The Carrots&Cake team with Co-Founder Meredith DePaolo (centre)
When COVID-19 broke out and lockdown came into effect, Meredith DePaolo, her husband Hamel Shah, and their two daughters were confined to the four walls of their home in Kuala Lumpur.
The couple noticed considerable behavioural changes in their kids as they spent their whole day on screens for education, socialisation, and recreation. The Shahs tried Apple Screen Time and some other parental controls on the devices, but these features didn’t consider how the device use affected kids’ behaviour.
“We wanted something better,” DePaolo tells e27. “Just like a parent would never serve a plate of broccoli alongside a giant slice of cake, you can’t hand a child a device with DuoLingo and TikTok and expect him or her to have the self-discipline to do any learning.”
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This motivated DePaolo and Shah to develop Carrots&Cake, an app focused on improving the quality of kids’ screen time.
Shah, a Cambridge University and INSEAD graduate from Britain, is a serial entrepreneur and founder of 101Candles, Amiri Capital, and Azimuth Global Partners. DePaolo, a Yale University graduate from the US, worked as a screenwriter and producer for two cable startups (subsequently acquired by CBS and NBC Universal). The couple came to Malaysia about 15 years ago for a six-month work stint but fell in love with the country and stayed back.
‘Eat the vegetables before the dessert’
Based out of Kuala Lumpur, Carrots&Cake is a parental control learning app that gets kids to learn first and play later. The app is based on the age-old parenting adage ‘eat your vegetables before your dessert’.
“Most parental control apps are one-sided; parents impose them on kids. Sometimes, those apps spy on kids’ private behaviour or geo-track them, weakening the family dynamic and triggering reactance, which is a rebellious behaviour kids engage in when they feel their autonomy is threatened,” says DePaolo.
“Carrots&Cake, on the other hand, helps parents select learning apps with a high cognitive load – anything they already own or anything in the App Store. When kids turn on their devices, these are the only apps they can access. When learning time finishes, the rest of the apps on the device are unblocked. Kids still get to enjoy free time, so they still maintain their agency,” she says.
According to DePaolo, by balancing the approach to screen time, Carrots&Cake has avoided dopamine-driven feedback loops, introduced delayed gratification, and countered the persuasive design of the apps that keep kids hooked. Kids have fewer screen time tantrums, and parents can hand over devices guilt-free.
“Our approach to the screen time dilemma is grounded in behavioural neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science,” she reveals. “Our app prioritises learning to make devices more beneficial and less addictive. Parents can pick from any apps available in the App Store, ensuring their kids have a best-in-class educational experience tailored to each child in their family.”
Create daily screen time schedules
Parents choose the learning apps (Carrots) they want their kids to do. This isn’t limited to, say, math or reading but includes music lessons, meditation, arts and crafts, and exercise apps.
Here, parents can create daily screen time schedules for their kids—for example, Monday for maths and more free time on the weekend. They choose how much learning time and free time kids get and customise screen time schedules around the family’s routine.
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The key advantages are that learning time is focused and distraction-free, and through micro-learning, kids compound knowledge with small but consistent daily effort. This develops healthy study habits.
Moreover, Cake time apps remain locked until kids complete their educational apps for that day, and the app can also provide customised app recommendations to supercharge a child’s learning.
Additionally, Carrots&Cake automatically blocks inappropriate content and prevents app stores from unauthorised app downloads.
The app also boasts an AI-powered assistant, Nibbles the Bunny, which enhances kids’ experience and motivates them to learn.
“We help parents find the most appropriate apps for their kids’ interests and inspire kids with intrinsic motivational exercises. This way, we want to foster family connections and cultivate trust through a nurturing environment of parental guidance instead of control,” she shares.
A B2C product, Carrots&Cake plans to launch a freemium version of the app at the start of 2024, and the subscription model will include monthly, quarterly, and annual plans.
DePaolo claims the app has users worldwide, most from the US. “We launched in private beta just a year ago, and the numbers have steadily climbed as we continue to iterate and are in thousands,” she discloses.
Proving naysayers wrong
In the app’s initial development stage, the team faced many roadblocks, and naysayers told them the app could not be built because they thought the tech behind it was too hard. It also faced some technical challenges; developing a smooth-running app with complex features demanded top-tier expertise.
“We overcame these challenges by hiring the right team, including a lead developer who successfully worked on seven parental control apps. His technical skill ensured that Carrots&Cake’s performance was of the highest standard,” she adds.
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Adding scientific elements was also challenging, but the startup collaborated with a team of leading screen time experts, doctors, and educators, DePaolo notes. “Their insight and advice shaped Carrots&Cake’s features, ensuring they were scientifically sound and beneficial for developing brains.”
A bootstrapped company so far, the company plans to go to the market for an angel round of funding soon.
As the company scales, it will introduce new features to improve kids’ transition between online and offline — for example, a feature that reduces the overstimulation kids experience in games by reducing volume and colours as kids approach the end of screen time. This helps to disengage kids gradually and reduces tantrums caused by coming off devices.
The startup is also talking with several schools to introduce pilot programmes to provide better balance on their tech platforms. For instance, with Carrots&Cake, teachers can control kids’ classroom screen time and be confident that kids are focused on the assigned task and not sneaking into games and streaming services. Additionally, it can translate school curriculums into Carrot apps to support kids’ at-home learning.
“Of course, there is no easy, overnight fix for the screen time dilemma, but we are working hard to stay in front of the problem and give parents and families the support they need,” she concludes.
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Image Credit: Carrost&Cake.
The post How Carrots&Cake fixes kids’ screen time dilemma with learn-first-play-later approach appeared first on e27.