Never use this app if you want good mental health
1
By tba255
if you’re a parent looking to download this app for your kids, please read till the end. i promise it will help you gain some perspective from a teenager who uses this app and has experienced all of its faults.
Both of my parents are strict asian tiger parents, so you could definitely imagine that once they found this app, they were thrilled beyond their minds. When my dad downloaded this app on his phone, he started worshipping it, calling it his favorite app, without knowing what truly goes on. Not only does this app make me feel controlled, irresponsible, and limit my ability to demonstrate my time management skills for the future, this app DOESNT WORK!!!!! If this app actually functioned well, I would give it a higher review even though I’m extremely annoyed by it. But here are all of the reasons why this app shouldn’t be installed:
1 This app slows down the internet in your entire house. Before, my internet was extremely fast, but after downloading circle, everything slowed down by a mile. （don’t rlly have anything else to say but it’s actually a major issue that the developer needs to get on asap.)
2 This app is supposed to count time WHILE THE APP IS BEING USED. However, even if I just leave the tab open and not use the app directly, Circle still counts that as time being used up, which is not the case. at all. I know how to keep track of time and sometimes when I just use snapchat for 5 minutes, i come back 8 hours later after school and find that my time has run out already even though i have more than 5 minutes on snapchat. Before, I was utterly confused as to how an app can be so janky, but later I figured out it was because merely leaving the TAB OPEN will make circle count the time. This drove an extremely rough wedge between my family and I, because no matter how hard I tried to explain this problem to them, they would NEVER BELIEVE ME. They would always call me ungrateful, obsessed with my phone, or call me out for making up excuses that aren’t valid. However, as a user of this app, I think i can safely say that circle wrongly adds time. Sure, I can just close out the tab and then *maybe* it’ll stop counting time (i’m still not confident in the functionality of thus app), but sometimes I forget. and then the time for the app even though only the tab is open is still counted.
3 Even if you “close out the tabs,” the app STILL doesn’t count time correctly. I’ve become so frustrated by this issue that I have PERSONALLY SET A TIMER ON MY PHONE (bc i don’t trust circle AT ALL) to track my snapchat time. In the morning at around 9, i used my snap and i counted 15 minutes used up out of my 30 minutes. then i went on filter.meetcircle or whatever that website is to check how much time i had left. i’ve learned to constantly go on circle to check my time so i can keep track of when the app is being faulty. circle said i had 15 minutes which was correct. i indeed had 15 minutes left bc i personally timed myself on my phone timer. I left the tab closed for the rest of the day because i was busy the entire day. at around 5 pm i came back and checked. And all 15 minutes remaining were GONE. i was extremely confused bc i knew i didn’t open snapchat the entire day and I clearly closed the tab out. (i made sure of it due to my past experiences) Circle CLEARLY has tons of work to do because this is actually unacceptable. because of this app, not only are my parents losing trust in me, i’m also losing trust in their ability to correctly manage my time and, literally, raise me as a human. I am already in high school. i don’t need this. anyway, that’s irrelevant because this review is about why this app is faulty and physically doesn’t work, not about it ruining the relationship between me and my parents( which it’s doing very well btw :)))) )
Ok, next!
4 Time limits and other stuff can only be modified if the device is connected to WIFI, and no data or hotspot is allowed in order to change the time limits. This isn’t necessarily a bug, but it’s extremely inconvenient. Once, I was out on a school trip to DC, and i took my phone with me, ofc, but i realized i forgot to tell my dad to turn off the time limits and whatnot, and he also forgot. During the trip, I called him so many times because i was internally panicking. ALL of my friends had access to data and they could contact anyone they wanted, meanwhile i was the only person without data or means of communication because of circle. my device wasn’t connected to my home internet because i was all the way in DC. We absolutely had no way to fix this and I was extremely upset the entire trip because I had to use my friends phone to contact someone (including my dad) and i felt extremely guilty. That trip just left a bad impression on me solely because of this issue. This is only one example of the wifi issue. whenever i’m at a sleepover, or camping trip, or some other event where it’s reasonable to allow me to use my apps, my circle is always on and i honestly felt like such a loser sitting there with no access to my apps while everyone else was living a normal teenager life. Constantly feeling different and having mini panic attacks because other people have more access to things than you do...is tragic
I totally understand where my parents are coming from when they want to use this app to control my life so that I can develop healthy time management skills, and the idea of this app seems actually, really reasonable and i can see why someone would want to use it, but what’s the point of making this “too good to be true” app and having it NOT WORKING?? i would much rather not use the app at all. not only this, but my parents are paying REAL MONEY FOR THIS!!!! This is definitely not worth it. you can easily use the Screen Time function on the iphone to set time limits and I don’t really mind that, but not only is mycircle making me hate my parents, it also does a very poor job of executing what it advertises.
