In his book ‘What Technology Wants,’ Kevin Kelly wrote, “Humans are the reproductive organs of technology”. It’s true, and from fishing knives to fusion reactors, humans have given birth to some mind-bogglingly awesome inventions. Unfortunately for us there is a little glitch that comes with all our brilliance. Humans might create technology, but technology also creates humans.

Like Tristan Harris, the founder of Humanetech and host of Your Undivided Attention tells us in the Netflix documentary ‘The Social Dilemma,’ tech companies play an uncomfortably large role in almost every aspect of our daily lives.

Since the release of that breakthrough film, the world has truly awakened to the dark side of technology, especially social media. We've witnessed the alarming rise in depression, body dysmorphia, polarisation, conspiratorial thinking, and the erosion of trust in our institutions.

The main culprit, according to Harris and other commentators, is the business models of the social media giants. They rely on creating AIs that hijack our nervous systems and turn us into us dopamine addicts who check our notifications on the loo and walk into parked cars while scrolling through our newsfeeds.

We have become so addicted to the dopamine hit that we now have to install apps that stop us from using our own apps. Lucky for us, not all tech is evil and not all social media platforms exist to turn your attention into money for shareholders.

Just because you want to connect with your friends and family and learn about what is going on in the world, doesn’t mean you have to use a platform owned by one of the two billionaire brothers who want to fight each other in the Colosseum. There are tonnes of amazing apps that are doing great things for people and planet, if you know where to look.

The apps we use on a daily basis shape our minds, our relationships and our societies. It’s time for an update.

By: Daniel Simons

WeAre8 - The App That Gives Back

Founded by the Australian-born, London-based Sue Fennessy, WeAre8 is a social media platform with a difference. Instead of hijacking your mind to boost advertising revenues, WeAre8 is designed to be used for only eight minutes a day.

Users aren't targeted or shown any advertising unless they ‘opt in’ to watch ads and for every advert users do watch, they receive 50 percent of the proceeds and decide if they want to keep it themselves or donate it to one of WeAre8’s partner charities.

Fennessy describes the app as “like Instagram and Tik Tok had a love child with Change.org and GoFundMe”.

WeAre8 features two content feeds, a public feed called the 8Stage and a private Friends Feed. The 8Stage features content from creators, and world class publishers like BBC Earth, PinkNews, LadBible, Hello!.

The Friends Feed allows you to see content only from your approved connections. The company also passes on five percent of its advertising proceeds to charity and climate solutions and another five percent to a fund for content creators. Every campaign is carbon neutral in partnership with Ecologi.

The app launched in Australia in 2022 with Adam Goods, Adrian Eagle, Stan Walker, Tsehay Hawkins and Sarah Wilson as ambassadors.

According to their most recent impact report, WeAre8 shared over $2 million USD with its community, contributed over $423,000 to charities across the globe and planted over 18,000 trees.

Good.Film - Watch Films. Do Good

Good.Film was co-founded by Australian Amy Tyler with the belief that, “the better we get at connecting people to stories they find entertaining and meaningful, the greater impact they will have on the world”.

The platform works by letting audiences curate their own watch lists based on their interests and values. The extensive database features everything from global blockbusters to indie art house flicks, but it tags them all according to the causes you care about - like animal welfare, earth & environment, mental health or First Nations people.

You can search the entire library by cause, genre, platform or country and save everything into a handy little impact watchlist.

You can also buy Good Tix cinema vouchers on the platform for $11 less than the regular cinema price and still see 50% of the profits go to charity. Double Good.

Waterbear Network - Turning Film and Documentary Watchers From Passive Viewers to Interactive Doers

Founded in 2020 by Ellen Windemuth, the Executive Producer of BAFTA and Oscar winning documentary My Octopus Teacher, the WaterBear Network is a platform that brings inspiration and action together through award-winning, certified films and documentaries that you can stream at any time, and on any device for free.

Featuring entertaining films that spotlight our greatest climate, environmental and humanitarian challenges, the WaterBear Network is a streaming service, a publisher, a distributor, and an impact platform all in one.

WaterBear Network’s content connects viewers with critical global issues and the campaigns of more than 100 NGOs. It’s already available to watch in 194 countries.

Watch a film, interact. Create impact.

We Don’t Have Time - A Social Solutions App for The Planet

Freaked out about climate change? We Don't Have Time is a social media app for climate solutions.

The app focuses on leveraging technology to hold leaders and companies accountable for climate change.

It lets users leave ‘climate love’ or a ‘climate warning’ for companies, organisations or leaders so that everybody can see how good or bad they are doing when it comes to planetary impact.

If a climate review gets ‘50 agrees,’ We Don’t Have Time reaches out to the company or leader and asks for a reply. They’ve already received replies from BP, Deloitte and Shell and leaders like Zuckerberg and Bezos.

We Don’t Have Time also hosts solution-oriented broadcasts and no-fly summits that reach millions of viewers online, and they curate climate news from over 200 sources and make it available to all members for free. Their current reach is over 175 million and growing.

Good Empire - An App to Save The F**king World

Good Empire is on a mission to “gather and unite over 100 million people and 100,000 organisations to empower a thousand impact projects across the 17 UN global goals by 2030”.

The company, which uses the tagline ‘It’s time to save the F**king World’ was founded by Australian Andre Eikmeir (who previously co-founded the $100m+ wine startup Vinomo) after what he describes as an existential crisis driven by concern for the world.

The app has featured a bunch of gamified challenges related to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, like the zero ocean plastics challenge, the sustainable cities challenge and the reforestation challenge.

Recently, Good Empire launched ‘G-Revolution’ an ambitious block-chain enabled project aimed at building a more abundant, equitable and sustainable world.

Ecosia - The Search Engine That Fights Climate Change Through Reforestation

Unlike Google, it might be a bit of a mouthful to use ‘Ecosia’ as a verb, but that shouldn’t stop you from making it your default search engine.

Ecosia is on a mission to plant 1 billion trees by 2025. Earlier this year they passed 200,000,000.

The search engine can be installed on your phone, or you can make it your default search option in chrome. It lets you keep track of how many trees you’ve planted with a personal counter and tells you exactly how much C02 your searchers have offset.

Ecosia has invested in two solar power plants that produce enough renewable energy to power all Ecosia searches twice over. They've also created an incubator for regenerative agroforestry and invested into climate tech solutions like Europe’s Climate Venture Capital Fund, a roof-top, commercial-scale solar system in Germany and other solar and regenerative projects across the globe.

Ecosia was Germany’s first certified B-corp and they donate 100% of their profits to the planet.