“I got my life back”: How an Atlantan’s app is helping curb phone addiction

After graduating from Auburn University’s entrepreneurship program in 2012, Clint Jarvis, who went to high school in Alpharetta, came home to Atlanta inspired. He helped startups blossom, then built gottaGolf, a popular social app for tracing and sharing golf shots, which was acquired in 2017. Some people might say he was living the techie American dream. He’d say hardly.

Jarvis was beyond burned out—and hopelessly addicted to the cheap dopamine blasts of internet nonreality.

“I was plugged in 24/7 and working just to work,” says Jarvis, 35. “When I wasn’t on my computer, I was on my phone, checking email 100 times a day.”

But then—bling!—the proverbial light bulb moment.

Believing in the power of mindfulness, Jarvis set out to build a nature-based wellness app called Roots (think: forest sounds and cool meditations), but he found that market to be crowded and the app not life-changing enough. Conversations with beta users were valuable, however—the issue of cellphone addiction kept coming up. Jarvis kept the wellness app name but switched focus from meditation to thwarting mindless scrolling. Using proceeds from his gottaGolf sale, Jarvis funded Roots’ early phases and formally rolled it out in 2024. So far, he’s raised about $700,000 to further back Roots and has hired a full-time team of four dotted from Sweden to India. As of May, most of Roots’ 50,000 global registered users had signed on in the past 60 days.

Like other apps that track sleep and exercise, Roots has a system for digitally monitoring people’s digital dopamine levels by measuring indicators such as heart rate, sleep patterns, and exercise movement. Users can also limit the number and length of sessions on apps such as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, or block the addictive apps altogether. (Jarvis calls it “guardrails.”)

A downtime function can even block all social media apps after specific times each day. Another feature trains users to replace scrolling with healthier activities that Roots suggests. “My personal favorite is reading,” says Jarvis. “I now have a stack of books.” The base version of Roots is free. A premium version, which costs $10 a month or $60 a year packs extra features, such as unlimited app blockings and monk mode, a setting that prohibits users from turning Roots off, with no workarounds.

With either version, a tracking function gives Roots an element of nonaddictive gamification and encouragement. Users start with a daily balance score of 50 to 100. (If you’re staying on track, a little tree blossoms to life on screen; if not, it withers.) A month of sticking to goals allows for “pauses”—a couple of hours of extra scrolling, guilt-free, for instance.

Fans of Roots include Ormewood Park resident Susie Ade, who started using Roots when it launched. With the app, she limited herself to 15 minutes for social apps daily and said she has become a more present mom and wife. “[Before] I would pick up my phone hundreds of times throughout the day, and I felt like I had zero control,” says Ade. “I feel like I got my life back.”

A more extreme case is Sally Iskandar Tan, of Indonesia, who can’t currently work because of severe dry eye disease caused by excessive screen time. After other apps failed to curb her scrolling, she bought the upgraded Roots version. “I was really irritable and angry, sometimes even sad, for no reason,” says Tan. “[Now] my mood is much better, I’m happier, more patient, and more present in the moment.”

This article appears in our September 2025 issue.

Advertisement