App for your digital diet

Scientists at University of Bonn in Germany have developed an application to keep track of your daily smartphone digital diet

HERE comes an app to keep track of your daily smartphone digital diet! Install and see how much time you are spending on the phone or which apps or games you are hooked to. Scientists at University of Bonn, Germany, have developed Menthal that runs on Android 4.0 - or newer - version.

“If you would like to go on a digital diet, we would provide you with the scales,” said Alexander Markowetz, junior professor for computer science at University of Bonn.

“Menthal would provide reliable data for the first time. This app can show us in detail what someone’s average cellphone consumption per day looks like,” added Markowetz.

The researchers used Menthal to examine the phone behaviour of 50 students over a period of six weeks.


A quarter of them used their phones for more than two hours a day. On average, participants activated their phones more than 80 times a day - every 12 minutes on average.


“Some of the results were shocking,” commented Christian Montag. What’s App alone took up 15 per cent of the time while facebook nine per cent.

Games accounted for 13 per cent, with some subjects gaming for several hours a day, said the study to be published in the journal Medical Hypotheses.

“We would like to know how much cellphone use is normal, and where ‘too much’ starts,” Montag added.