“The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing you to download his app.” – Ancient tech proverb, probably!
In a world where 43.2% of Americans openly admit they’re addicted to their smartphones and the average person checks their device 205 times daily, one entrepreneur has discovered the perfect business model: create the disease, then sell the cure1.
Meet Aidan Maxwell, founder and CEO of PhoneFix Solutions, the fastest-growing tech conglomerate you’ve never heard of—until now. His business strategy? A revolutionary two-phase approach that first hooks users on their devices through addictive apps, then offers them expensive solutions to break free from the very addiction his company created.
The Perfect Business Model: Digital Drug Dealing
“I had my eureka moment while watching my nephew play Candy Crush for six straight hours,” Maxwell explains from his minimalist office in Silicon Valley, where not a single screen is visible. “I realized there’s more money in rehabilitation than in addiction. Drug dealers only profit once. Rehab centers get recurring revenue.”
Maxwell’s business empire operates through two seemingly separate companies. Phase one: AttenTech, which designs hyper-engaging apps specifically engineered to trigger dopamine releases at precisely timed intervals. Phase two: DigitalDetox, which offers expensive solutions to break those exact addictive patterns.
The business model is brilliant in its simplicity. First, get people hopelessly addicted to their phones through free or low-cost apps. Then, once they’re desperate to reclaim their lives, charge them premium prices for the cure.
“We’ve essentially reverse-engineered the tobacco industry’s business model for the digital age,” explains Dr. Eliza Chen, PhoneFix’s Chief Addiction Engineer. “But unlike cigarettes, which take decades to kill you, our products can destroy your attention span, relationships, and mental health within months. And then—here’s the beautiful part—we step in to save you from yourself.”
The Science of Digital Addiction
The company’s flagship addiction product, an innocent-looking social media app called “Momentz,” appears harmless at first glance. But beneath its sleek interface lies a sophisticated algorithm designed by 1000’s of former gambling industry psychologists.
“We’ve incorporated over 38 psychological triggers into the basic scrolling mechanism,” explains Chen. “Each time you pull down to refresh, there’s a variable reward schedule at play—the same mechanism that makes slot machines so addictive. Will you see something exciting or nothing at all? That uncertainty keeps users pulling the lever again and again.”
The results speak for themselves. Internal data shows that Momentz users check their phones an average of 312 times daily—significantly higher than the national average of 205 checks. Over 76% of users report opening the app within five minutes of waking up, and 83% say they’ve used it while driving, despite knowing the dangers.
“We track everything,” says Maxwell. “Eye movement patterns, millisecond hesitations, emotional responses to content. We know precisely when dopamine levels drop and exactly how to boost them again. It’s basically digital cocaine.”
Phase Two: Selling the Cure
Once users reach peak addiction levels—a state PhoneFix internally calls “Digital Dependence Stage 4″—they’re mysteriously served ads for DigitalDetox, the company’s rehabilitation arm.
“The beauty is that we already have all their psychological data,” explains Maxwell. “We know exactly which addiction-breaking products will appeal to them based on their usage patterns. The heavy social media users get our ‘SocialBreak’ program. The workaholics who can’t stop checking email get ‘WorkLife Balance.’ It’s completely personalized exploitation.”
DigitalDetox’s offerings range from $9.99 monthly app subscriptions that block access to addictive apps, to the premium “Digital Rehab Retreat”—a $5,000 weekend getaway where phones are locked in specially designed safes and participants undergo intensive therapy to reconnect with reality.
“Our most popular product is the ‘PhoneBox Pro’—a $199 lockable container for your phone that only opens after a predetermined time,” says Jasmine Lee, Chief Marketing Officer at DigitalDetox. “It’s essentially a $199 box that does what a $5 kitchen timer could accomplish, but people love the irony of buying an expensive physical product to stop them from using an expensive digital product.”
The strategy is working. In 2024, PhoneFix Solutions reported revenue of $487 million, with profit margins exceeding 78%.
The Addiction Ecosystem
What makes PhoneFix’s business model truly ingenious is its closed-loop ecosystem. The company’s addiction experts continuously study user behavior in the DigitalDetox programs to identify recovery patterns, which are then used to create more effective addiction triggers in the AttenTech apps.
“It’s basically a perpetual motion machine of exploitation,” boasts Maxwell. “We create the perfect addiction, then the perfect recovery, then use what we learn to create an even more perfect addiction. Rinse and repeat.”
This approach has attracted attention from industry leaders. A confidential memo obtained from a major social media company reads: “PhoneFix has managed to monetize both sides of the digital wellness equation in a way we’ve only dreamed of. While we’ve been giving away addiction for free and leaving money on the table, they’re double-dipping.”
The company has even pioneered what it calls “Relapse Marketing”—specifically targeting former DigitalDetox customers with specially designed AttenTech apps that promise to be “mindfully engaging” but employ subtle addiction mechanics that work around the very techniques taught in their recovery programs.
The Human Cost
Not everyone is impressed with PhoneFix’s business acumen. Dr. Nora Singh, director of the Center for Digital Wellness at Stanford University, calls it “perhaps the most ethically bankrupt business model I’ve encountered.”
