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Design Ethicist Imagines How Apple Could Help Combat Tech Addiction in Future iOS Updates

Disgusting how Apple is constantly used because it generates clicks. Before smartphones there was Nintendo and Xbox and PlayStation. God I remember my nephews playing games on their Windows computers for hours at a time. I remember them glued to cable TV channels like Disney and Nickelodeon. Kids were addicted to things a long time before the iPhone existed.
 
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jav6454 said:
It is a parent's job to monitor kids phone usage, not a corporation's.
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Kids are only a small portion of iOS users. This woud be for every user.

I agree, people should be able to look after themselves, but unfortunately most people are idiots.

I don't know if any of these suggestions are going to work but this is area that demands attention. Humans aren't designed to be hunched on a sofa, looking at a screen 12" from their face for prolonged periods of time.

Also, this isn't a problem for Apple, it's a problem for the industry.
 
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jav6454 said:
It is a parent's job to monitor kids phone usage, not a corporation's.
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The manufacturer can supply parents with the tools to make these decisions. Nothing at all wrong about that, and quite a bit right about it.

My problem is with this article. Apple was asked by two major investors to look into childhood tech addictions, an initiative Apple seems prepared to pursue. Good for them. This article veers way off that point into more general issues of tech use that don't have anything directly to do with children. I've heard a number of interesting and quite straight-forward methods suggested for how parents could be empowered to limit the amount of time their kids spend using tech. None of them were mentioned here, I suppose because the article doesn't have much if any relationship to what Apple was actually asked to do.
 
This comes from the New York Times, which is a cesspool of crap... They are even trying to advertise about the truth, which is a foreign language to this outfit..
 
Sod that. It's bad enough that my watch pings me every 10 minutes to get up and walk around, I don't need my phone tutting at me disapprovingly because it's deemed my Reddit usage to be too much.
 
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The road to hell is paved with good intentions... by wealthy douchebags planning to make more money by charging for the use of the road.
 
Particularly for those of you confounded as to what the real problem is, read Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) and Technopoly (1992) by Neil Postman.
 
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Google has over 80% smartphone marketshare. They also profit off of having your constant attention. But let's go after Apple to fix all of society's problems!
 
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I can't wait for the anti-tech elderly crowd to die out. When I was a kid I would sit there on the swing and be incredibly bored. Tech literally made my life worth living. Just because you liked kicking a rock around for 6 hours every day doesn't mean the rest of us do.
 
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SuperMatt said:
Google has over 80% smartphone marketshare. They also profit off of having your constant attention. But let's go after Apple to fix all of society's problems!
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Chalking you up as another victim of a poorly-written article that has nothing do with anything Apple has actually been asked to do.
 
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Swampthing said:
Sometimes these people don’t think things through. What financial incentive would there be for Apple to help people use their product less?

:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:
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This. Gotta laugh all the wannabe engineers, idealists with their proposals. I always want to say, if you have such great ideas, go to a good university for 5 years, study engineering or design, computer science or other, go get the job out of thousands of people competing, become part of the company, and then propose your idea. Kind of funny when the work part of it comes in and it's crickets.

Do not want my phone telling me how much time I spent on apps. Battery use, data use, sure, but I don't need to know how much time, I was there, and was on the apps, so going out on a limb here ... I already know that I spent time on them.
 
jav6454 said:
Your own example indicates my point. Technology should help aide a parent do his/her job, not do it for them. Putting controls that "curb" addictions is asking a tech company to watch over your kid. It has become too hard for many parents to do the right thing and either ground a kid who won't listen or take away whatever is causing the addiction. Why bring Apple (or XYZ company) in?
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As a parent I can tell you that parenting is not an easy task, especially when mom and dad work long hours and they are not there with the kids as much as they would like too. So, this could help parents too. It certainly would help me. On top of that, some parents are not even aware that this is a problem.
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scrapesleon said:
Apple job is to sell device not what the consumer does with it
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you could also argue that getting involved with politics and social justice is not Apple's job but they do it anyway.
 
Most of my skills today come from the time I spent on a computer as a child. I was modifying code in chess engines (C code) when I was in my early teens... Because of that experience, I'm employed as a programmer today. My parents tried to limit our time on tech (playing computer games back in the early 90s) but I still spent many many hours on unix ICS servers and spent some time coding. My dad helped by implementing a rule - the time I spent learning programming, I could spend that same time playing games (Aces of the Pacific, Age of Empires, etc...).

Parent involvement is key. Allowing kids the freedom to game is good, but also making sure they spend a good amount of time learning and doing stuff that isn't as easy is key too.

But how is that Apple's problem? If Apple has to do anything about it, imo, the parent(s) have failed.

Due to my skills today thanks to my time spending dabbling in tech as a kid - I'm very against keeping kids away from tech. But all gaming is also bad.
 
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hagjohn said:
Just put a count down timer on the phone that the parents can set and control and when the timer hits 0, data, games, etc... shut down until the next day.
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Amazon Fire has this feature for kids. It limits how long you can do apps, video, etc.....and when it is done, it is done. You need a parental override to see/do more.
 
I agree it's up to parents to help curb their kids' phone/device addiction. However, the idea of the device being able to track how long you spend doing certain things sounds interesting. I know a few adults that are constantly on their phones. I ask them what they do staring at them all day, the response is usually "huh, shrug, I don't know". I hint they are staring at their phones all day and they get visibly mad and argue that they aren't. Something that lets you know exactly how long you are staring at facebook, twitter, playing that game, etc... sounds like it might be useful in letting people know just how bad their addiction really is.
 
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iisdan said:
I can't wait for the anti-tech elderly crowd to die out. When I was a kid I would sit there on the swing and be incredibly bored. Tech literally made my life worth living. Just because you liked kicking a rock around for 6 hours every day doesn't mean the rest of us do.
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What a pity. I mean that, sincerely. I truly feel a deep sadness for you and others who feel as you do, because it indicates a lack of meaningful human relationships and little or no connection to the incredible natural world around you.
 
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My initial reasoning was that users aren’t addicted to the hardware. They’re addicted to the content, particularly social feeds and content with psychological rewards. Therefore, concerned advocates should be lobbying those companies instead. However, a phone’s portability and convenience makes those content sources more available. A kid probably wouldn’t/couldn’t sit at a desktop PC or laptop all day for his fix. The phones are enablers.

Call me skeptical. The tech industry is going to deny their intentions like the tobacco companies when those companies tried to influence future customers early.
 
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