• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year

2

Philanthropy leader at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge says children of billionaires are pushing them to give their wealth away faster

3

Elon Musk on MacKenzie Scott giving away $26 billion of her fortune: 'Sadly,' it makes the world a worse place

1

MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year

2

Philanthropy leader at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge says children of billionaires are pushing them to give their wealth away faster

3

Elon Musk on MacKenzie Scott giving away $26 billion of her fortune: 'Sadly,' it makes the world a worse place
HealthThrive Global

Exclusive: Arianna Huffington Adds a Do-Not-Disturb Sign to Your Samsung Phone

By
Clifton Leaf
Clifton Leaf
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
Clifton Leaf
Clifton Leaf
Down Arrow Button Icon
October 19, 2017, 12:09 PM ET
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

There is nothing radical about most digital media or technology—at least in the sense that it doesn’t make us do things we wouldn’t ordinarily do. It just helps us do them better.

Facebook didn’t invent making friends. It just does a good job—or, rather a comprehensive one—of letting friends (and bare acquaintances) keep track of one another’s lives, thoughts, and high school crushes. Twitter didn’t invent news or gossip or puppy videos. It just spreads them faster. Airbnb didn’t invent sleepovers. It just helps us have them at strangers’ homes instead.

And Thrive Global, the wellness-crusading company that new media czarina Arianna Huffington founded nearly a year ago, didn’t invent downtime. But a new app the startup has created makes that precious commodity much easier to secure.

The app, with the eponymous name of “Thrive,” was designed for all Samsung devices and will be available for download, starting in December, exclusively through the Samsung Galaxy Store—an announcement Huffington made onstage today in front of a sold-out crowd attending the Samsung Developer Conference at San Francisco’s Moscone Center.

So what does this app do? It helps you turn off your phone. Now, if that sounds minor, just ask yourself this: “When was the last time you did it?”

The Thrive app has several “modes” to help you disconnect in different ways. Switch into “Thrive Mode,” for instance, and your phone will thoughtfully lock you out for whatever amount of time you choose—squelching notifications, text messages and phone calls, except from the loved ones you preselect to be on your “VIP list.”

If you want, you can end your nirvana session early—that is, unless you opt for “Super Thrive Mode.” Here, there’s no going back. Essential for true work addicts who don’t trust themselves to turn off, even for a few minutes. There’s a scheduler, too, where you can set up regular daily or weekly bouts of quiet time. (The whole thing is rather elegantly designed, I might add, in a soothing moon glow sort of way.)

Among Thrive’s scariest modes, though, is its “App Control” setting, which reveals how much time you actually spend on Instagram, Twitter, or “Clash of Clans.” And, yes, Thrive lets you set time limits here as well—or block some games or social media drugs altogether.

Huffington has been on a holy war to end our aching emotional, physical, and spiritual burnout. “And one of the big accelerators of burnout is our addiction to our cellphones,” Huffington told me in a recent interview at Fortune’s Most Powerful Women Summit in Washington, D.C. “We need to address that. Because the truth is your day, my day, most people’s day never ends. You have to declare an artificial end of the day and the symbol of that is turning off your phone.”

And given how addicting our personal, always accessible technoceuticals are, that ain’t easy.

Tristan Harris, the former Google “Design Ethicist” who once worked as a magician, wrote a compelling essay last year on “How Technology is Hijacking Your Mind…” He argues that our phones, social media, and games use a psychological lure called intermittent variable rewards. He writes:

“If you want to maximize addictiveness, all tech designers need to do is link a user’s action (like pulling a lever) with a variable reward. You pull a lever and immediately receive either an enticing reward (a match, a prize!) or nothing. Addictiveness is maximized when the rate of reward is most variable.”

“That’s why we need to set boundaries,” says Huffington. “The Thrive app is designed to help us monitor our addiction.”

We can do that by descending into silos, perhaps. Internally, in fact, Huffington and her team called the app “silo” for a while, she says, but the word has negative implications.

