Many students come to college looking to better themselves and their future by obtaining their education. However, when doing so, the workload of college and the stress that comes with it can make students develop bad habits and miss the things they really wanted to do that week.
That is why Sean Higgins, CEO of BetterYou, created an app that would encourage a healthier lifestyle.
He saw himself as patient zero because he, too, wouldn’t complete simple things in the week, like calling his parents. He realized he wasn’t busy. Rather, he just did not know where his time was going.
“You look at those like weekly screen time reports, and it would show me 3 hours on YouTube. Was I too busy? Or did I just not have any idea where this time was going?” Higgins shared with The Cauldron.
With BetterYou, the idea is to have a companion on your phone that will help redirect you and get you more aligned on how you want to spend your day. Now, Cleveland State students have the opportunity to use this app and get the most out of their days.
However, the most popular features that are currently on the app weren’t features that Higgins had started with but ones that he would later add to allow people to experiment and, afterward, receive data and feedback along their journey.
“You need to get those data points along the way to figure out if you’re on the right track or not,” said Higgins. “At the end of the day, it’s the customer who decides what’s right and what’s wrong. It’s our job to find them and talk to them.”
Features BetterYou offers include activity tracking, sleep tracking, staying in touch, visualizing your progress, place goals and more.
“People who have BetterYou on their phone get more sleep, they move more for steps, they talk to their friends more. We’ve seen it at a clinical level from the Stanford research that that’s working, and that happens, I think is awesome,” said Higgins.
A goal for BetterYou is to add long-term insights that tell you about your longest streaks in meeting your goals.
The most significant benefit CSU students have gained from using BetterYou is a sleep lift. Higgins told The Cauldron that CSU students are getting 20 more minutes of sleep each night.
Not only is more sleep what CSU students can earn, but they can also get cash rewards.
“We had students who earned in the course of two semesters over $130 just on BetterYou doing things they were trying to do anyway, and they’re now more successful at it,” Higgins said.
Another popular result that CSU students are getting from using BetterYou is more minutes of talk time. 60% of users get more minutes of talk time with their top people daily, which helps lower anxiety, depression and loneliness. 42% of users are getting 500 more steps daily, which helps lower high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes and heart disease risk.
However, BetterYou doesn’t want the benefits to stop there. Developers are working on a custom goal feature that can be any type of goal users want, and they will find ways to help you measure and stay on top of that goal.
CSU students can download BetterYou from the Apple and Google app stores.