Explore
Research, scoring dimensions, and key resources
How people relate to screens has been changing. Broadcast TV showed everyone the same show at the same time. Today's apps narrowcast: each person gets a different feed, built from whatever the app already knows about them. Our Toy Story 5 series traces how Lilypad, the app in the movie, does exactly this to Bonnie. Below: the five dimensions DarkBadge scores, the research behind each one, and the books that named the pattern first.
A growing set of apps take the opposite bet — putting friction back in on purpose. Our comparison of five screen-time tools covers what they do, the research behind why a pause works, and how they stack up against each other. Before installing any of them, there's also what's already built into the phone — Apple, Google, and Microsoft each ship a free screen-time system, for yourself and for a kid's account.
Dimensions
The five axes DarkBadge scores every app on, with definitions and sources.
Why this matters
These five dimensions are how DarkBadge turns a pattern like Lilypad's endless feed into a score. The library is where those patterns were first named and studied. Start with a dimension if you want to know what's being measured, or the library if you want the research behind it.
Agency
How hard is it to stop once you've started? High scores indicate design choices that undermine users' ability to set and keep their own limits — no natural pause points, no "you're done" signal. This is what psychologists call self-regulation.
Bottomlessness
Whether the content stream has a visible end. Infinite scroll, autoplay, and endless feeds remove natural stopping cues, keeping the session open indefinitely.
Speed
The pace of rewards, feedback, and content delivery. Fast loops of action → reward train the brain's dopamine pathways and make slower, offline activities feel dull by comparison.