This clever new app bribes teens to get off their phones, with help from brands like Starbucks and Adidas

Parents make “deals” with their kids everyday. Mow the lawn and get your allowance. Finish your dinner, and you’ll get some ice cream.

When Corey Scholibo was eight, his mother made him an offer: if he stopped sucking his thumb, he’d earn $20. He stopped in a week, and she made good on the promise.

Now 47, Scholibo has a business designed around these childhood “deals.” In January, he launched an app-based service, Dayo Deals, that enables parents to strike bargains with their teenage children—specifically to help them reduce their screen time and social media use.

Together, both parties work together to establish time limits and a monetary reward. If the teen stays within the limit, they keep the money; if not, the cash vanishes.

Sure, it could be considered bribery. But Scholibo argues, quite simply: cash talks. “There’s something transactional about it, and that’s kind of the point,” he says.

A screen time solution

Parents and teens alike agree that the overuse of smartphones is a problem. According to Pew, half of teens between 13 and 17 spend more than four hours a day on their phone. Forty-six percent report being online “almost constantly,” with six in ten teens using social media apps like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat.

But many are willing to ditch the screens. Nearly half of U.K. youths between 16 and 21 recently said that they support a digital curfew. Actually implementing limitations is difficult: A Pew Research study from 2024 found that four in ten teens and parents argue regularly about screen time, and while 76% of parents say managing screen time is a priority, 43% say it’s hard to do.

“There’s never really been a product where people use it this much and dislike it this much,” Scholibo says of screens. “Except maybe insurance.”

Scholibo, a former journalist and entrepreneur whose previous ventures include compostable tableware and a plant-based wellness line for menopause-aged women, started the app with his co-founder, Patrick Triato, when Triato grew concerned about his own kids’ screen time. Scholibo and Triato realized that America is unlikely to follow countries like Australia and Spain in banning social media use by children under 16. But the pair did notice people looking to restrict themselves, which was giving rise to a new category of products that Scholibo calls “restriction-as-a-service,” such as Bark and Brick.

Scholibo describes Dayo as a “peer-to-peer payment model.” With a subscription of $9.99 a month, parents and kids set deal parameters together, then monitor progress live on a colorful dashboard that also shows monthly progress and days-in-a-row streaks.

If teens keep their screen use under the allotted time, they can withdraw their reward—via Venmo or PayPal, or in gift card form from brands like Starbucks, Adidas, and Amazon. But if they go over, they watch the money travel back to their parents. “It’s like asking your kid to give you back $5 at the fair,” Scholibo says. “No one wants to do that.”

The brand connection

Dayo initially launched in April 2025 as a “rewards-based marketplace” for helping adults reduce their own screen time. It resembled any earned rewards program: If users stick to their self-imposed limits, they can claim discounts at close to 100 partner stores such as Yeti, North Face, Stumptown Coffee, and Portland-based Powell’s Books.

That iteration of the app still exists and currently has a user base of 6,000 people; just as parents set their teens’ deals, they can set their own, with Dayo as their “sponsor.” They gradually earn discounts with partner stores; for example, they might work up to 40 “Dayo Dollars” toward a $100 Yeti cooler or Rumpl blanket.

For these partner companies, it’s good PR with little risk: be involved in a mission, and simultaneously gain some new customers. Christopher Eng, founder of ergonomic furniture company Smallish, via email, calls it “a win-win. We acquire new customers at a cost similar to what we would spend on other channels, while providing the discount directly to the user.”

Some brands even tie Dayo’s mission to their own. “Hammies is all about the simpler times when shorts were shorter and people got together in person to socialize,” said Grant Nestor, founder of the retro-themed apparel store.

Drew Downie, co-founder of pet supply company Lay Lo, credits Dayo for encouraging “people to spend more intentional time with their dogs.”

Teens can also earn these discounts, but Scholibo reports that they overwhelmingly want to cash out or get a gift card. (Dayo doesn’t have direct partnerships with these gift card partners but with Tango, a gift card aggregator.)

The rewards conundrum

Dayo is based on the theory of contingency management, a behavioral intervention used frequently in drug addiction therapy. It offers a tangible and immediate reward, like a voucher or cash, for a good behavior change such as abstaining from a drug. Or a screen.

The notion of engaging in bribery may turn off some parents, but “one person’s bribery is another person’s positive reinforcement,” says Nicholas Kardaras, a psychologist and clinical professor at Stony Brook University who focuses on substance and behavioral addiction, and who wrote Glowkids, a 2016 book about the epidemic of screen addiction.

“Money does have value, especially in our materialist culture with adolescents,” Kardaras says. “In the short term, it’ll work.”

Kardaras explains that a major issue with extrinsic rewards—e.g. tangible incentives, like money—is that they tend to diminish in perceived value over time, so parents would likely have to keep upping the sum. It’s a similar idea to being in the same job year after year with the same salary; your perceived value often starts to outweigh the compensation.

“I think parents need to understand it’s not the whole solution,” Kardaras says. “It’s a “starting point.”

The magic number

In the longer term, he says, parents would need to shift from extrinsic motivation to intrinsic—where the will to behave a certain way comes from within, fueled by a change in personal values. That might be helping kids to understand that there are more valuable things than social media likes and followers, and that excessive screen time is unhealthy. Once that happens, “social media has less of a gravitational pull.”

While Scholibo respects the argument, he believes absolutely in the rewards system as a motivator. “It wasn’t like my parents sat down and tried to educate me on why I should empty the dishwasher for the good of society,” he says.

He also realizes that some parents are simply strapped for cash. Dayo doesn’t have firm data yet but Scholibo has anecdotally found $100 to $200 to be “highly impactful.”

To help fund the deals, Dayo is starting what it calls a “scholarship” program, initially with 15 scholarships of $50 a month for three months. Teens will apply for it, which will in turn equip Dayo with some case studies and a better understanding of the gravity of screen dependence.

Eventually, Scholibo may look to recruit more brand partners to sponsor these scholarships, particularly banks, which typically want to attract young people as lifelong customers, and influential individuals.

“Why couldn’t Bank of America sponsor 1,000 teens?” he says.“Why couldn’t Scott Galloway, who talks about how he wants to get young men off social media?” Galloway declined Scholibo’s initial invitation to get involved, but Scholibo has plans to reach out again.

Meanwhile, Scholibo is working on growing the audience for his “reduction-as-a-service” product, defending its transactionary nature for what it is. “What I can do is get your time back,” he says, “and I can get you money for it.”