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Former Senior VP of Apple Tony Fadell Says Company Needs To Tackle Smartphone Addiction (wired.co.uk)
In an op-ed published on Wired, former SVP at Apple Tony Fadell argues that smartphone manufacturers -- Apple in particular -- need to do a better job of educating users about how often they use their mobile phones, and the resulting dangers that overuse might bring about. An excerpt: Take healthy eating as an analogy: we have advice from scientists and nutritionists on how much protein and carbohydrate we should include in our diet; we have standardised scales to measure our weight against; and we have norms for how much we should exercise. But when it comes to digital "nourishment", we don't know what a "vegetable", a "protein" or a "fat" is. What is "overweight" or "underweight"? What does a healthy, moderate digital life look like? I think that manufacturers and app developers need to take on this responsibility, before government regulators decide to step in -- as with nutritional labelling. Interestingly, we already have digital-detox clinics in the US. I have friends who have sent their children to them. But we need basic tools to help us before it comes to that. I believe that for Apple to maintain and even grow its customer base it can solve this problem at the platform level, by empowering users to understand more about how they use their devices. To do this, it should let people track their digital activity in detail and across all devices.
Is personal responsibility really that foreign of a concept?
Yes, yes it is. Its never the person's fault. Its never their bad decisions. Its never a lack of self-control. Society made than instant gratification addicts.
Oh, lord. These tech execs falling all over themselves to tell us how much they hate their own products.
Puke.
Please just sell us more and let us decide for ourselves, instead of telling us "Your'e doing it wrong!" Shut up and give me more shiny things to play with.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." - Epictetus
If a child is "addicted" to mobile devices, it's an issue with parenting. Maybe the parent is "addicted" as well. In any case, trying to un-addict the child is like treating final-stage cancer, whereas promoting prevention measures (ie, teaching good parenting) would likely be much more successful.
I find it odd that he's referred to as "former SVP at Apple Tony Fadell" rather than by his most recent major stint as the "co-founder and former CEO of Nest who was forcibly ousted after squandering hundreds of millions of Google's dollars". It strikes me as a flagrant attempt by Wired to avoid undermining the credibility of the source who is giving them material that makes for a sensationalist headline.
To be fair, Fadell's prior work—both with founding Nest and prior to that at Apple with the iPod and iPhone—is outstanding, but, so far as I've seen, he really has rested on his laurels for the last few years as the worldhas passed him by, so I'm not sure why we should be listening to what he has to say now.
But when it comes to digital "nourishment", we don't know what a "vegetable", a "protein" or a "fat" is. What is "overweight" or "underweight"? What does a healthy, moderate digital life look like?
Sorry.... ALL that is nonsensical. What is unhealthy is when you have a habit that is (1) Beyond your Control, and (2) Causes harm or prevents you from pursuing goals.
"Using a smartphone" is not one thing ---- there are MANY different things you could be doing, some of the things you do could be productive, some of them less-so, some may sharpen some skills or abilities, some may be fairly useless such as exchanging funny cat memes on social media: on the other hand, some of the things you do on a smartphone could be highly critical to meeting your goals, for example personal development/app-based education or training, scheduling business meetings, business transactions performed on the phone: If your entire work/career/job can fit into things done on your phone then you could justify 8 hours, no problem.
How often and how long you can use a smartphone: depends on where you are in life, and what you hope to achieve.
Most of us have many responsibilities and things we need to get done every week and a limited number of hours per day to get things done, And if we're not productive enough and not getting the important things done because one activity is eating up all the available time, THEN that's a problem, and we need to make a change.
OTHERWISE it's a subjective choice --- how much of your entertainment/free time do you want to spend in an app. Maybe you're concerned about relationships and SmartPhone usage taking time away from that - Well, there's no exact formula for that..... Maybe you chose to stay single; do you really think going out to drink at random bars could be healthier than staying at home and playing a game? If you're in a relationship --- how much time you should spend focused on a significant other or friend or family per week; that's different for every relationship, and how fulfilling people want it to be, And nobody outside has the right to tell you what that balance has to be. Same goes for how much time you're staring at a little screen per week.
The next iPhone will produce an electric shock through its case if you pick the phone up more than twice an hour or hold it longer than a minute. Perhaps it will give you 15 second delay just in case you are actually making a phone call in which case it will disable the shock until the call is ended.
Since when are companies responsible for policing an individual's self control? This is even more ridiculous than the "nanny state".
I came to the datacenter drunk with a fake ID, don't you want to be just like me?
It's funny he chose protein and carbs as his example, because protein and sugar are the two things that food producers DON'T tell us how much we are eating. Go ahead, pick up the closest packaged food to you and look at the nutrition label. Protein and sugar are the only items that don't have a % daily value. Food producers don't put those numbers on there because they don't want their Snickers bars to have to say "3000%" recommended daily intake of sugar. Same with protein. Meat packers don't want to tell you that that steak you are eating has far more than the safe level of protein.
If they had to give consumers that information, consumers might make better choices.
I think that manufacturers and app developers need to take on this responsibility, before government regulators decide to step in -- as with nutritional labelling (sic).
