Stuck in a pattern of cycling between games on her iPad and scrolling through her phone, writer Nichole Perkins says that too much screen time had filled her head with static and drained her creativity.

She'd tried the built-in tools on her phone, but they were too easy to ignore. A post on Instagram seemed to offer a solution: a new productivity app that claimed to combat doomscrolling.

Perkins is one of hundreds of thousands of people who downloaded Focus Friend last month. The app surpassed ChatGPT to briefly claim the top spot on Apple's App Store in the U.S. In the app, you set a timer to allow a cute, cartoon bean to knit some socks. If you disturb it before the timer goes off, the bean will drop its stitches.

It's the latest example of focus-based apps and products seeing a surge

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