Ruva (Ruva.app) was designed by Dearborn resident Daniel Kastner as a healthier alternative to existing apps. Its mission is to keep people connected, not addicted. He explains, “One of the values is to design something that can still connect us well, but does not have this pull to come back to the app over and over. I wanted an app that operates in a social way that’s closer to real-life interactions.”

            Ruva doesn't have a “like” button. Rather than employing the traditional feed layout, an unpredictable, never-ending scroll, Ruva takes away the surprise factor and gives users control of the curation of their feed. Users have no public-facing profiles. To add friends, each user has a private link they can share directly with friends with which they want to connect. This eliminates fears of spam bots or parents’ fears of predators finding their children.

            “[Mainstream] news feeds are essentially designed like casino slot machines, so when you open one of these social media apps, you don’t actually know what you’re going to get,” says Kastner, who has an engineering background.