“We had lots of back-and-forths on whether the app should be the same name as the company,” Marc Mathieu, the chief marketing officer of Samsung Electronics, tells me in an interview. “But what Arianna has developed is not just a trick—it’s a philosophy, it’s a point of view, it’s a platform.” And “Thrive” is what that philosophy-pov-platform is. (For more on that, see “Dream Catcher,” the story I wrote on the day of Thrive Global’s launch last November.)

Indeed, as I think of it, there is something “radical” about Thrive. That’s because it does, in my view, have the power to get us to do something we wouldn’t ordinarily do—and that’s brag about resting.

As Huffington says, so many of us in the modern age seem to compete to see who can keep their engines revved the hottest, longest, and most intensely.

That’s why my favorite setting in the Thrive app is what the programmers modestly call “Bi-directional Communication.” That option tells anyone and everyone who texts or calls you that you’re busy unplugging.

It’s a subtle message, yes. But with those few words repeated millions of times, Huffington hopes to foment a revolution. God bless her.

About the Author
By Clifton Leaf
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon
Add Fortune on Google for similar content.

Latest in Health

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in Health

kean
PoliticsCongress
Tom Kean discloses depression diagnosis behind 4-month absence from Congress: ‘until you experience it yourself, it is difficult to fully understand’
By Mike Catalini, Joey Cappelletti and The Associated PressJune 30, 2026
21 hours ago
‘Cop on your wrist’: Wearables offer tons of data, but people are still going to sleep to Netflix and TikTok
HealthBrainstorm Tech
‘Cop on your wrist’: Wearables offer tons of data, but people are still going to sleep to Netflix and TikTok
By Amanda GerutJune 29, 2026
2 days ago
usa
EnvironmentHeat
Long and dangerous heat wave to roast America from Dallas to New York through July 4th holiday
By Marc Levy and The Associated PressJune 29, 2026
2 days ago
France suffers 1,000 additional deaths in just the past week amid record heat wave—and 85% involved people aged 65 and above
EuropeWeather and forecasting
France suffers 1,000 additional deaths in just the past week amid record heat wave—and 85% involved people aged 65 and above
By Kirsten Grieshaber, John Leicester and The Associated PressJune 28, 2026
3 days ago
Peter Rahal speaks on stage in front of a black and purple background.
RetailFood and drink
David Protein CEO says ‘diet trends are over’ because of GLP-1s: ‘What’s next is really hard to predict’
By Sasha RogelbergJune 28, 2026
3 days ago
What 3 million Americans quitting Obamacare shows: Republicans couldn’t repeal it, so they made it unaffordable
HealthHealth Insurance
What 3 million Americans quitting Obamacare shows: Republicans couldn’t repeal it, so they made it unaffordable
By Ali Swenson and The Associated PressJune 27, 2026
4 days ago

Most Popular

MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year
Success
MacKenzie Scott alone accounted for one-third of America's $19.2 billion in megagifts last year
By Sydney LakeJune 25, 2026
6 days ago
Philanthropy leader at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge says children of billionaires are pushing them to give their wealth away faster
Success
Philanthropy leader at Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge says children of billionaires are pushing them to give their wealth away faster
By Preston ForeJune 27, 2026
4 days ago
Elon Musk on MacKenzie Scott giving away $26 billion of her fortune: 'Sadly,' it makes the world a worse place
Success
Elon Musk on MacKenzie Scott giving away $26 billion of her fortune: 'Sadly,' it makes the world a worse place
By Sydney LakeJune 29, 2026
2 days ago
'Humanity has chosen to become idiots': This Brown professor switched to take-home exams after a mass shooting and discovered mass cheating
AI
'Humanity has chosen to become idiots': This Brown professor switched to take-home exams after a mass shooting and discovered mass cheating
By Catherina GioinoJune 29, 2026
2 days ago
The U.S. Army is opening military bases to private billions — here's why that changes everything for the next 250 years
Commentary
The U.S. Army is opening military bases to private billions — here's why that changes everything for the next 250 years
By Marc AndersenJune 30, 2026
1 day ago
The retired college professor fighting a $313 trespassing ticket in Wisconsin thinks he's part of a national struggle
Environment
The retired college professor fighting a $313 trespassing ticket in Wisconsin thinks he's part of a national struggle
By Catherina GioinoJune 28, 2026
3 days ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.