Press & media
Everything journalists need to cover TaskBlue: the focus app for families where every focus hour pulls real plastic out of the sea.
Why TaskBlue exists
TaskBlue was founded by two students from Berlin, Paul Kasten and Alexander Zakharov. It started with the phone bans more and more schools are introducing.
We don't believe bans are the answer. A ban governs the school day, but it doesn't teach kids to handle their phone themselves. After school the phone is back, with the same apps built so that you never stop. Research backs this up: in a UK study of 1,227 adolescents at 30 schools, kids at schools with phone bans used their phones no less overall and felt no better than kids at schools without one. (Source: Goodyear et al., The Lancet Regional Health Europe, 2025)
So TaskBlue makes only the distracting apps invisible, and the rest of the phone stays usable. On top comes a positive reason instead of a no: every focus hour with TaskBlue pulls real plastic out of the sea. Your child sees that their focus makes a difference and has a reason to focus without the distracting apps. Our goal is that over time kids notice how good a clear head feels and focus on their own, not just because their parents set it up.
The app in three sentences
With TaskBlue kids stay focused, and the sea gets cleaner. The app runs only on the child's iPhone: parents set once when and where focus runs, at school for example, and the distracting apps then disappear on their own; it comes with the BlueTag, a small key ring for the parents, handmade in Berlin from plant-based PLA. Each child brings up to 5 kg of plastic a month back to land, recovered with WWF Germany and GhostNetZero, for €49.99 a year including the BlueTag or €9.99 a month.
Fact sheet
| Name | TaskBlue |
| Domain | taskblue.app |
| Based in | Berlin, Germany |
| Founders | Paul Kasten and Alexander Zakharov, two students from Berlin |
| Platform | iPhone, iOS 16 or later |
| NGO partner | WWF (marine conservation) |
| Audience | Parents of school-age kids |
| Pricing | €49.99 a year or €9.99 a month, BlueTag included either way |
| Contact | [email protected] |
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