Apps could make drinking culture safer

Drunk students, rejoice: Two new apps are here to help you save face and keep you safe.

In the last week, Drunk Locker and Drunk Mode have been receiving media attention for their efforts to curb users’ drunken mistakes. They claim to help make your night out a little less unfortunate, whether you have a tendency to call your ex, lose your friends or post regrettable Snapchat stories.

Drunk Locker, free on the Google Play store for Android, blocks Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, Snapchat and Facebook Messenger when you let it know that you’re getting prepared for a night out on the town.

The app is specifically for college students, and developers hope that with the app users will “never worry again about sending out drunk messages and party all night long.” Users will have to pre-plan a bit to get this app. Its functions are turned on as soon as you let it know how many hours you plan on being drunk for, and there’s no way to turn it off until those hours have expired.

If you do sober up sooner than expected, being disconnected from a few apps for a few more hours is worth it to protect your social media accounts.

It’s a fairly well-known fact that employers have more access to your personal life than ever before because of social media. A Eurocom Worldwide study in 2012 reported that “almost one in five technology industry executives say that a candidate’s social media profile has caused them not to hire that person.”

By turning off your social media apps with Drunk Locker, you can save yourself from a tweet that could get you fired or an accidental Facebook status that could prevent you from getting hired in the first place.

Drunk Mode, free on iTunes Store or App Store, is also a new app that was created by Joshua Anton, a graduate of the University of Virginia. According to its crowdfunding page, the app is “designed to change the lives of drunk people around the world by providing you an all in one solution for the party professional for both safety and fun.” Also aimed at college students, the app has been being marketed to select colleges across the country for testing.

Similarly to Drunk Locker, you simply set how many hours you’re going to be out and turn the app on. After that, Drunk Mode will track you and your friends via GPS for as long as you’re out. If you lose your friends, simply open the app’s “Find My Drunk” feature. If you don’t remember where you went last night, check the app’s “Breadcrumbs” feature, which maps your GPS tracking.

The app might appear scarily similar to the ones helicopter moms use to stalk their children, but at least with this one, it’s your friends stalking you instead of your parents. In addition to GPS tracking, features that allow you to block certain people from your contact list (e.g. your ex or your boss) so you can’t text them during the night will be coming soon.

Drunk Mode is also developing features to be released in 2015. “Find a Ride” connects you with methods of transportation including Uber, public transportation and safe rides. “Recovery Mode” can help you recover last night’s Snapchats. “Night Time Enhancers” and “The Hype Map” help you find where to go for the best happy hours, food and guy to girl ratios. Though many of the features from Drunk Mode enable you to have a fun, less shameful night, they also have a much greater purpose: safety.

College students have been getting drunk for years, but with the recent death of a West Virginia University fraternity member and the suspension of all Greek activity on campus that followed, the country is trying to find the best solution to curb dangerous college drinking.

Each year, over 1,825 college students die from accidental, alcohol-related injuries and 97,000 students experience alcohol-related sexual assault or date rape.

The apps seem to be designed to cultivate the same kind of look-out-for-each-other spirit that UVA fostered after the disappearance of 18-year-old student, the late Hannah Graham, earlier this year.

The app encourages students to keep track of each other not only for practical purposes, but also to ensure that nobody gets left behind. Apps like Drunk Locker and Drunk Mode may not prevent heavy drinking. Some might even argue that their existence encourages students to get belligerently drunk and rely on their phones to keep them safe.

But these apps do have the potential to minimize some of the consequences of belligerent behavior.

“Students will party. This will not change. It is the nature of being young in college to want to be a bit ‘rebellious’ and do crazy stuff. All we are trying to do is create an easy button for certain questions,” Anton said in an interview with the Huffington Post.

Keeping students from posting on social media or talking to people they shouldn’t talk to at 2 a.m. protects their dignity and professional lives. Giving students a tool to responsibly track their friends has the potential to save lives.

If you can get over the necessity to pre-plan and let your friends stalk you, these apps could save you some next-morning or even rest-of-your-life regret.