Students create software to help deal with Internet addiction

The discussion on children spending too much time in the virtual world has been on for long. Parents often worry about the access to information their kids might have in the age of the Internet. Students of Kaligi Ranganathan Montford School in Perambur, have taken it upon themselves to bridge the gap between parents and their wards, using technology. 

Class 11 students B Praveen Kumar, S Karthick Raja and M Vigneshwar have proposed to Google a plan for a separate search engine for students. “While we were doing research, we found that many parents were worried that their children had an easy access to unwanted sites that could distract them and imposed restrictions on them. This would upset students because they’d need to be online to get information for their research,” says Praveen, adding that they wanted to solve the problem using technology. “We created our own design of the search engine, called Schoogle –— Google For School. It is an exclusive search engine for the student community, with information related only to education. There will be no advertisement or options for downloading commercial movies or any adult content available here,” he said. 

It will not just be about studies. “It will also have games designed based on educational concepts. Students can login with their school ID and get access to fun concepts. They can also identify the real life application of science and mathematical concepts that they come across,” says Karthick. The school has sent a detailed proposal to Google and are hoping to hear from them soon. 

Apart from this, they have also created an app called ‘Poppygle’ which notifies the user about his or her Internet usage. “Once installed, the app is designed in such a way that it will send a signal that will alert the user about the time spent online. And after every 30 minutes, the intensity of the alarm will increase and it will also notify the remaining time. We have also designed visuals that will appear with the notifications. The app will also gauge the performance of the user and award points,” says Vigneshwar, adding that they have planned the app for users aged between 7 – 15 years. 

Technologies aside, they have started peer-based initiatives where a designated friend could intervene when he/she realises that the friend is wasting time online. “We want to use the technology to warn against its perils and let students across schools enjoy the benefits,” he says.