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Every Time You Check Your Phone, A Tree Dies
Or So It Seems With The Forest App (An Experiment On Myself)
It shouldn’t be possible for a tree dying to guilt trip the fuck out of me every time I picked up my phone.
Its a bunch of pixels!
Colour hex codes!
Clever scripts and codes.
But no, every time I checked my phone and thought of the consequences to my budding virtual tree, the pain of thinking about the upcoming demise of the said tree was enough to make me stop, think and reconsider the relationship with my phone.
I had two choices — either pick up the phone, enjoy another 5 minutes of mindless Instagram scrolling while my tree died, or let my tree sink its new roots into the virtual soil.
This is the power of Forest.
Created by Chinese app maker Shaokan Pi, Forest is an unusual app to help you stay focused on the task at hand. Users can grow a virtual forest by not using their phones during designated times they set.
If you have virtual green fingers (or the sheer discipline to not pick up your phone every 5 minutes), voila! You earn virtual currency to buy new trees in-app.
