The End

It seems quite odd to be writing about The End right at the beginning, but rather than a paradox, this is the title of a new mobile phone application.

The End is aimed at those with something of a morbid curiosity, either their own or of others. As the name hints at, it’s all about when you may be pushing up daisies. However, rather than leaving you with a feeling of impending doom, this application is trying to show you how your life choices can influence your lifespan.

The way this application works is by asking you some basic information, name, age, date of birth, gender (however the last time I checked my name wasn’t an indication on how short my life may be). The application then goes on to ask some lifestyle questions of a more personal nature. These questions include eating habits, sexual behaviour, active lifestyle and whether you own a pet?!

After honestly answering all the questions (don’t worry there’s only about 10 to do), you’re then told that the calculation is now complete and then shown your results.

Now some of you who’ve read my other reviews of similar applications will probably already know my slightly sceptical opinion of such things. I think it’s fairly safe to say that certain things will of course affect your life expectancy. For example eating fast food rather than having a healthy balanced diet will dramatically influence your overall life expectancy. However, this title doesn’t really look too deeply on your daily activities and clearly makes some assumptions rightly or wrongly which then contribute to your final countdown.

For some of you this will be quite a bit of harmless fun, as is intended by the developers of the application. However for me I find it a little disturbing and rather pessimistic.

I did fill in the questions a few times and yes, the end results were different each time as a result from tweaking my answers. The answers do range from a matter of a few years (particularly if you are playing Russian roulette with your life by not having protected sex) through to being a very ripe age, providing you’re careful.

Of course there’s nothing in this application which takes into the effect of being squished by a bus – but that would be taking the programme to a whole new level.

On the positive side, this can show you the errors of your ways and will help illustrate how something quite simple, like quitting a smoking habit, a change in diet and improved fitness will change the likelihood of an early death to having a long and healthy life.

Please note, as this application asks some mature questions I would advise that only mature audiences download it.

Rating 60%

Positives

Can show you that changes in your lifestyle will affect your life expectancy

Quite an interesting idea

Simple to use application

Negatives

Once you’ve answered the questions and got your answer, there’s not much else you can do

The results aren’t scientifically proven and should not cause you to worry (as this will probably shorten your life – ironically)

Some ambiguous multiple choice questions