Every number on this site comes from here. If nobody measured it, we don't say it.
Offimo rests on a claim about behaviour: that a short, deliberate pause between the impulse and the app changes what you do next. That is a testable claim, and other people have tested it: not on Offimo, but on the mechanism Offimo is built from.
This page lists every figure the site uses, what the study behind it actually measured, and a link to the primary source rather than to a summary of it. Where the evidence is thinner than we would like, it says so.
Screen-time figures vary wildly depending on what is being counted. We cite the ones that publish their method.
DataReportal's Digital 2025, measuring time spent online via mobile among internet users aged 16 to 64. This is time online, not total screen time: the latter is higher, and measured less consistently.
SourceKemp (2025)
Common Sense Media's 2021 census of 1,306 young people. Excludes screen time for school and homework, and counts all devices, not only phones.
SourceRideout (2021)
Same census, same exclusions. Both figures grew sharply between 2019 and 2021.
SourceRideout (2021)
These are associations found in a meta-analysis, not proof that phones cause any of them. The distinction matters and we keep it.
Odds ratio from a meta-analysis of 41 studies covering 41,871 children and young people. An association, not a cause: heavier use and low mood travel together, and the research cannot say which comes first.
SourceSohn (2019)
Same meta-analysis, same caveat. The population is children and young people; the numbers should not be read as applying to adults.
SourceSohn (2019)
Same meta-analysis. Of the three outcomes, sleep is the one with the most plausible direct mechanism. Screens late at night displace sleep.
SourceSohn (2019)
The part that matters most to us: independent, peer-reviewed evidence that a moment of friction before an app opens changes behaviour.
A randomised experiment run with a phone-tracking app, published in the American Economic Review. The 31% is the study's estimate of the share of use that would disappear if people had no self-control problem at all.
SourceAllcott (2022)
From the same experiment. This is the finding Offimo is designed around: the effective lever is a constraint you choose for yourself in advance, not one imposed on you in the moment.
SourceAllcott (2022)
A six-week field experiment with 280 participants, published in PNAS. The app studied was one sec, not Offimo: it tests the mechanism, not our product.
SourceGrüning (2023)
Same study. The effect grew over time rather than fading, which is the opposite of what habituation to a pop-up would look like.
SourceGrüning (2023)
The pause research above was run on one sec, a different app. It is good evidence that a pause before an app opens changes behaviour. It is not evidence about us, and we will not present it as such.
The depression, anxiety and sleep figures come from observational studies pooled into a meta-analysis. People who use phones heavily report more of all three. Nobody has shown that the phone is what produced them.
Different trackers count different things (time online, time with the screen on, time in an app) and the widely circulated figures rarely say which. We cite the sources that publish a method, which is why our number is lower than the ones you will see elsewhere.
Offimo has not shipped. When it has, and when enough people have used it long enough to say something honest, we will publish what we find here. Including the parts that do not flatter us.
Kemp, S. (2025). Digital 2025: Device Trends. DataReportal.
Read the sourceGrüning, D. J., & Lorenz-Spreen, P. (2023). Directing smartphone use through the self-nudge app one sec. PNAS 120(8), e2213114120.
Read the sourceAllcott, H., Gentzkow, M., & Song, L. (2022). Digital Addiction. American Economic Review 112(7), 2424–2463.
Read the sourceRideout, V., Peebles, A., Mann, S., & Robb, M. B. (2021). The Common Sense Census: Media Use by Tweens and Teens, 2021. Common Sense Media.
Read the sourceSohn, S., Rees, P., Wildridge, B., Kalk, N. J., & Carter, B. (2019). Prevalence of problematic smartphone usage and associated mental health outcomes amongst children and young people: a systematic review, meta-analysis and GRADE of the evidence. BMC Psychiatry 19, 356.
Read the sourceOffimo puts that second of friction between you and the app you did not mean to open.