👋 Before you begin, here's a summary of what PAUSE App is, what happens with your information, and how using this app helps build better health for your community. No jargon, no fine print — just honesty.
PAUSE App is a free digital wellness tool created by a team of community medicine doctors. It was built with one simple goal — to help everyday people understand how their digital habits are affecting their health, and to give them practical tools to feel better.
Using internationally validated screening tools, PAUSE helps you check in on six areas of digital health: health-related internet searching, social media use, short-form video habits, gaming, AI tool dependency, and digital work stress. It then gives you personalised, evidence-based guidance to improve.
🏥 Built by community medicine doctors. Our department's mission is the health of the whole community — not just individuals. Every feature in PAUSE App was designed with that public health spirit in mind. This is our gift to the community we serve.
PAUSE App is open to anyone who is 18 years or older and wants to take a honest look at their digital habits. Whether you're a student, a working professional, a healthcare worker, or simply a curious member of the public — you are welcome here.
The app works on any smartphone or computer with an internet browser and is completely free to use.
💙 If you are going through a very difficult time emotionally right now, we gently suggest speaking to a trusted person or healthcare professional first. PAUSE App is a wellness tool — it's here to support you, but it's not designed for crisis situations.
PAUSE App gives you a lot, and charges you nothing:
📱 No advertisements. No subscription. No hidden charges. PAUSE App is a public health initiative built for people, not profit.
We keep this purposeful and minimal. Here is exactly what we collect and why:
| What | Why | Where it stays |
|---|---|---|
| Email address (via Google login) | To save your progress and sync across devices | Secure cloud, encrypted |
| Google profile photo & name | Display only — never stored for research | Your device only |
We ask for some background information such as your age, occupation, and lifestyle habits. This helps us understand how digital health challenges vary across different sections of society, so we can build better tools and advocate for the right support for everyone.
| Information | How it helps your community |
|---|---|
| Age & gender | Helps us understand which groups are most affected so we can design targeted help |
| Education & occupation | Helps identify communities that may need more awareness and support |
| Where you live & income range | Helps advocate for equitable digital health resources across urban and rural areas |
| Screen time & smartphone habits | Core data for understanding how digital exposure affects health |
| Sleep, health, and physical activity | Helps us understand the full picture of how digital habits affect overall wellbeing |
Your screening scores are saved so you can track your personal progress over time. Your anonymised scores also contribute to a community-level picture of digital health in India — one that helps shape future public health guidance.
🔒 We will never collect: your name, phone number, home address, contacts, location, camera, or microphone. Only what you choose to share with us is ever used.
When you use PAUSE App, you are not just helping yourself — you are contributing to something much larger. Your anonymised data helps build a picture of digital health across India that simply does not exist yet, and that could shape public health decisions for years to come.
🎓 Your data is used purely for community benefit. It will never be sold, shared with advertisers, or used for any commercial purpose — ever. This is a promise we make as healthcare professionals.
Research findings may be shared at medical conferences or published in health journals — always in aggregated, anonymised form. No one will ever be able to identify you from any published data.
We take the responsibility of holding your information very seriously. Here is what we have done to protect it:
🛡️ Your trust means everything to us. We are doctors — protecting the wellbeing of the people we serve is fundamental to who we are, and that includes your data.
This is your experience and your data. You are in charge at every step:
We will respond to any such request within 30 days. Your participation is entirely voluntary — and choosing to stop at any point is completely fine. We will always respect that decision.
PAUSE App is designed to be a helpful, honest first step — a friendly way to check in on your digital health using validated tools. It is not a replacement for a consultation with your doctor.
💙 Think of PAUSE as a caring, knowledgeable friend who helps you understand what's going on — and always points you toward the right support when you need it.
To keep PAUSE App trustworthy and useful for everyone, we simply ask that you:
These terms may be updated occasionally as the app grows and improves. If anything significant changes, we will let you know within the app. Your continued use means you are comfortable with the current version.
Last updated: April 2026 · Version 1.0
Alongside the six internationally validated disorder screening tools, PAUSE App includes four Health Impact Modules — friendly five-question check-ins that explore how your digital habits may be affecting everyday life in four important areas:
These modules were thoughtfully developed drawing on a growing body of peer-reviewed research that consistently shows digital habits have real, measurable effects on these four areas of life. Here is the science that inspired each one:
💛 An honest note from us: These modules are exploratory wellness check-ins, not formally validated psychometric scales. Their questions reflect the research above, but have not yet undergone independent validation. A formal study is planned. Until then, treat your results as a helpful personal reflection — a starting point for positive change, not a clinical measurement.
🔬 Want to contribute to the science? Every assessment you complete adds to our anonymised dataset. As this dataset grows, it will form the foundation for validating these modules properly — so your participation is genuinely helping turn these exploratory tools into something even more robust and useful for the whole community.
Your Digital Wellness Score (DWS) is a single, friendly number from 0 to 100 that summarises how healthy your digital habits are across the six screening areas — cyberchondria, social media, short-form video, gaming, AI chatbot use, and digital work.
Higher is better. A score of 100 means your digital habits look very healthy across all six areas. A lower score is the app's gentle way of saying that some of these areas could use a little attention.
For each of the six wellness areas, we do three small steps:
So if your average difficulty across the six areas is 30%, your DWS is 70. Each of the six areas contributes equally — no single area weighs more than the others.
At the start of a Full Check-up, we'll ask whether you do three optional activities — playing video games, using AI chatbots, and working/studying digitally — so we can skip questions about things that don't apply to you.
For any area you skip, your wellness in that area is counted as 100/100. This is medically defensible: the diagnostic criteria for these conditions require the behaviour to be present. A person who doesn't play video games cannot, by definition, have gaming disorder. So a perfect wellness score for that area is factually correct, not a workaround.
This means every user's DWS is fairly calculated across all six areas, whether they engage in all of them or only some.
💡 A note on Quick Checks vs Full Check-ups. If you only complete some of the six areas in a Quick Check, your DWS is based on just those areas — the app will tell you which areas haven't been checked yet so you know your score may shift after a Full Check-up.
Your Health Wellness Score (HWS) is a single, friendly number from 0 to 100 that captures how well the rest of your life — your sleep, your focus, your productivity, and your emotional health — is holding up alongside your digital habits.
Where the DWS is about your behaviour with screens, the HWS is about your real-life wellness around those screens. Both matter, and together they give a fuller picture.
Higher is better, just like the DWS. A score of 100 means your daily life feels largely unaffected by your digital habits. A lower score is the app's way of pointing out that some part of your offline health is feeling the weight of screen time.
For each of the four Health Impact areas you complete — Sleep, Attention & Focus, Productivity, and Emotional Health — we do the same three steps as DWS:
If your average impact across the four areas is 25%, your HWS is 75. If your average impact is 70%, your HWS is 30. Each of the four health areas contributes equally.
💛 DWS and HWS are designed to move together. If your DWS improves, your HWS usually follows — because healthier digital habits tend to protect your sleep, attention, productivity, and mood. The reverse is also true: looking after sleep and emotional health often makes it easier to manage screen use. The two scores are friends, not rivals.