Inspiration
Screen time/social media, sleep issues, and loneliness are major contributors to high rates of sadness/hopelessness. According to the CDC, 4 in 10 students experience persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, with 20% seriously considering suicide and 9% actually attempting it (https://www.cdc.gov/healthy-youth/mental-health/index.html). As of 2025, over half (58%) of Washington adolescents report experiencing anxiety and/or depression. Approximately 114,000 out of 633,000 adolescents (~20%) need clinical care for these issues (https://www.childrensalliance.org/blog/our-new-report-identifies-promising-solutions-to-wa-youth-behvioral-health-crisis). Excessive screen time is linked to worse mental health, reduced physical activity, irregular sleep, and behavioral issues (https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/29/most-parents-think-their-kids-mental-health-is-getting-worse.html).
We aim to create an app that helps children develop healthy habits to combat such issues and carry these habits into a healthier adulthood.
What it does
The app provides regular reminders for water intake, medication, health checkups, etc.; a daily mood and wellness check-in where users log how they're feeling; and an off-app timer that grows a virtual plant the longer users stay off their phone. The current idea is to have an RPG-like game centered around the user's avatar and work similar to Pokemon GO or Animal Crossing to cater to a younger audience.
What makes our app stand out is that we incorporate screen reduction measures - including limits on our own app usage- so that the younger audience can develop good habits while refraining from excessive screen use.
How we built it
We built the app using Lovable, refining our prompts to match the design and components we envisioned.
Challenges we ran into
We came in with limited hackathon and coding experience, but we are genuinely impressed with how far we were able to achieve with Lovable.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
We're proud that we were able to bring our ideas to life and build a proof-of-concept that demonstrates the capabilities of the app.
What we learned
We learned that a good idea can go far, and that it's important to just start and see where it takes us.
What's next
If the app is deployed, it would be valuable to survey the needs of young users, incorporate their feedback, and continue gathering input as the app grows.
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