Want to keep scrolling your social apps? Take a walk.
WeWard, a French fitness app backed by tennis star Venus Williams, has vibecoded a new feature that puts social media behind a step count. Called “Walking Mode,” it lets users lock apps like TikTok and Instagram until they hit a customizable walking goal — say, 3,000 steps before the doomscrolling can begin.
WeWard’s cofounder and CEO, Yves Benchimol, told Business Insider the idea came from a member of the company’s non-technical staff. Their head of growth, Tyler Chandler, used Claude to vibe-code and launch the feature within 2 months.
“A few months ago, we were talking about AI when an employee said, ‘Hey, I think I can vibe code a feature where instead of earning financial rewards for working, we can give people a reward from the time screen,'” Benchimol said.
Chandler told Business Insider that his “walking mode” idea came from his own “pain point” of frequently postponing Apple’s default screen time controls.
“It was born out of a goal: to demonstrate to our product, business, and tech employees that a single person armed with AI-assisted coding could develop a complex feature end-to-end,” Chandler said.
“We wanted to galvanize the team to get excited about using AI to bring their own ideas to life no matter how ‘out there’ they might seem,” Chandler added.
The feature expands on WeWard’s existing rewards model, which grants users in-app currency called “Wards” for walking. Users can redeem the points for cash, gift cards, or charitable donations. The app also includes leaderboards that encourage friendly competition.
Benchimol said it’s aimed at people looking to increase their physical activity while cutting back on screen time, because social media is promoting “a sedentary lifestyle” for all generations.
“Finding a way to motivate people to do better stuff is what we want to do, and we believe that constraining people from using social media when they wake up before they do any physical activity is a good way to help people get into a better shape, mentally and physically,” Benchimol said.
Benchimol said that Williams, as the company’s angel investor, is also supportive of all features that help people get outside and move their bodies, though she is more involved in marketing than in feature creation.
Williams’ representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
Benchimol said users typically spend only a few minutes a day inside the app, which he views as a positive outcome because its goal is to encourage activity away from phones.
The Paris-based company says it has more than 30 million users across 29 countries, including 4 million in the US, with top cities being New York, Chicago, and Miami. It also said that its platform increases users’ walking time by nearly 25% on average. At the moment, the average user age is around 35, and 60% are women, the company said.
“So the feature was born as a way to block people from using their phone except if they start working and connect with their surroundings,” Benchimol added.
Rather than letting social media come first, Benchimol wants users to earn it: “As a reward for being connected to the world, now you can be in the digital world.”
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