Texas Mom Develops App To Lock Your Teenager's Phone

Aug 18, 2014 11:09 AM EDT | Jordan Ecarma

How do you simultaneously achieve cool mom status and become the least cool parent in the world?

Develop an innovative Android app--that locks your teenager's phone when he or she doesn't respond to your calls. At least, that's what Sharon Standifird of Texas did after one too many times of being frustrated when her son Bradley didn't call or text her back, The Telegraph reported.

"We need to develop an app that just shuts their phone completely down and they can't even use it," she told herself at the time. "And I ... literally just started researching how to develop an app."

Now available in the Google Play store for $1.99, the "Ignore No More" app allows a parent to lock a child's phone remotely, which essentially blocks the device from doing anything other than calling Mom or dialing 911 in case of emergency.

"It went from a frustration to a worry," Standifird, who is also developing an iOS version for iPhone, said of not being able to get responses from her kids.

"It takes away texting, it takes away gaming, it takes away calling their friends, surfing the internet," she described the new app to ABC's Houston-owned station KTRK-TV. "If there's an emergency, the child will always be able to call 911. It's a feature that no developer can take off the phone."  

After one tap from the parent's phone, a teenager's device can only call a pre-selected list of numbers that presumably include parents or other caregivers.

Has Ignore No More been working for her son Bradley?

"I do have to say that he responds to my texts and my calls a whole lot quicker than he used to," Sharon Standifird told KTRK-TV.

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