Do apps that track your “filler words” work?

CNN.com recently ran a story about a new app called “LikeSo” that tracks and promises to help you eliminate verbal filler—crutch words such as “like,” “actually,” and “whatever.” The app’s creator, a media trainer named Audrey Mann Cronin, told CNN how it came about.

The way people speak has always been on her radar, she said, so two and a half years ago, when she noticed her teenage daughter—always well-spoken and poised—starting to use “like” between every other word, she freaked out:

“I thought, ‘Oh, no, not her. Has she now fallen into this verbal trap, and how do I pull her out?’ said Mann Cronin, a mom of two. ‘She’s such a good girl and I didn’t want to pick on her. I have a son, who’s younger, and I thought, I want to pull her out of this trap before my son falls in.'”