Meredith DePaolo

Co-Founder & Mom of two

Meredith DePaolo is a TV journalist, Yale grad, and mother of two little girls who felt like she was losing her mind during the lockdown and distance learning over her kids' screen time habits.

Her husband and her set screen time limits, but their kids threw tantrums and rebelled when their time was up. Life turned into a negotiation. As parents, they found that fighting against Roblox, YouTube, Minecraft, and TikTok was a battle they could not win.

They tried parental control apps, but the existing technology didn't work. They were hard to set up, their kids broke out, and they got bombarded with notification requests for extra screen time. Fundamentally, they found the approach of simply limiting screen time flawed.

Families deserved something better.

So they teamed up with teachers, scientists, and child psychologists to create Carrots&Cake, an app focused on improving the quality of kids’ screen time. Now their kids have balance, they are happier, and their family has more time to connect.

Carrots&Cake prioritizes educational apps and gets kids to Learn First and Play Later. It puts parents in charge of technology while still giving kids agency. Their balanced limits help combat some of the biggest negative side effects associated with screen time: tantrums, anxiety, depression, obesity, sleeplessness, lowered self confidence. Tech companies and app developers understand a child’s dopamine reward pathway and leverage it to make it impossible for kids to put down their screens. Parents need to understand they aren’t fighting their kids over screen time, they’re battling Silicon Valley.

Since launching Carrots&Cake, parents report their kids’ daily screen time use is cut in half while time spent on educational apps has tripled.

Carrots&Cake has won The Mom’s Choice Award, Best New Mobile App Award 2022, and the Family Choice Award 2023