“What they’re doing is equivalent to a pharmaceutical company creating both highly addictive opioids and the overdose treatments,” explains Singh. “Except it’s perfectly legal because digital addiction isn’t recognized as a formal disorder—despite causing documented increases in loneliness, depression, anxiety, and stress.”2
Former employees have begun speaking out. Rachel Kim, who worked as a user experience (UX) designer at AttenTech before discovering the company’s connection to DigitalDetox, describes the internal culture as “disturbingly proud” of its manipulation.
“There were actual dashboards on the wall tracking ‘time-on-device’ metrics,” Kim recalls. “Designers would high-five when they created features that increased average session length. Meanwhile, everyone in the office had their own phones locked in drawers during work hours. The hypocrisy was stunning.”
Maxwell dismisses such criticisms. “Look, we’re just giving people what they want,” he says. “First, they want digital engagement. Then they want digital freedom. We’re simply meeting market demand on both ends of the attention spectrum – a bit like when Goldman Sachs were the market makers that caused the 2007 financial crisis.”
The Copycats Arrive
PhoneFix’s success hasn’t gone unnoticed. Venture capital (VCs) has poured over $2.8 billion into “attention economy startups” in the past year alone, with many explicitly adopting the addiction-then-cure model.
“We call it the ‘Push-Pull Strategy,'” explains venture capitalist Morgan Zhang of Exponential Partners. “Push people into addictive behaviors, then pull them back out—for a hefty price. It’s exponentially more profitable than just focusing on one side of the equation.”
New entrants include MindfullyAddictive, which creates meditation apps that subtly train users to check in multiple times daily, then upsells them to premium “digital detox” features when they realize they’ve become dependent on the app.
Another startup, ScreenTime Solutions, has created an ecosystem of intentionally addictive games for children, paired with parental control software sold separately. “We’re targeting both generations simultaneously,” their pitch deck proudly proclaims.
Meanwhile, established tech companies are scrambling to implement similar strategies. Internal documents from a major smartphone manufacturer reveal plans for built-in “wellness features” that track addiction metrics but only offer meaningful intervention tools in premium subscription tiers.
The SPACE Race: When Startups Fight Back
Not everyone is following PhoneFix’s morally ambiguous path. Some genuine digital wellness startups are fighting to break the addiction cycle without creating it first.
SPACE, an app that helps users break phone addiction and manage screen time, has amassed over one million downloads by taking a more ethical approach. Their users spend an average of 2 hours and 46 minutes on their phones daily—significantly less than the national average of 4 hours and 16 minutes3.
“Companies like PhoneFix are the reason we exist,” says Alex Chen, SPACE’s founder. “We’re trying to be the antidote to their poison, not the poison and the antidote.”
But these ethical startups face an uphill battle. Without the data collected from creating addiction, they have less insight into breaking it. And without the revenue from both sides of the equation, they have smaller marketing budgets to reach potential users.
“It’s like fighting a war where the enemy has all your battle plans and twice your resources,” explains Chen. “They know exactly how the addiction works because they engineered it.”
The Future of Digital Exploitation
Maxwell has even grander ambitions for PhoneFix. The company recently filed patents for what it calls “Attention Shifting Technology”—a system that can seamlessly transition users between addictive behaviors and recovery states to maximize lifetime revenue.
“Why choose between selling cigarettes or nicotine patches when you can sell both to the same customer indefinitely?” Maxwell asks. “The future isn’t digital addiction or digital wellness—it’s the controlled oscillation between these states.”
Industry analysts project that by 2027, the “digital wellness” market will exceed $28 billion annually, with dual-model companies like PhoneFix capturing nearly 60% of revenue.
“What Maxwell has pioneered isn’t just a business model—it’s the future of attention manipulation,” explains tech analyst Sarah Johnson. “Create the problem, sell the solution, study the recovery to create better problems, and repeat. It’s diabolically sustainable.”
The Twist: Who’s Manipulating Whom?
As our interview concludes, Maxwell’s assistant quietly enters the room and hands him a sleek smartphone. Maxwell checks it immediately, his fingers scrolling with practiced precision.
After a moment, he looks up sheepishly. “Sorry about that. Important business.”
I point out the irony—the man building an empire on smartphone addiction can’t go thirty minutes without checking his own device.
Maxwell’s expression shifts, revealing an unexpected vulnerability. “That’s the dirty secret of this whole industry,” he confesses. “None of us are immune. I’ve personally enrolled in our premium DigitalDetox program three times. Cost me $15,000 of my own money.”
He places his phone face-down on the table. “Sometimes I wonder if I created this company to save myself rather than exploit others.”
As I prepare to leave, I notice Maxwell’s hand instinctively reaching for his phone again. He catches himself and pulls back.
“The real genius of the smartphone,” he says quietly, “isn’t that it connects us to the world. It’s that it makes us forget we ever existed without it. And once you’ve created that kind of need—well, people will pay anything to feel whole again.”
Three seconds after I close his office door, I hear the distinctive click of an iPhone unlocking.
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