“Go touch grass,” which means to go outside and take a walk, has become a quippy suggestion ― or a comeback ― meant to encourage people to log off from the internet (and maybe get a reality check).
Now, a new productivity app is making people actually do it.
If you find yourself reaching for your phone before your eyes fully open or sense that you’re getting too fired up by comments on social media, there’s a new app that aims to curb your obsessive need to scroll: Touch Grass.
Available for iOS 17 devices or later, the new Touch Grass app, which promises to “end the doomscrolling,” requires you to take a picture of yourself touching grass before you can regain access to your apps. In the app’s free “grass detection system,” you can select up to two time-wasting apps for Touch Grass to monitor.
App blocking programs are not new. Both iPhones and Androids have built-in options to limit access to apps at set times of the day. On iOS devices, it is through the Screen Time setting. And on Androids, it is through the Digital Wellbeing settings.
But what makes Touch Grass different is how it requires you to take action and provide proof you walked outside and disconnected from the shackles of social media. Once you hit your time limit on your selected app, Touch Grass will require you to submit a photo of grass before you can continue to scroll to your heart’s content.
If running outside to touch grass is not an option, the app allows you to choose to “skip” the touch-grass requirement once a month for free and then for at least 0.99 cents thereafter.
The app’s website said it uses “computer vision to verify it’s real grass in real-time.”
Sounds great in theory. But based on my own (unofficial) testing, the caveat to using this app as your new screen time surveillance is that it appears to have a strict definition of what qualifies as grass.
I live in New York City, and my street corner is still emerging from winter’s hibernation. There is no real grass yet, but there are a few spring flowers and a bush nearby. But “Touch grass” discounted both of my attempts to connect with nature to regain access to TikTok.
“Nice try, but we haven’t detected any grass!” the app scolded me. In other words, your mileage for how useful this app is may depend on your proximity to grasslands. (So good luck if the ground is covered in snow?)
Right now, Touch Grass is only available on later versions of iOS, but its developer has said an Android option is coming in the future.
To make Touch Grass more than a fun gimmick, you need to do more than just take pics.
Staying on our phones for longer than we would like is a real problem many of us deal with, including Touch Grass’ app developer.
Rhys Kentish, the U.K. developer behind the app, told CNET that he got the idea for the app after realizing his first impulse each morning was to start scrolling on his phone.
“I knew this wasn’t healthy and on top of that, I needed an incentive to get outside more especially in the winter months.” Kentish said. “I also love apps that merge the digital world with the real world and I found the concept of touching grass funny, so I thought, why not create an app that forces me to do so?”
A mindfulness practice can help us combat our urge to scroll by regulating our nervous system and teaching us how to accept thoughts and bodily sensations. And if an app is your gateway to doing this, that could be helpful, said Alicia Velez, a licensed clinical social worker.
However, Velez said, to make the Touch Grass app most helpful, you need to go beyond just, well, physically touching a blade of grass.
“The key here is doing something intentionally, purposefully and mindfully,” she said. “If you’re not interacting with the grass, with its colors, its bristles, the sensations on your hand, its texture, its smell, then you are defeating the point of having a mindful moment.”
In other words, it should not feel like a chore to go find grass; it should feel like a break from your everyday routine.
“Your mileage for how useful this app is may depend on your proximity to grasslands.”
It is also possible to reset your screen time habits without downloading a new app.
You can try curating what you see without fully blocking yourself from using an app, recommended Stacy Thiry, a licensed therapist at Grow Therapy.
Instead of scrolling endlessly on TikTok and Instagram, “focus on a few reliable sources that provide balanced, factual information,” Thiry said. “This helps prevent the feeling of being pulled in different directions by conflicting reports and opinions.”
Velez also recommended the advice of Catherine Price, the author of “How to Break Up With Your Phone.” In the book, Price recommends asking yourself three questions before you pick up your phone to scroll: “What for? Why now? What else?”
“Asking yourself these questions helps to create some intentionality instead of mindlessly reaching for something that may actually cause you more harm,” Velez explained.
The good news is that following Price’s advice doesn’t require you to download a new app; it just requires you to shift your way of thinking, which may be much harder for brains like mine that have become fried from the quick dopamine hits that TikTok scrolling rewards.
“The problem is not the phone, it’s more so how we interact with the phone,” Velez said.
So feel free to take pictures of grass if it inspires you to stop doomscrolling, but know that the true work of building a better relationship with your phone is going to take longer than a few nature pictures.