Addiction to the smartphone: a problem more complex than a timer

Apple and Google are suddenly concerned about your digital wellbeing with very similar features. I spent a few weeks, especially with those built into iOS 12 and, if the ideas are there, put a simple time counter on applications only a small part of the problem.

Apple and Google, firemen firefighters?

We spend too much time on our smartphones. This is the discovery that the creators of the iPhone and Android have made in 2018, and that necessarily makes you smile. I will not repeat once again the badogy of dealer who sells a rehab, but concretely, after having a good month with a smartphone that counts my time spent on different apps and wants to help me sleep better, what is it really?

Precision to begin: I do not have access, personally, to a smartphone compatible with the beta of Android P. My impressions turn therefore mainly around the implementation of "digital health" features on iOS 12. Nevertheless, both editors have approaches so similar that what applies to one is valid, for the most part, for the other. [19659005] When Siri orders you to go to bed

A detail differs anyway: Apple does not allow to block a specific application, but a category of applications. These are from the clbadification of the App Store. Assuming we spend too much time playing, using video apps and social networking, these are the main categories I've disabled.

I've also turned on the 'Time to Live' mode. Off "or" Downtime ", which disables almost all applications over a period of time (the night in this case), and the" Do Not Disturb Overnight "mode. This significantly darkens the lock screen and cuts off all notifications until you wake up. I'm not a fan of pro email at 3 am, but it happened to me, when I woke up at night, to take a look at my smartphone. And just seeing a lit screen and notifications can be disturbing.

Google offers a similar feature, but with the interesting approach: the "Wind down" mode switches the whole interface in black and white, to make the smartphone less attractive

A halftone report

What about the effectiveness of these measures? Do I feel like using my smartphone with more reserve? In fact, not really. I would divide this provisional balance into two categories. What actually works is the stop mode and the attenuated screen during the night. Some people, including me, are sleep procrastinators, and frankly, apart from one or two instances where I've turned off the limit for 15 minutes, curfew at 11 pm has been pretty effective, just like the minimalist lock screen. We wake up, we look at the time and we go back to sleep. Of course, Apple invented the ambient display but better late than never. I would be curious to see if the equivalent in Android P is also dissuasive.

For the rest, the time limits on social apps, statistics … I keep a feeling much more mixed. Admittedly, it is interesting to know which apps are the most used, how many times you activate your phone in the day, especially over time? But is that really the problem?

I do not think we have so much of a problem with time spent on this or that application. I do not think we use our smartphones too much. I especially think that we use them badly, and for that, these functionalities bring no answer. We can limit the use of Twitter or Facebook to 30 minutes per day, that's enough to post comments not necessarily inspired, even downright toxic or hateful, or view his quota of fake news . These limits may, however, be of interest, especially for the purpose of parental control.

In this, I finally find that the best ideas come from Google, with the "Pretty please" mode of Google Home. Teaching his children to politely address, even to an artificial intelligence, it seems ridiculous, but it starts from a good feeling, and in a broader approach of sensitization on the part of the company of Mountain View.

So, I imagine things that are perhaps far-fetched … The machine learning that would alert you when it detects that you are about to post a hateful or stupid comment, or that you slip " What if you use this music app to do something creative? Oh and your article, it's not going to write itself if you keep watching Jeremy Parish's videos! "

And besides, I see a lot of features that set limits and locks, but finally, nothing really positive … Apple is rather good, on the "real" health, to encourage physical effort via the circles of the Apple Watch, the occasional challenges … It may be lacking this dimension : limit the time spent on Facebook or Twitter, why not, but it might be more effective in greeting "serious" or creative activities. But hey, at some point, it may be necessary to no longer rely on his smartphone for that …