A new fitness system created by Saskatoon software developers is aiming to cut down on screen time.

FitCoins, founded by Dustin Gamester and Andrew Crouse, is a program designed to keep kids — and adults — active by balancing screen time with exercise.

“The problem is it’s so much worse than it was when we were kids. Games are really designed to be addicting nowadays,” Gamester said. “We figured that this would be a potential solution for a big problem.”

The points-system program awards kids with FitCoins for exercising. The coins, or points, can then buy screen time. The points decrease as a video game is played, and eventually the screen will shut off — either when the coins hit zero or after the points dive into the negatives, depending on a parent’s preferred settings for the software.

To keep playing the video game, the user must earn more FitCoins.

The software works on phones and televisions, and will soon work for computers. Activity is tracked either through phones carried by the child or user, or through fitness trackers like Fitbit.

“Our website hooks into the back end of those services and pulls in how many steps they’ve taken, so it can add to the user’s balance,” Crouse said.

Crouse and Gamester have been working on the software for less than a year.

A full launch of the FitCoins program is scheduled for January.