MINNEAPOLIS — When Aaron Siddiky checked his screen time usage on his phone, it showed a daily average of 10 hours and 40 minutes.
"If you're on your phone for 10 hours and 40 minutes — which is not an outlier case at all in our generation — that's really not healthy," Siddiky said.
Wanting to help people cut down on mindless scrolling, Siddiky founded AxaBlock in 2022 at the age of 16. AxaBlock is a platform that targets users with excessive screen time, using financial incentives to help promote healthier screen usage.
Siddiky, now a senior at Hopkins High School, added two co-founders to the team.
Wayzata High Seniors Dhruv Vishal Gupta and Darrel Zhao met Siddiky during a post-secondary class at the University of Minnesota.
"One year prior, I actually completed a short film with one of my other friends. It was actually about digital well-being and social media addiction," said Zhao, who is now a co-founder and the chief financial officer. "I'm really into standing up for or trying to solve this issue of social media addiction that I witnessed so much throughout people my age and throughout the high schools that I visit. Once I met Aaron, I knew our social missions aligned very well."
Vishal Gupta, a co-founder and chief operations officer, added, "The more that you use social media, the less focus that you have on other things that you do. So you're more likely to want to keep scrolling for that instant dopamine hit."
Currently, they are developing the AxaBlock app with the idea of "swipe less, earn more."
Users can choose from public challenges to participate in. For example, putting $5 into a week-long challenge called "scroll saver." Say the challenge is to limit Instagram and TikTok usage to 10 minutes per day.
"But then I, after two days, decide to use Instagram for two hours. I start losing money from that initial amount that I put in. That money then gets redistributed among the people that were successful," Siddiky explained. "When it comes to social media addiction, usually there is an intermediary. Either a parent kind of telling a kid that, 'Hey, spend less time on your phone,' or it's on my own self-discipline. But with AxaBlock, that self-discipline comes from that financial incentive aspect of it."
While the app could work for any age group, they are targeting ages 14-27.
"I think social media addiction isn't treated as big of an addiction as other things which we think is personally wrong," Siddiky said.
AxaBlock has caught the attention of MN Cup — the country's largest statewide startup competition.
Earlier this month, the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management and Holmes Center for Entrepreneurship announced 90 companies advancing to the semifinals. MN Cup had a record-breaking 3,178 applicants this year.
MN Cup offers more than $400,000 dollars in cash prizes. The program also offers the semifinalists mentorship and educational workshops and events throughout the summer.
AxaBlock is in the youth division.
"We're competing in one of ten companies where we have a chance of around $20,000. If we move forward to the grand finale, we'll be competing against companies from across all divisions," Siddiky said. "It's really a humbling experience for us."
If they won, money would go into developing the app. They've received more than 100 applications from high schoolers interested in internships with AxaBlock.
MN Cup winners will be determined in September.
In the fall, Siddiky will be attending Columbia University to study computer science and financial economics. Meanwhile, Gupta is headed to Georgia Institute of Technology for computer engineering and biomedical engineering, while Zhao plans to study biomedical engineering and economics at Northwestern University.
They plan on developing the app throughout the summer, testing it in the fall and launching in the first quarter of 2025.
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