The research behind Scoreboard

Phones take a big share of the day

US adults say they spend about 5 hours a day on their phones and check them about 205 times a day.¹

In a review of 20 studies covering 125,198 kids aged 6 to 19, using a phone or tablet at bedtime went with less sleep and worse sleep.²

Seeing your progress helps, more when others see it

Across 138 experiments with 19,951 people, tracking progress toward a goal helped people reach it, and it helped more when the progress was reported or made public.³

On Scoreboard, your score sits on a board your friends see. Friends see your score and how it splits by category; never which apps, never what you did in them, never anything on your screen.

Goals work better out loud

Across randomized trials with 16,523 people, setting a goal changed behavior by a small amount on average. It worked best when the goal was hard, set publicly, or shared by a group.⁴

Everyone on a board plays for the same goal: lowest score wins.

Friendly competition moves people

In a trial with 790 university students, those who could compare themselves with others went to 90% more exercise classes than those who couldn't. Comparison beat support.⁵

In a trial of 602 US adults with overweight or obesity, a 24 week step competition raised daily steps the most of three game designs: about 920 more a day than the control group.⁶

Across 16 trials with 2,407 people, game style programs raised physical activity by a small to medium amount.⁷

On phones, early results

In a three week study of 62 people at a Korean university, those who limited their phones together in groups of friends cut daily use from about 234 to 177 minutes. Those using a solo version saw no significant drop.⁸

In a randomized experiment with about 2,000 US adults on Android phones in 2020, letting people set limits on their future screen time substantially reduced their social media use.⁹

Scoreboard's Focus is a block you set for 5 to 120 minutes, with every app blocked except the ones your iPhone always allows.

Where it can go wrong

Comparison can backfire. In a field experiment on home energy, showing households the neighborhood average saved energy or backfired, depending on whether a home was already using a lot or a little. A note of approval stopped the backfire.¹⁰

In the Korean phone study's pilots, a ranking of every participant let a few top players dominate, which put off people lower down, and people cared little about ranking against strangers. The final app ranked people within each group of friends, and groups against each other.⁸

Effects also fade: activity fell once the step game ended, and gamification's effect was smaller at follow up.^6,7

On Scoreboard, every board is your friends or a group you're in, and you can leave a group any time.