
Apple shareholders push for study of phone addiction in children - anigbrowl
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-08/jana-calpers-push-apple-to-study-iphone-addiction-in-children
======
CaliforniaKarl
I think it's worth taking a look at the parental controls that Nintendo put in
for the Switch. They have a video here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03bAayBtcb0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03bAayBtcb0)

I think it's worth watching, if for no other reason than to see Bowser &
Bowser Jr..

iOS app link:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id1190074407](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id1190074407)
Play store link:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nintendo.z...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nintendo.znma)

For me, the only annoyance is that the controls apply to the entire console,
not to individual users of the console. But, that makes sense as things are
today, since I don't think there's any way to authenticate individual users
every time someone wants to use the console. Also, that may conflict with the
way that games stay "running" most of the time, even when you come back to the
console later.

~~~
brightball
IMO the biggest difference is the style of games. Switch games are much more
comprehensive like Zelda.

iPad games are geared towards button mashing and showing ads for other games
that do the exact same thing.

A switch game will be $30-60. An iPad game will be “free”. Subjecting your
kids to advertising driven games which aim to have them play much as possible
to drive revenues is noticeably different. I’ve taken away the iPad entirely
after seeing how my kids respond to it.

Contrast it with the WiiU or Switch that we’ve had and it’s a totally
different experience. Right now I TRUST Nintendo with the game experience
that’s best for my kids.

~~~
tlrobinson
I don't have kids so I haven't looked into it, but I assumed there would be
more games with educational value on iOS than Nintendo.

Is curating your kid's apps to only allow such games an option?

~~~
astura
What's the point though?

The app store is 99% low quality garbage. Sure, you can spend your time and
effort searching out the 4-5 high quality gems that may exist and configuring
the ipad but it's 10x easier just to buy a Nintendo game and call it a day.
Nintendo's first party games are almost always very fun, always high quality,
ad free, and always(?) kid friendly. When you buy, for example, a Zelda,
Mario, or Kirby title you know _exactly_ what you are going to get. Not all
entertainment needs to be "educational" and we are talking about entertainment
here.

~~~
tlrobinson
Maybe "educational" isn't the right word, but as a kid I mostly played games
that, in retrospect, had some sort of value beyond pure entertainment (Sim
City, The Incredible Machine, etc)

Surely there are blogger parents who do the work to find decent games for
kids, educational or otherwise?

------
andrei_says_
I think this is a very good sign.

It is my hope that Apple is able to pioneer tools which make it possible to
interrupt addiction forming (dark) patterns.

Addressing this on the device/os level (vs possibly legislation) could be very
effective.

Right now this is a lawless territory and creating + exploiting addiction at
the cost of depleting millions of people’s cognitive resources as free is very
profitable.

The long term costs associated with this profit are still to be seen but I am
sure they exist.

~~~
sparewalking
The real result will be that kids will be educated by devices instead being
educated by their parents.

~~~
ngcazz
... not necessarily a bad thing, if approached thoughtfully -- computers and
smartphones are such fundamental parts of everyday life, it makes sense that
an element of didacticism is embedded in how they're designed.

------
hilyen
They should be pushing for a study on neck injury / muscle strain on smart
phone use. Millennials and the next gen after are going to pay dearly from
injuries from bending their necks/heads down for years and years looking at
their phones.

~~~
gpmcadam
Do you have a source for smartphone usage having any impact on neck or muscle
strain, versus non-smartphone usage, and why it would disproportionately
affect millennials?

~~~
pmarreck
Why is this guy getting downvoted simply for asking for evidence?

This is Hacker News. Raise the bar, people. Leave the baseless assertions and
hearsay to Reddit. I expect citations in discussions here. In fact I just
scrolled through this entire discussion and did not find A SINGLE LINK to
outside evidence/data. How do you expect to debate anything with any validity,
based on nothing but bullshit?

~~~
le-mark
I didn't down vote, but I took the gp to be an expression of opinion rather
than a statement of fact, and neck pain from phone use being something I can
relate to. Merely asking for sources can be distracting when discussing
opinions.

I think a more cogent response would be "How is smart phone use different than
reading a paper or having ones nose buried in a book?" which of course isn't
new, but the same physical movement.

~~~
pmarreck
Well at least you're making a rational argument!

~~~
le-mark
Indeed, intelligent people can debate in good faith[1], without battering one
another with sources. Since a source (or out of context snippet) can be found
to support nearly any assertion, sources are not the end all. Often times,
source ladden arguments devolve to a debate of source validity and
authoritativeness. Which to me, is boring.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_charity)

~~~
pmarreck
I suppose there should be a balance of source-citation, with sources preferred
which establish a broadly-accepted concordance (such as a meta-study of
studies) instead of a single study (in which case you would be correct).

To me, rational arguments are the leaps between facts established by evidence,
so both are necessary to some degree.

In online conversations devoid of any citation, things seem to far too often
veer into wild speculation, unsubstantiated opinion/belief, and most
egregious, ad hominem/stereotyping/etc.

I was unaware of the Principle of Charity, thanks for educating me!

