Call your mother!

“You’re starting with nothing more than an idea, and then you have to create something that you’re proud of.”

-Rowan Turner ’26

One student from Vermont, one student from Maine, and one idea to create an app that teaches teens communication skills and gives parents a reprieve from worry. Meet ParentLock, an app that designers Eli Burgess ’26 and Rowan Turner ’26 believe is an evolution of Life360.

At its most basic level, ParentLock is a phone safety app specifically built for families on a family phone plan. The goal, Burgess and Turner say, is to encourage better communication between adults and their kids, something they both struggled with as early teenagers.

“I was not the best at responding,” recalls Turner. “Taking away a kid’s phone is such a common punishment, and being able to do that remotely with just the click of a button would revolutionize some parenting capabilities as far as technology goes. That was our goal.”

Burgess knows teens and parents often struggle to speak the same language.

“Rowan brought it up, and I realized that my parents were always on me about that, too. A lot of my friends were the same way,” Burgess says. “That is how it started.”

ParentLock, which is still being developed, will allow parents to lock a child’s phone if the child does not communicate about their location or avoids phone calls.

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“So, if parents say, ‘Please stay in contact with us so we know that you’re safe,’ but their teen is not responding, parents could lock the phone until they finally get a call back,” Burgess says.

The app is meant to build good habits and then be deleted once communications improve, says Burgess, a management major. ParentLock is targeted for families with children ages 12 to 16.

Burgess and Turner, who has not yet declared a major, plan to prioritize safety protections. Children will always be able to call parents, approved contacts, and emergency services — even if the phone is locked.

The two took a class called Clark Tank with entrepreneurship and innovation Professor Emilee Cocuzzo ’18, MBA ’19, which challenged students to develop a pitch for a business, and then present that pitch at the Clark Tank competition in Spring 2023.

The Clark Tank class combined with Burgess and Turner’s own experiences fueled the pair’s desire to create the app. They drew additional inspiration in a crowdfunding class taught by Professor Teresa Quinn.

Turner placed as a runner-up in the Clark Tank Business Pitch competition and received a $100 prize to put toward ParentLock’s development.

“The whole time, they were brutally honest with us,” Burgess says about Clark Tank. “The professors in the entrepreneurship department want to push you to be the best that you can be.”

Turner says that learning about the entrepreneurial process in these classes was deeply important.

“You’re starting with nothing more than an idea, and then you have to create something that you’re proud of,” he says.

Burgess and Turner say their current focus is getting ParentLock built and tested. They have been searching for help with software development since early 2023 and are hoping to finally realize their dreams.

“The biggest thing we look forward to is learning from feedback once people use it,” Burgess says. Turner hopes to use that insight to turn the app into a tool that genuinely fits the needs of its audience.

“We believe that we found a little niche in the parent control app area,” Turner says, referencing the need for an app specifically designed to help families communicate. “We just need to make it happen.”