Smartphone usage among teenagers has given parents the option of staying in touch with them at all times. However, kids who are with friends may ignore calls from their mother and father, even if there is an emergency when they are needed to be reached immediately. Many teens keep their phones on silent and do not respond to calls or messages.
A 45-year old dad from London was facing the same issue with his son as well.
However, unlike other parents, he did not give up trying to reach his son on the phone. He even developed a brand-new Messaging App for the sole purpose of ensuring that his son cannot ignore his messages and has no choice but to respond to the same.
What is the new app?
British dad, Nick Herbert, was fed up with not being able to reach his son on his phone when he went out. He states that he was unsure whether his son had even read the messages that he sent to the boy. Ben, a 13-year old, mostly ignored the texts from his father and did not reply to them. So, in a frustrated state, Nick decided to find a way so as to make such a messaging app where messages cannot be disregarded on ignored.
He tried to find any such means in existing apps, such as WhatsApp, but could not do so. Having no experience in tech and app making, he hired a professional team to design such an app, through which a message can be sent. This led to the development of ReplyASAP.
When a message is sent through this app, the receiver will be met with an alarm on their phone. This alarm will not be similar to a simple notification sound and will play continuously until the receiver checks the message and responds. This alarm will also sound off even if the smartphone is kept on the silent mode, unlike notification sounds.
Nick says that even though the ReplyASAP app was mainly designed to solve his problem of reaching Ben on his phone, that issue persists.
This is because the ReplyASAP is currently only available for Android handsets, while Ben uses an iPhone. However, the iOS version will also be released quite soon.
How to get ReplyASAP
The app is free to download from the Play Store but will require a subscription fee to be used. The lowest subscription price is $1.28 per month, which allows the user to connect to one other person. For a monthly fee of $16.73, users can connect to up to 20 people. Smartphone owners should have Android 4.1 KitKat or above to use the latest app. iOS owners will have to wait longer before the app is made available for the platform.