone use lowers GPA

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But this time what's happening is positively impacting their future.

Azha is available free on the App Store:

Social media addiction may ruin a generation


The big social networks are very powerful applications that can have positive impacts on the world and the people who use them. The ability to disseminate information and organize have empowered more people to effect positive change. However, the apps are being continuously designed and engineered to increase metrics likes "average sessions per user," "time in app per user," and "median session length" so the app companies can serve more ads and make more money.

The job of "attention engineers," as they are sometimes referred, is to exploit people's weaknesses and use cognitive tricks to make people more addicted to an app. A former design ethicist at Google describes some of the tricks used by the big social media companies to hijack the minds of their users - like those red notification badges that you have to tap to see what you missed during the past 10 minutes.

The problem is so big that even major news organizations like Huffington Post are dedicating reporting to the topic of social media addition.

The result of this addictive engineering is that the average adult now spends 5 hours per day on their phone. The average student spends 9 hours - that's 135 days of every year spent on a phone.

Social media addiction is an epidemic that must be dealt with immediately. A solution is especially important for the younger generation whose brains are still developing. Social apps are causing irreparable harm to the development and functioning of the attention centers of their brains, not to mention their time is being allocated away from doing things in the real world that will advance their studies, careers, and ambitions.

The brain's dopamine response to social media apps is similar to that of drugs, alcohol, or junk food - a quick, easily digestible fix that makes people want to repeat the activity, even if it is detrimental to their productivity, self-esteem, and well-being.

Many people are well past the "tipping point" at which the negative impact of social media outweighs the positive social gains. Thousands of hours of beneficial, real-life activities are being replaced with mindless scrolling through updates, images, videos, and ad in a virtual world.

Azha has retooled the addictive features used by the big guys to create a powerful to-do list and calendar app that will shoot your productivity and self-esteem through the roof by making you addicted to getting things done in your real life.

Azha is the healthy, organic alternative to the overdose of junk food served by the big social apps. And you won't even realize how much healthier your app diet is because Azha is super tasty. With a proper diet of Azha and more Azha, your social media hunger pangs will lessen over time.

Azha is free on the App Store. We dare you to give it a shot: