WeWard, a free app backed by Venus Williams motivating 30M people to walk, recently announced the launch of its ‘Walking Mode’ feature. The feature allows users to restrict access to selected apps, particularly social media, until they reach a specified daily step goal.
Walking as the key to unlocking your apps.
WeWard is taking a new step in its mission to combat sedentary lifestyles. After demonstrating its ability to increase users’ walking time by an average of 25%, the app is now tackling a second public health challenge: excessive screen time.
With this new feature, WeWard users can voluntarily block access to any application of their choice — including social media, mobile games, and streaming platforms — which can only be unlocked once they reach a minimum daily step goal.
Starting July 8th at 9:00AM ET, the feature will go live to all 30M users across 29 countries.
Walk first, scroll later.
The feature works immediately and is fully customizable:
- Through the users’ in-app settings, they select the apps they wish to restrict.
- A personal unlock threshold is set based on the users’ step goals (3,000, 5,000, 7,000 steps or more).
- As users walk, in-app progress notifications keep them updated on how close they are to unlocking their step goal.
- The block for selected apps is reset automatically every night at midnight until users turn off the feature.
Any app can be included, giving users complete control over their usage.
A philosophy that goes against the grain.
While many consumer apps seek to maximize screen time, WeWard has chosen the opposite approach.
According to Tanguy de La Villegeorges, co-founder of WeWard:
“The value of an app should no longer lie in the screen time it captures, but in the positive impact it generates on its users’ lives. With WeWard, gamification is not a vehicle for dependency — it is the very mechanism that helps people step away from their screens and reconnect with the physical world.”
WeWard’s data shows that this approach works. Users increase their walking by nearly 25% on average after downloading the app, while spending less than a few minutes a day in the app itself, demonstrating that long-term engagement doesn’t require optimizing for screen time.
“Our average user spends less than a few minutes on the app, and yet WeWard continues to see record growth and long-term engagement. We’re proving that consumer apps don’t need to maximize screen time to succeed,” says Yves Benchimol, CEO & co-founder of WeWard. “Our goal has always been focused on motivating real-world behavior and improving our users’ well-being. We want to see more of that in the world, and this new feature is a big step towards that vision.”
In line with this sentiment, Benchimol was recently appointed Advisor for French Foreign Trade, and is pushing the European Commission to advocate for a European framework that encourages the development of technologies designed to promote healthier, more positive digital behaviors.
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