Overview
Reclaim started over Thanksgiving break during a long night of conversations with friends. Two themes came up separately throughout the night: how often we fall into doomscrolling, and how little we were actually investing. Reclaim is my attempt to connect those two behaviors into one system that makes the tradeoff visible.
Instead of telling users to scroll less, the product introduces a moment of friction before a social session starts. The goal is to turn mindless usage into an intentional decision.
The Big Idea
If scrolling has a cost, it becomes a choice. Reclaim uses a behavioral paywall to unlock timed social sessions with a small payment, then redirects that money into an investment bucket rather than letting the time disappear for free.
Current State and Constraints
This is an early MVP, so two key pieces are not implemented yet:
There is no hard block on Instagram or TikTok right now
Investing is simulated, with real investing integrations planned in future builds
Outcome and Next Steps
Even without full integrations, building and using Reclaim has changed how I use social media by forcing a pause before I scroll. Next steps are adding true app blocking and connecting the product to real investing rails so the loop becomes fully real.
