High schoolers, ages 14 and 15, who built Vivaly to pull teens back into the real world.
Ruth Geller noticed something simple and a little sad. She could barely hang out with her friends without it costing money, and everyone she knew was defaulting to their phones instead. She was a rising tenth grader at Oconee County High School near Athens, Georgia, and she decided the fix should not have to wait until she was an adult.
So she built it. Geller, 15, teamed up with three friends, Hannah Hellems, Ellie Bartlett, and Evelynn Shea, all 14 and 15, and made Vivaly, an app that hands teenagers real-world experiences to complete. Watch the sunset. Cook something from scratch. Go on a hike. Users snap a photo of the experience, upload it, and score points for actually living the moment instead of scrolling past it.
They shipped it. Vivaly launched this summer and is live on the App Store, built for ages 13 and up, made by teenagers who were tired of watching their own generation disappear into their screens.
"A 15-year-old looked at the phone problem and built the way out of it."
Adults have spent years writing think pieces about teen screen time. Geller and her friends skipped the hand-wringing and built a product, aimed at the exact people the problem affects, designed by people who live it. That is the difference between naming a problem and shipping a fix.
This is the builder instinct ANF exists to spotlight. You do not need a degree or a decade to solve the thing bothering you. Geller saw it at 15 and made the app herself.
Her generation is glued to the screen. She built the reason to look up.