I'm pretty sure the powers that be like the zombified masses, they're easier to manipulate. "Don't worry about thinking for yourself, keep up that Twitter #slacktivism!"
Even if they did step in, all they're going to do is put a warning label on the box: "Warning: Cell phones can be addictive!" Right below that will be a second warning for CA residents: "Cell phones have been shown to cause cancer in California."
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
Then work to make it more resistible once it becomes an enormous success.
It's not THE PHONES. It's the services, information, data, tools, communication, maps and other things one gets to through that device that are the issue. People aren't addicted to their phones. They're addicted to their social contacts, to the news, to the novel they're reading, to the weather forecast, and such. Before those phones, they'd have been "addicted" to the AM radio while they were driving, they folded map they looked at, the printed novel they gazed at over lunch, the stock pages in the newspaper, the tabloid paper they picked up at the grocery store, and all of those other analogs.
How much novel reading or stock research is healthy? It's not the phones, just like it's not the guns, and not the spoons.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Just become some people are too stupid/lazy/weak that they can't pull their noses away from their phones that's Apple/Samsung's fault?
What the fuck is wrong with people that they believe this shit?
I'd think the over-pricing of the Apple iPhones would be enough to curb addicts....
Do donut manufacturers agonize over donut addiction?
Do we expect them to?
If you are with a group of people, friends, workmates, a date, etc........and you raise your head up from your phone and everyone is GONE, then it is time to put the fucking phone DOWN.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I would love to move back to a feature phone. Unfortunately, there is no feature phone I can find that has a camera as good as an iPhone 4, let alone a S9 or iPhone 8. A feature phone built like an iPhone SE (touch screen, same form factor and with a solid camera) and that can install some restaurant apps would be a great detox setup.
the xbox kinect used to judge me for playing too long. netflix judges me for watching too long. all it does is make me mad and ignore it even more than if i had naturally come to the conclusion.
When you are talking about society you cannot focus on the individual.
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
Here is a theory.
I do not think that the anger is with the high price, but with the perception that the high price translates into high quality, and the perception that unless you are proudly displaying an Apple product, you are a penniless peasant who cannot afford the real deal.
There are many competitor products that are significantly powerful, and infinitely more customizeable. Sure, Macs may be great out of the box - "they just work", or whatever... but I know that for gaming, software development, and education, a properly installed and configured Linux or Windows box can be made a lot more useful. For artistic endeavors... I'm not qualified to judge.
No one tries to convince me that I should start smoking to remain healthy, or that gambling is better than proper saving and investing. But when some people see that my laptop is a ThinkPad or that my wife uses a Surface, they ask me why I don't upgrade to Apple product...
As a car analogy, it's like when you are driving a 28 years old Supra with 560 horsepower and pristine original paint, and your coworker with a low end Boxster is saying how 'that old heap in the parking lot' brings the company image down.
No good deed goes unpunished...
Here is a theory.
I do not think that the anger is with the high price, but with the perception that the high price translates into high quality, and the perception that unless you are proudly displaying an Apple product, you are a penniless peasant who cannot afford the real deal.
I don't know ANYONE who feels this way - no matter how much they dislike Apple products. It sounds a lot more like projecting one's on insecurities on to others to me.
I do not think that the anger is with the high price, but with the perception that the high price translates into high quality, and the perception that unless you are proudly displaying an Apple product, you are a penniless peasant who cannot afford the real deal.
I have a pricey Macbook Air sitting here that spontaneously developed bright spots all over the screen, apparently a common issue that Apple tries to blame on customer mishandling, but there is no shortage of evidence that it is just crap quality control. WTF?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
You are aware that beer companies constantly tell people not to drink and drive, right?
Meet some teenagers.
I got the point. Given the debate on food, what is healthy weight, appropriate diet, false studies and doctors on the take, etc? This system is grossly full of misinformation and wrong. Why the fuck would we do more labels and more dictation of "normal" for something that will get used differently by each person? There's already well established definitions for addiction. Don't be an asshat with even more fucking labels. The kids these days hate fucking labels, they'll make up another gender just to fuck with you.
I think that phones could definitely become safer, not just through better education in how to use them but also through how the phone interacts with the user.
This is something that Apple, Google (and others makers of "Smartphone" OS:es) could do better.
For instance, if a phone detects movement it should either require that a handsfree/sync is connected or ask for confirmation that the user is not driving a vehicle.
Make the exception an app entitlement and approve for your app store only those where that entitlement makes sense.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
You are aware that beer companies constantly tell people not to drink and drive, right?
Drink and drive is a decision made by the consumer.
I think in this case, Apple would like to refrain from admitting that their devices may cause addiction and harm their customers
Sure.
My point was that for virtually any position X, there are numerous cases where X doesn't hold. Therefore, someone holding position X is hardly a reason to make wholesale judgements, such as people are angry at Apple because SOME people may have the "perception that unless you are proudly displaying an Apple product, you are a penniless peasant who cannot afford the real deal." I mean, who the fuck cares? There are plenty of people who DON'T feel that way. Furthermore, there are plenty of people who will find reasons to piss on whatever brand you DO own/like/worship.
At the end of the day, being angry about what someone feels about your purchasing decisions is just retarded.