Good News

A little more than ten years after the introduction of the first iPhone, two groups of Apple shareholders, the California State Teachers’ Retirement System and Jana Partners, LLC sent a letter to Apple imploring them to consider the unintended negative consequences, including mental health problems, of phone addiction among children. Apple’s response to this letter was to create a socially responsible mobility software upgrade (iOS 12) that would help track and analyze how much time is spent on an iPhone or iPad.

Apple’s new Screen Time feature will allow parents to set limits for kids to help manage the time spent using apps and visiting websites. With the Downtime feature, you can pick a specific time when apps and notifications are blocked. The App Limits function sets the amount of time your kids can spend each day on specific apps and websites, and Activity Reports provide daily and weekly app usage, notifications and device pickups. Notification Center provides new ways to reduce interruptions throughout your day, including how often you pick up your phone and which apps are sending the most notifications. And finally, the Do Not Disturb feature offers more ways to mange phone calls, messages and alerts to minimize disruptions.

All of this may be comforting news for parents, since more than 75% of American teenagers own an iPhone and spend more than 4 ½ hours a day on it (excluding text and calls).

Bad News

In The Atlantic September 2017 article, “Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?”, celebrated sociologist and professor Jean Twenge follows the new generation (iGen) of teens born between 1995 and 2012 “that have grown up with smartphones, an Instagram account before starting high school, and do not remember a time before the internet.” She concludes that “they are less rebellious, more tolerant, less happy and completely unprepared for adulthood.”

After a massive study conducted by Twenge of 500,000 teens in the United States, statistics showed that suicide rates for girls aged 13-18 increased between 2010 and 2015 by 65% and those reporting severe depression by 58%. The single biggest change in teen behavior during this five-year period was increased screen time and less time on other activities (sports, exercise, homework and talking to people).

After comparing the quantity of screen time and the increase in depression, she found that teens that spent more than five hours per day on electronic devices had twice the suicidal tendencies of those who spent one hour or less per day. She contends that “it’s not an exaggeration to describe iGen as being on the brink of the worst mental health crisis in decades, and much of this deterioration can be traced to their phones.”

Athena, a 13-year-old teenager living in Texas, admitted to Twenge that she spent most of her summer hanging out alone in her room with her phone. She proclaimed, “It’s just the way my generation is. We didn’t have a choice to know any life without iPads or iPhones. I think we like our phones more than we like actual people”.

According to the Free the Kids Campaign (dirtisgood.com), children spend twice as long playing on screens as they do playing outside, with 3 in 4  spending less than 60 minutes outside and 1 in 5 not playing outside at all.  The average child around the world spends less time outdoors than a maximum-security prisoner. Child advocacy expert Richard Louv, author of “Last Child in the Woods” directly links this lack of nature in the lives of today’s wired generation to some of the most disturbing childhood trends such as the rise in obesity, attention disorders and depression. He calls it  Nature Deficit Disorder.

Research

According to the research firm Zenith, all forms of media consumption in the United States amounted to over 10 hours per day in 2017 and has been steadily rising for the past ten years. Mobile media consumption represents 24% of all media consumption, a 40% increase per year since 2010.  Out of 168 hours in a week, we spend more than 50 hours with devices, 50 hours sleeping, 40 hours working and 28 hours eating, bathing, dressing, preparing food, and driving.

According to the research firm Dscout, the average smartphone user touches (typing, tapping, swiping and viewing) their phone 2,617 time every day (955,00 times per year). This amounts to 2 hours and 25 minutes with 76 sessions per day, which equates to 36 full days per year. The extreme smartphone user touches their phone 5427 times per day (1.98 million times per year) and averages 3 hours and 45 minutes per day or 57 days per year.

According to the Deloitte Global Mobile Consumer Survey (July 2017), smartphone owners use their phone 47 times per day, 85% use it while talking to friends and family and 80% check their phone within an hour of getting up or going to sleep.

Persuasive Technology

The field of research known as persuasive technology has created thousands of apps, interfaces and devices that encourage certain human behaviors and discourage others. Children’s brains are being engineered to get them to stay on their phones, however, they are not customers of Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat or Google, they are the product being sold. With increased public awareness of the huge responsibility and influence that technology companies have on society, companies like Apple, Facebook and Google can no longer afford to ignore the collateral damage that their products and services have created in our technological world.

Recommendations

Until iOS 12 arrives later this fall, Moment and Onward, two apps designed to help automatically track how much you use your phone and help you achieve tech-life balance, are available through the App store. How ironic, an iPhone app designed to limit iPhone usage!

So what should you do to help counter the effects of these dangerous trends? Here’s a few options, some easier than others:

•Decrease screen time (phones, computers, tablets, TVs) to no more than 1-2 hours per day

•Turn off phones during meals and while driving

•Turn off audio notifications and delete non-essential apps

•Remove TVs, computers, tablets and phones from children’s bedrooms

•Turn off all media devices at a set time every night

•Limit your own screen time. Kids learn from what their parents do, not what they say.

If this seems too difficult, you can order the “Light Phone” (thelightphone.com) from a New York start-up company. This minimalist phone is designed to be used as little as possible –  it only makes and receives phone calls. It uses your existing smartphone number for those times where you don’t need or want the internet in your pocket. Hurry, demand is high.