Pavlok is a bracelet that sends electric shocks every time you engage in bad behaviors
Smartphone addiction is now an established problem, as shown by numerous researches, and can have effects on mental and even physical health. It would seem that the abuse of these devices, in fact, generates depression, anxiety and sleep deprivation.
Experts, who have been studying this phenomenon for years, suggest various cures, providing numerous tools to combat smartphone addiction. There are those who have developed "essential" mobile devices, able to curb the impelling need to check the device every 15 minutes, and those who, instead, propose to make the devices less attractive. This is the case of Tristan Harris, former Design Ethicist, according to whom we could try to activate the grayscale screen mode. And then there are also those who advance more extreme solutions, such as using electric shocks to dissuade people from using their smartphones too much.
Pavlok, the electronic bracelet that sends electric shocks
One of these "shocking" devices is Pavlok, an electronic bracelet that promises to help people stop bad habits. That includes smartphone addiction. The wearable device, which takes its name from Ivan Pavlov, a Russian scholar known for his discoveries on the conditioned reflex, generates electric shocks every time you put into practice bad behaviors, such as eating too many chips, biting your nails, smoking, not doing enough sports and using, in fact, too much smartphone.
How Pavlok works
The idea behind Pavlok is to push users to send themselves electrical stimuli in the presence of a bad habit. In this way, like Pavlov's dog, they will come to associate the habit with the electrical discharge, reducing the number of bad behaviors over time. The wearable can also be controlled via app, which also provides a number of additional features, such as the ability to replace electrical pulses with sounds and vibrations.