Award-winning app has now been recognized by NAPPA in back-to-back years, for learning and for kids, arriving just as summer screen time surges and millions of children risk losing months of academic progress
CHICAGO, June 9, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Summer is the best time to be a kid. It’s also, for many parents, the most anxious time on the calendar, when school routines disappear, screens fill the gap, and the learning gains from the past year begin to quietly erode.
Into that moment comes news that couldn’t be better timed. Grogo, the first parental app built on the premise that smarter screen time beats less screen time, has received the 2026 National Parenting Products Award (NAPPA) for Best App for Kids, its second NAPPA recognition in as many years. In 2025, NAPPA recognized Grogo for Best App for Learning. Together, the two awards validate what Grogo’s founders always believed: that an app kids actually embrace and an app that genuinely builds knowledge are not competing ideas. They can be the same product.
What a NAPPA Award Actually Means
NAPPA has been evaluating children’s and family products for more than 30 years. Its awards are not self-submitted badges or pay-to-play seals. They reflect hands-on review by panels of real parents and child development experts who test products as families actually use them. What the evaluators wrote about Grogo this year speaks directly to what makes the app different from every other screen time tool on the market.
“It is not a punitive way to monitor and control screen time,” one evaluator wrote, “it just provides a break with some fun, challenging questions.” Another noted that “kids would like this because it is just a break, the app is not being shut down.” A third observed that the experience “worked to stop me from scrolling mindlessly,” a reminder that the habits Grogo interrupts are not unique to children.
The 2025 NAPPA evaluators were equally direct. One wrote that Grogo “takes the parent out of the picture in a way, so they do not have to monitor their child scrolling.” Another called out the design specifically: “Brain breaks – grade level questions – are a wonderful way to let children know it is time for a break and to earn more time.”
Two awards. Two independent panels. One consistent conclusion: Grogo works and kids don’t fight it.
The Summer Slide Is Real. And It Starts Now.
Summer learning loss, the documented decline in academic skills that occurs during the summer months, is one of education’s most persistent challenges. Research published in the American Educational Research Journal, drawing on a study of 18 million students in grades one through six, found that children can lose up to 40 percent of a school year’s learning gains over summer break, with the effect compounding across consecutive summers. Math skills are consistently the hardest hit.
Additional research reinforces the urgency for the age group Grogo serves most directly, kids in grades 2-12, and especially those who are 8-13 years old. Studies show that 70 to 78 percent of elementary students lose math knowledge over the summer, while 62 to 73 percent lose ground in reading.
For parents, the math is sobering. Ten to twelve weeks of summer screen time, at the 4.5 to 7 hours per day that Common Sense Media reports children and teens average, represents a significant window of lost learning opportunity. Or, with Grogo, a built-in one.
At a 15-minute break interval, Grogo generates up to 18 learning breaks per day and up to 126 grade-appropriate questions answered, automatically, from screen time that was already happening. No tutoring sessions. No homework arguments. No battles over the tablet.
Built for Kids. Designed Around What Parents Actually Need.
Grogo works by interrupting parent-selected apps at set intervals (every 15, 30, or 45 minutes) and presenting a brief, gamified series of grade-appropriate questions before returning kids to their entertainment. The questions come from a bank of more than 30,000 items across eight subjects: math, science, English language arts, history, pop culture, and now even Financial Literacy, and Civic Life, two subjects that schools and other apps routinely skip.
Difficulty adapts automatically based on each child’s response patterns, keeping the experience engaging without being frustrating. A redesigned 3D animated character experience gives kids something worth showing up for. An enhanced parent dashboard shows not just how many breaks a child has completed, but how they’re performing above, at, or below grade level, by subject.
Setup takes just a minute or two, all on the child’s device. There’s no surveillance, no screen time war, no awkward moment where a parent has to enforce a rule. Grogo does that automatically, and the kids know it’s coming.
In Their Own Words
“Two NAPPA awards in two years means two independent groups of parents and child development experts looked at Grogo and said it works, not just as an educational tool, but as something kids actually engage with,” said Richard Marra, Jr., Co-Founder and CEO of Grogo. “That validation matters to us because it mirrors what we hear from the families using the app every day. Grogo changes the relationship between kids and their screens. This summer, for any parent dreading what three months of unstructured screen time does to their child’s learning, we want them to know there’s a better option.”
“Every parental control tool on the market is built on the idea that screens are something to be rationed,” said Brad Brinegar, Co-Founder and CMO of Grogo. “We built Grogo on a different belief: that screen time is already happening, and what matters is what happens inside it. The NAPPA Best App for Kids award tells us that kids agree, and that’s the hardest vote to earn. Parents shouldn’t have to spend the summer being the screen-time police. Let Grogo build healthier screen time habits while their children keep growing.”
Try Grogo Free This Summer
A free 7-day trial is available at grogo.com. Charter Member pricing, available for a limited time, starts at $19.99 per year ($1.99 per month) for one child and $29.99 per year ($2.99 per month) for a family plan. For less than the cost of a single cup of coffee a month, parents can turn their child’s summer screen time into a daily learning engine.
About Grogo
Grogo, Inc. is a Chicago- and Durham, NC-based mobile app company founded by Richard Marra, Jr. (CEO) and Brad Brinegar (CMO) with a mission to make children’s screen time healthier, smarter, and self-esteem building. The first parental device management app built for healthier screen time through screen time interruption, microlearning, and kid-friendly design, not limits, punishment, or surveillance, Grogo draws from a bank of more than 30,000 grade-appropriate questions across eight subjects, including Financial Literacy and Civic Life. Grogo holds a utility patent pending on its core screen time interruption architecture. Now a two-time NAPPA award winner (2025 Best App for Learning and 2026 Best App for Kids) Grogo is available as Grogo: Healthier Screen Time on the Apple App Store and Google Play. Learn more at grogo.com.
View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/grogo-wins-second-consecutive-national-parenting-products-award-this-time-for-best-app-for-kids-302795106.html
SOURCE Grogo, Inc.
