Tech addiction and the paradox of Apple’s “Screen Time” tools

First things first, note the image at the top of the article, captioned “A phone-absorbed attendee at WWDC”. Hey, that poster-child for phone-absorption looks familiar.

But I digress.

Wired:

Apple—like much of Silicon Valley—wants to cure the disease it’s caused. The next version of iOS will be armed with a “comprehensive set of built-in features” to limit distractions and recalibrate priorities on the iPhone.

And:

There’s also a dashboard for usage insights, called Screen Time, which sends a weekly breakdown of how you spend your time on the iPhone. A built-in App Timer can set limits on certain apps, reminding you to move on after 30 minutes or an hour.

So far, so good. But:

Moments later, Apple executives demonstrated Memoji, a new personalized emoji feature that involves staring at the screen and animating a digital character with your facial features. Another demo featured Julz Arney, who works on Apple’s fitness technologies, biking while breathlessly scrolling through productivity apps on her Apple Watch, changing dinner reservations, texting friends, browsing the web, checking notifications about her infant baby, and struggling to close the fitness rings on the watch’s face.

The cognitive dissonance was striking. Apple says it wants you to have a healthier relationship with your phone, and it’ll even give you the tools to do it. But for every feature it showed to wrangle notifications or curb app use, it added more to keep you staring at your screen.

I’m wrestling with this one. I do see the point, that Apple is filling the bucket while emptying it, giving us more things to distract us while giving us tools to manage those distractions. Ultimately, I appreciate both things. I appreciate the tools to set limits, like better Do Not Disturb and Screen Time.

But I also appreciate the new distractions, the ARKit games, the face tracking Memoji, all of it. I see these distractions as part of the fabric of life, the texture that helps keep things interesting. But there are also elements that keep me from doing things that matter to me, that tug the strings of anxiety, seed misunderstanding.

I do think there is an addictive element to tech and social media, and tools like Screen Time and and improved Do Not Disturb are a step in the right direction.