It’s a familiar sight – groups of friends or colleagues sitting in silence, eyes transfixed on their smartphones rather than making eye contact and interacting with each other. We are fast becoming addicted to our phones.

Menthal, a new Android app developed by computer scientists and psychologists from the University of Bonn, looks to highlight and address these problems by allowing people to monitor and measure their smartphone use.

As well as tracking screen time, the app will also see which apps the user spends the most time on. The data is then sent to the Menthal team to analyse. Eventually the app has the potential to be used to measure the severity and progress of depression; social withdrawal and an inability to enjoy activities both being symptoms of the disease. Bearing similarities to apps like Recess, this is another example of people's growing concern of our dependency on our devices, and the efforts made to help us break away from them.

If this sounds like something that you could perhaps use some help with, Menthal can be downloaded from the Google Play store.