Apple Should Address Youth Phone Addiction, Say Two Large Investors (reuters.com)

Two large Apple shareholders, Jana Partners and the California State Teachers' Retirement System, are urging Apple to take steps to address what they say is a growing problem of young people getting addicted to Apple's iPhones, Jana partner Charles Penner said. From a report: Jana, a leading activist shareholder, and CalSTRS, one of the nation's largest public pension plans, delivered a letter to Apple on Saturday asking the company to consider developing software that would allow parents to limit children's phone use, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier on Sunday. Jana and CalSTRS also asked Apple to study the impact of excessive phone use on mental health, according to the publication. Jana and CalSTRS together control about $2 billion worth of Apple shares, the Journal reports.

Comments

What else can they do

[Chrisq]

They already make their phones more expensive than anything a kid should have. What else can they do apart from this public-spirited action ;-)

Re:What else can they do

[Hal_Porter]

I guess that means some people have a reputation for buying overpriced stuff. Android is just as guilty as is Apple

Android is an OS Google give away for free. You can buy Android devices from a wide range of manufacturers. macOS/iOS is single sourced which means if you're hooked on their ecosystem you must buy from Apple. And Apple don't make low end devices. E.g. no netbook class machines. I got my Mum a Zenphone 5 for 4000 TWD, ie about $US 135. The cheapest iPhone is ~$350.

Now you may say "But I don't want a cheap machine, they're underpowered". Well good for you. But the problem iOS/macOS users have that Android/Windows/Linux ones do not is that you can't legally run Apple OSs on low end devices because Apple won't sell them.

So once you commit to the Apple ecosystem you're also committing to buying only high end devices and only buying them from Apple.

This is not a problem Android/Windows/Linux users have.

For the same price as a replacement for my Macbook I could either get two comparable Windows machines - e.g. Asus Zenbooks, or one really high end gaming laptop, or about 8 really low end netbook class machines.

But if I want to build iOS apps I need a Mac, and I can only buy from Apple.

Re: What else can they do

[ShanghaiBill]

That just means you're a bad parent.

Maybe. Or perhaps the moral panic that the world is going to hell because teenagers are using technology to SOCIALIZE is just the predictable result of yet another generation reaching cranky geezerhood.

Meanwhile, until I see some objective evidence that mobile phones are really more harmful than TV or landlines (the targets of previous moral panics), I will decline to micromanage my kids social lives, and let them learn responsibility by making their own decisions.

Re: What else can they do

[dgatwood]

There's actually a lot of objective evidence that people are a lot more mean online than they are in person. There's even a name for this difference—the online disinhibition effect. It should be self-evident, then, that doing most of your socializing online will lead to people not being as nice, and in aggregate, will cause significant societal harm.

This is not to say that parents need to micromanage their kids, but there definitely comes a point at which parents do need to actually parent, by telling their kids to put down the phone and actually talk to other people. That said, I'm not sure how Apple could address that—Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, etc., sure, but not Apple. The problem isn't the hardware, and thus can't realistically be solved by the hardware, I don't think.

Hypocrites. Mind your own business.

[erapert]

Let me get this straight: some super rich people are looking around and decide that they don't like "how all those young'uns are spending a lot of time on them there phones (that I'm making a lot of money on...). T'ain't right. We gotta get them kids to go out an' play!"
How is it any of their business how other people run their own lives? Why isn't there a counter news article saying "butt out and mind your own business"?

Re:Hypocrites. Mind your own business.

[sound vision]

There are people who think that kids spending all day on the phone might not be healthy. Some of these people are rich. You did get that part straight.
The part you didn't get straight is when you assumed that someone is telling someone else how to run their life. What's being proposed is for Apple to put software on their phones to facilitate parents who, on their own, make the decision to limit their kids' screen time.

The need a new app.

[nospam007]

The iParent app.

Re:wrong target

[DaveV1.0]

And why do parents need help in cutting their own childrens' phone usage?

What happened to the good old "Turn the damned phone off"....or even better..."Give me that phone".

No need for Apple to get involved there.

Because mommy and daddy want to be their kids' friends and don't want to traumatize the kids by actually parenting.

Hell, why would parents buy children (less than teens at least) a phone in the first place?

Because it is a lot easier to let the phone entertain the kids instead of actually parenting.

You can be Addicted to anything.

[foxalopex]

I think these investors are missing the point. You can be addicted to *anything*. But something that they've long pointed out is many addictions are the result of some other gap or need that is missing in life. I often get the impression that online a lot of folks are quite literally lonely. As much as you can make do with a virtual social life, I suspect having a real social life is a part of being human. So parents throwing their kids a near $1000 phone because they don't have time to deal with them is not really making the situation better. Instead encourage your kids to be with other kids in person and better yet take a more active approach to the community you belong to.

Heard this one before

[zifn4b]

Oh think of the children! We should:

- Address profanity in music by censorship (Tipper Gore)
- Address video game addiction (think World of Warcraft)
- Address violence in video games because it's causing crime to increase
- And now... TADA! Phone addiction

These so-called "values groups" do the same thing every now and then. They claim X is going to ruin society and some overarching entity needs to intervene and forcefully make people "behave appropriately".

This claim has been made again and again and again and every prediction of society turning into a bunch of lazy, dangerous degenerates proves to be false because it's not supported by any evidence. Get off your high horse and worry about yourself instead of thinking yourself superior and others being too stupid to think for themselves thus needing you to think for them.

Re:Heard this one before

[PoopJuggler]

Can you cite where in TFA they claim iPhones are turning kids "into a bunch of lazy, dangerous degenerates" ?
You can't, because it doesn't. All they're saying is that the phones should have better parental controls, which is a perfectly reasonable thing.

