After students return home from a tiresome day of hard work at school and exhausting extracurricular activities, the last thing they want to think about is the several hours of homework they have ahead of them.

However, they usually don’t have to because, with the touch of their fingertips, students have access to over thousands of apps on their phone, allowing for the perfect distraction. Over the past four years, many apps have hopped onto the iPhone screens of practically every person at Staples.

Among these apps, are “Temple Run,” which follows an explorer who has stolen treasure from a temple and is being chased by demonic monkeys. However, there’s a catch. The game goes on forever; there is no winning. The only feeling of accomplishment comes from achieving a higher score. This feature caused students to play for days on end.

“I played religiously,” Danny Jersey ’17 said. “I had days at a time where I would disregard work just to play.”

Next came “Flappy Bird,” the app that wreaked havoc in the halls as frustrated students tried to fly the small bird through the narrow pipes over and over again.

“I played, but I honestly don’t know why,” Peter Sauer ’16 said. Other students concurred that the app certainly was addicting but not for a good reason. Sauer even described it as “boring and repetitive.”

Other apps like “Candy Crush” became  popular games for the average student at lunch or to whip out in class when the teacher wasn’t looking. Due to more exciting features, students became more addicted to “Candy Crush” than preschoolers do to sugar.

“There were so many levels,” Emma Caplan ’15 said. “It kept me going and made me want to play more.”

Most recently of all, came “Trivia Crack,” an app that rose in popularity just around midterms this year. It was the perfect distraction from studying and provided students with all the information they wouldn’t actually need for their exams. However, people took this game seriously and competition heated up during the holiday season.

“It was so important to people that they would ignore someone for days just because they beat them in ‘Trivia Crack’ 15 times,” Jersey chuckled.

Although all of these apps were created to entertain, they also serve to help stressed students remain sane and relax when it comes to homework and tests.

Recently, new social media apps such as Instagram, Facebook Messenger and Snapchat, among others, have taken over the best-sellers lists. Meanwhile the apps from our past have fallen in the ranks. But Staples students will never forget the apps that have gotten them through five-hour study sessions for a quick break.