Lookupp wins Rep. David Rouzer’s 2022 Congressional App Challenge in North Carolina’s Seventh District

When asked what inspired the creation of Lookupp, the students said, ”Every Sunday when I was in middle school, my neighborhood buddies and I would beg our parents for money, run out the door, fasten our helmets, and cycle to the nearby Keg n’ Egg restaurant for breakfast. The server would seat us at our normal spots, and we were completely absorbed in each other’s company.

However, after we started high school, I observed a new trend at breakfast. We simply couldn’t put our phones down. We were right in front of each other, only a few feet apart, but not truly present. Our weekly conversations, which were previously filled with joy, laughter, and stories, have been replaced by quiet, isolation, and mindless phone scrolling. I no longer looked forward to breakfast as the months went by, and I felt increasingly alienated and lonely throughout the week.

I wasn’t the only one who felt like I was losing people because of screens. My younger brother went through something similar. My teachers, like myself, had lost students, I noticed. It didn’t stop there; I’d go to any of my friends’ houses and ask their parents how they felt about it, and they were just as frustrated as I was.

Both my brother and I spent nearly a year investigating dozens of apps and determining what to do to improve outcomes. Finally, I feel that limiting screen time is counterproductive in encouraging more screen-free people time. So, with the help of behavioral economics, the science of decision-making, I decided to create an app.

As I built this app, my community encouraged me. Lookupp was named the winner of a regional social innovation competition for high school students. Dr. Elham Ibrahimi, a UNC Wilmington professor, and Dr. Larry Hodges, computer science chair of the North Carolina School of Science and Math (as well as the co-founder of two startup companies), have also agreed to work with me on this project.

I was recently acknowledged as a changemaker when Taco Bell/Ashoka Ambition Accelerator chose Lookupp as one of the top 25 social venture projects out of 300 projects submitted nationwide. The monetary assistance I got from Taco has pushed me to move even faster. To put it simply, I truly believe that the current generation is being slowly destroyed by excessive screen time; it is analogous to digital cocaine. And, for me, contributing to this problem is an inspiration in and of itself.”