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Want to hear something scary? The average smartphone user touches his phone more than 2,600 times a day.
Even Apple (AAPL), Facebook (FB) and Alphabet (GOOGL) think it's a little too much.
According to a study conducted in 2016 by the Dscout research firm, the Facebook and Alphabet apps ordered 43% of these taps and daily scans. Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Youtube and Chrome have occupied a large part of our attention, with Facebook as the most requested application by a wide margin.
Technology companies have all hooked on their gadgets and applications. Now, they offer ways to help users remember it, at least in theory.
At WWDC, Apple announced a list of new features in iOS12, which included a number of tools to help iPhone users understand and manage how much time they spend on their phones. These features include Do not disturb, which suspends notifications for a given period of time, suggestions from Siri about disabling notifications you do not need; Screen Time, an activity diary summarizing the time you spend in applications; and Application Limitations, a way to allocate budgets for the use of the application. Enhanced parental controls are also coming in iOS12, allowing parents to set budgets for phone use.
"[Apps] Please ask us to use our phone when we should care about something else, they send us floods of notifications, trying to attract us for fear of missing out, and some of us c & rsquo; Has become a habit that we might not even recognize, "said Craig Federighi, vice president of engineering at Apple, at WWDC.
This idea took several nicknames: At Apple, it was nicknamed Digital Health; at Google, it's Digital Wellbeing; on Facebook, it's Time Well Spent, borrowed on behalf of a nonprofit organization that fights digital addiction.
Google's Digital Wellbeing efforts are also taking the form of an update of the mobile operating system, called Android P, which will be released later this year. Just like the iOS12 features, Android P will include a dashboard that will allow you to see the use of your application, a "do not disturb" feature and ways to impose limits on the use of applications on you and your children. As reported by The Verge, who presented a preview of the OS, the features are more aggressive and can actually block you temporarily once you have reached your limit: "We are the operating system, and we feel we need to do more We think we have a responsibility to do more, "said The Verge Sameer Samat, vice president of product management at Android.
Facebook, the company perhaps most often blamed for creating a generation of social media junkies, follows its own usage journal called Your Time on Facebook, which is currently being tested in the Facebook Android app. .
The new tools reflect a growing consensus among researchers and health advocates that a constant screen time can be damaging, especially for minors. A number of studies have associated the use of social media to depression, anxiety and other ills, and even some of Facebook's first responders have even decried its properties addictive: "Short-term dopaminergic feedback loops destroy society. works, "said investor Chamath Palihapitiya, who also led the growth of Facebook users until 2011, at an event in 2017.
"It's a confluence of circumstances that has led to the conversations we have now," said Colby Zintl of Common Sense Media, an advocacy group that promotes the safe use of technology and media. "I think technology companies are realizing that the libertarian state of mind can have consequences that will ultimately hurt their business, even if it is not the case now."
Despite the seemingly broad consensus on the issue, whether phone junkies will actually use the devices is another issue entirely. None of the features is still public, and it is likely that many will not be influenced: 68% of those surveyed in the Dscout study said that even if they found the results "shocking", they would not change probably not their habits.
"We have to take a wait-and-see approach, but we are certainly optimistic," said Zintl.
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