“Stay off technology 30 minutes before going to sleep.” Standing in front of 100 high school students in Sagar, India, senior Sharika Dipu shared this digital wellness tip. As the founder of the nonprofit Lotus Focus, Dipu served as one of the speakers in a digital health presentation this July, collaborating with Indian youth organization NextGen FC. By promoting longer attention spans and improved focus through psychology-based activities, Dipu aims to teach healthy phone and social media use through her nonprofit.
Dipu’s fascination with digital health began when she noticed that her overuse of social media was harming her productivity. As she attended the Startup UCLA: Social Entrepreneurship Summer Institute in the summer of 2024, Dipu’s interest in social entrepreneurship spurred her to find a community-oriented solution for short attention spans and poor digital health.
“So many people are addicted to social media, and it’s become kind of normalized,” Dipu said. “I want to stop that. This is a major issue that I see within my generation, and I want to fix it.”
At first, Dipu struggled to come up with a tangible solution that could tackle the complexity of digital health. Interviewing over 10 teenagers, Dipu gathered different perspectives on what solutions would most effectively tackle this problem. Attending the local Business Entrepreneurship Encouragement Program Fair in October 2024, she pitched her idea for a digital health program and received positive feedback from parents and teenagers.
“It was the first time I’d ever showcased my idea to the world,” Dipu said. “When you’re really anxious about your first idea, you keep it inside and you don’t tell anyone. When you reveal it and you get the approval of your idea, it is a really special moment.”
Dipu officially formed Lotus Focus that same month with the goal of developing a digital health app and building a community to battle social media overuse together. Dipu created a Discord server for teenagers and a professional community on LinkedIn for deeper research in digital wellness.
“I wanted it to be an organization, not just an app, because there are so many other apps for focusing,” Dipu said. “We made our project better by introducing this community aspect, by bringing people together and making it research-based.”
Since its formation, Lotus Focus has launched many projects promoting digital health, notably a 7-day challenge where Dipu led a group of 30 high school students to develop new digital habits, ranging from staying off social media to trying digital health-related apps. For every day of that week, Lotus Focus recommended three simple digital health tips.
“One of the habits that I implemented for myself was turning off Shorts suggestions on YouTube,” senior and challenge participant Jessica Steiger said. “If you’re not the best at staying off social media, starting off small really helps.”
Moving forward, Lotus Focus hopes to launch its app in November. The app will offer users individualized approaches to solving problems with digital health.
“Our app gives the option to target specific parts of a distracting app rather than blocking the entire app,” University of California, Irvine freshman and Lotus Focus chief technology officer Aryan Patnaik said. “Customizability is at the heart of this platform. It’s really about what the user wants to use their device for.”
With Lotus Focus, Dipu aims to expand and develop the community even more to spread an accessible and customizable solution to the digital health issue.
“I want to make this something very revolutionary,” Dipu said. “I want Zuckerberg to be scared of me.”
