Screen Time Accountability

In early 2022 I had a call with a mentor of mine, and we were discussing desire. First we talked about Psalm 37:4 which says, “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart,” and then we transitioned into Mark 11:24 which reads, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” There are obviously nuances to these verses that I won’t get into, but in the moment my mentor asked me what was a desire of my heart. And the first thing that came to mind was building an app that helps people stay off their phones, particularly through relationship and accountability with others. At the time I had no real experience in building applications, but I had plenty of experience with screen time addiction, and I wanted to help be a part of the solution.

In the weeks ahead we prayed into this desire, and we both felt like this was something God was leading me to pursue. I even got confirmation through “randomly” hearing about an unadvertised free mini class my college was allowing some students to take to learn how to build apps with a no-code program. So fully believing this was God’s will, I dove into building Screen Freedom.

About a year and a half later I graduated college and was close to finishing the app. Admittedly, the no-code program was more limited than I had once believed, and the end result of the application greatly disappointed me, but it was the best I was able to do with the resources I had. However, right around that time the platform altered their cost structure, and unfortunately their new method of determining costs made my app design extremely expensive. In order to keep the app at the low subscription cost I desired to reach more people, I would have lost a ton of money. So I entered a week of prayer and fasting.

I had recently attended a conference where a multitude of testimonies were told concerning times God had asked people to give things up or do new things in their lives. At the time, doing what God asked seemed obvious, but when I began to sense that God wanted me to learn how to code in order to build Screen Freedom in a way that would be user friendly and actually change people’s lives, I began to push back. But God slowly worked on my heart, and by the end of the week I was fully committed to learning Swift and SwiftUI coding and building Screen Freedom the right way.

The learning and building process was long and strenuous, but God was faithful all the way through. After a couple of rebuilds, I was able to complete a beta version of the app in September of 2025 that offered a free version for personal use but only granted access to partnering with a friend and holding each other accountable for a small subscription cost. This cost barrier to the true value in my app always worried me, but at the time I thought it was necessary to help provide for reoccurring app expenses and to help make a living.

However, a few months later when I was thinking about the small amount of revenue an app called Quotes – Daily Book Quotes that I had developed as a side project was generating, I was struck with the idea of making Screen Freedom free and covering its costs with the revenue from Daily Book Quotes. And after praying through this and consulting with a few mentors, I fully believed this idea was from God. So today I am thrilled to offer Screen Freedom for completely free. The goal of this project was always to set as many people free from the hold our phones have over our lives as possible, and now the app is best positioned to do so. I truly hope you enjoy using it and that it helps change your life for the better in this one small way.

Caleb Grieser