Re:Heard this one before

[ljw1004]

You can only restrict some applications that come with the phone. There is no way to restrict instagram and snapshat specifically while allowing a third party alarm clock app or organizer app.

??? Sure you can, and existing products already do something roughly similar...

Amazon's FreeTime works on a whitelist basis. As a parent, I specifically chose to allow which of the installed apps my children can use.

Amazon's FreeTime Unlimited, a bit like Amazon Prime Video, provides access to 9000+ videos, apps and books. They are curated and assigned an age-appropriate level. As a parent, I can specifically chose to let only material appropriate for 2-4 year olds be available on my Kindle Fire. The curation also indicates whether a given item is education or entertainment. As a parent I can have the software allow 30 minutes entertainment a day and that only after 30 minutes education. It also curates youtube videos, so as a parent you can let your child browse just an Amazon-curated subset of youtube.

Disney's Circle works at the wifi level via ARP spoofing (for folks whose routers aren't as configurable or friendly to configure). It lets you specify, for instance, which social media sites are allowed to be served to which MAC address and which aren't, or at what times of day. Yes it can certainly limit snapchat and instagram without limiting BBC News.

Apple's Guided Access sort of works with i-devices in more limited ways, but kids by their early teenage years pretty soon learn to disable it by powering off the device and then powering it back on again. And then social-engineering the passcode out of their parents.

That was just the technical answer to your comment. On a parenting philosophy level, I'm following an approach called "RIE" promoted by Janet Lansbury. It stresses that it's important to respect your children (e.g. give them freedom in their playtime to make their own autonomous choices), but always give them the solidity of knowing there are boundaries (e.g. it's in their nature to ask for more than what they should have, and it ultimately reassures them when they can't get it). I've so far found that a whitelist like I use with Amazon's Kindle works best for this, in hand with me setting time limits. It's certainly better than hovering over their shoulder all the time -- that would take away their autonomy at a time when they should be developing it, and I'm not the helicopter parent either at the playground or at home.

On another parenting philosophy note, after reading stuff about "The Paradox of Choice", I believe it's bad parenting to give kids huge unlimited choice. So they get the autonomous choice to use their device for only 4 things that I think are age-appropriate and formative right now... at the moment, Sesame Street, Mr Rogers, videos of their grandparents from the other side of the world reading stories to them, and The Snowman (soon to be replaced by Kipper The Dog). And one game, "Peekaboo Barn".

Re:wrong target

[grub]

I have a phone addiction (according to my wife, at least), and I only have Android. How is this Apple's problem?

It's not. Apple is an easy target because they're the sole source for iPhones and iOS.

Re:Where are the parents?

[DaveV1.0]

They are busy playing CandyCrush on their phones.

I think there's something to this

[ErichTheRed]

I have a 7 year old and 4 year old. They have devices (not phones) but we don't let them use them forever. This is definitely an issue though...if we didn't limit what they did on these devices they would be on them to the exclusion of everything else. I can definitely see how smart devices are more addicting that TV or video games were for us. With TV, it's a totally one-way medium and even with the most expensive cable package you can buy there's only so much content available. Video games when most of us were kids are laughably primitive compared to immersive experiences we have today. So parents have to be in control, but it's not entirely a matter of parents being lazy.

Before parents throw stones, or worse, before non-parents throw stones, don't forget that not every family is alike. Some families have serious issues where parents are working 2 jobs, one parent isn't present or is totally checked out, or one or both parents is working an insane amount of hours because that's what their employer expects. And it's not about cost of devices either -- cheap Android tablets or phones are just as addicting as the iPhone X. I live in a reasonably decent neighborhood, and of course I've run into the zombie moms who are either addicted to their own smartphones or want to shut the kids up so mommy can have her wine or painkillers in peace. But, there is something to be said about instant access to all the content in the entire world hitting the same endorphin receptors that other addictive substances do.

There *is* a need

[cascadingstylesheet]

There is a need - or if you prefer, a market - for phones with limited capabilities, parental controls, etc.

It's been a few years since I looked, but this market was not being served well (or barely being served at all) when I did look.

Re:wrong target

[fluffernutter]

You're right of course, ultimately this is the job of a parent. However, I can think of a lot of features that could be added to mobile OSes to allow the kids to have access to their phones without having access to the time and attention sucking applications on their phones. As an example case, phone gets taken away and then they want to go for a bike ride outside. Well, I want them to have their phone on them if they are doing that! There should be a way to access the phone features while locking down access to apps. Another example, we can't seem to find a standalone alarm clock that is loud enough to wake my kids up. I would love for them to just be able to use an alarm app on their phones but if we give them their phones at night they'll be up late on them.

I've found some third party apps that kind of do things like this but a lot are expensive, some you even have to pay for on a monthly basis. It could be built into the OS.

Re:wrong target

[ShanghaiBill]

What happened to the good old "Turn the damned phone off"....or even better..."Give me that phone".

Or even better "Show me some objective evidence that phone use is actually harmful".

In the meantime, I will let my kids make their own decisions.

Hell, why would parents buy children (less than teens at least) a phone in the first place?

My daughter has had a phone since she was 8 (3rd grade). It is not just a matter of convenience, but also of safety. If she gets lost or is in a bad situation, she can call for me for help, or dial 911.

I have seen no evidence that having a phone is harmful to kids in any way. The moral panic about "excessive texting" just means another generation is reaching cranky geezerhood and thinks "the world is going to hell".

Re:wrong target

[rogoshen1]

Because of mommy culture and people such as Nancy Grace convincing said mommies that there are pedo's lurking around every single god damn corner.