------
krisives
Full disclosure: I work for a company called DnsLearning (although we are
rebranding to StudyCity)

Our system is simple, you point your child's device at a DNS server then add
various accounts to supported educational sites like Khan Academy, Duolingo,
Prodigy Math, etc. Our server detects when your child earns points on these
platforms and disables access to non-educational (junk) sites until they earn
X points to unlock Y time. Most of our user-base has noticed their kids now
fully understand the value of their time instead of being stuck in a zombie-
like YouTube spell of watching 5 hours of minecraft videos recommended next.

~~~
659087
Your company doesn't appear to have a privacy policy or anything similar on
the website, assuming that site is at dnslearning.org. How are you monetizing
this? What kind of data are you collecting, and what are you doing with it?

~~~
utefan001
Just add /privacy to the url.

I can't include the full url here because my posts don't show up. I assume
because I posted about it too much or some vast right/left wing conspiracy
against my startup :)

~~~
659087
That privacy policy tells me absolutely nothing about the data your service
collects from the people who use it, and very little about anything else
either for that matter.

It's also incomplete. No offense, but it honestly looks like someone tried to
copy and paste a privacy policy from somewhere else, but didn't get the whole
thing. It ends at "Security", with nothing beneath - not that any of what was
above provided much information to begin with.

~~~
utefan001
Good points, we will make it more clear. Feel free to email us to discuss in
detail. I see from your comment history your concern about privacy and don't
want to lose a user because of a misunderstanding about our intentions.

Note here is a post from way back when I asked if anyone did what I wanted for
my child.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9299697](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9299697)

------
dhagz
I mean, I think a study of iPhone addiction in general would be a good thing.
Adults definitely know they are dependent on their devices, but it would be
interesting to see if any long-term effects can be extrapolated. Moreso I'd
just like to see any of the negative effects people claim are more than
anecdotal.

~~~
hycaria
But as always, what is the cause and what is the consequence. One could
totally argue that it's the original person's behavior that push them into
"addictions", and the opposite, or both at the same time in mutual
reinforcement.

------
trothamel
For the record, these shareholders seem to control about 0.2% of apple stock.

~~~
krisives
Also consider that most big players in the game have very little incentive to
reduce screen-time in a meaningful way. The more time spent on devices
consuming media the more they sell from their App store.

~~~
jpalomaki
It may be a big opportunity for Apple. After all most of their income comes
from device sales, not from app store. Offering tools for parents which make
them feel good, might cause them to spend the extra $100-200 per kid and get
them iPhone instead of cheaper Android device.

Of course others could follow with similar features and this would remove the
possible advantage Apple had, leaving them with no advantage and reduced app
store revenue. Or if others don't follow, this might drive developers to other
platforms.

------
derefr
I really hope that this doesn't get caught up in/confused with the moral panic
of _teenage_ phone use—which is 99% just "teenagers want to be socializing
100% of the time" and has nothing to do with the medium they use to do that.

------
lloydde
I hope the App Store’s ‘Today’ (Home screen) content is examined. Apple
“editors” shill absolute garbage. An “app” and “game of the day” ensures they
have to regularly dumpster dive.

------
Tempest1981
I wish iOS had a way to limit time by app. Or even just a daily limit. Is
there any way to do this today?

Or just show # of minutes by app, each day -- to observe where time is being
spent... even for adults!

~~~
Jonovono
[https://freedom.to/](https://freedom.to/) is the best/only one I have found.
It's meh but it works.

~~~
istorical
I have a subscription to this but I'm not gonna renew it because I don't like
having to schedule my blocked and unblocked hours.

I just want to be able to set a daily or weekly budget of hours and then once
I've used my hours up I get blocked.

------
CaliforniaKarl
The letter in question is here:
[https://thinkdifferentlyaboutkids.com](https://thinkdifferentlyaboutkids.com)

Note that, when you first go there, a "Terma & Conditions" popup appears once
the page finishes loading. But, I think that requires JavaScript in order to
trigger. Also, at least in Safari, reader mode was able to show the letter's
contents without having to click through (or around) the T&C popup.

------
IBM
I'm sure Apple can create some more granular controls to restrict certain
apps, but it's probably going to hurt CalSTRS.

I took a look at their 13F filing and some of their holdings include Google,
Facebook and Twitter. They should probably start with divesting that if they
feel really strongly about this.

~~~
SamPutnam
I would think this is Jana's move and CalSTRS is just a pawn. Rosenstein is
scrappy and happy to stir the pot to invoke a stock price spike (see PetSmart
sale and Whole Foods).

~~~
IBM
Jana is raising a fund for activist socially responsible investing, so that's
clearly their motivation [1]. CalSTRS is $1.3B of the combined $2B so I doubt
they're "just a pawn".

[1] [https://www.wsj.com/articles/wall-street-fighters-do-
gooders...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/wall-street-fighters-do-goodersand-
stingconverge-in-new-jana-fund-1515358929)

------
thisisit
I sometimes wonder how much of this is actually on the parents as well? I see
some of my co-workers handing phones with some games to distract their child.
Previously we had smaller toys - plastic etc, now it seems phones are an
easier go to medium.

~~~
krisives
15 years ago it was called "VCR parenting" now we call it "tablet parenting"
\- People live hard and complex lives, so I'm not going to make judgment on a
single parent trying to provide for their kids being unable to be a full-time
entertainer as well. The good news is technology and apps are making it easier
for parents to be better with less effort (which may sound harsh but is how
life gets better overall)

~~~
rock_hard
I agree that I rather hand my kids a tablet or smartphone then putting them in
front of a TV or game console.

What I sometimes miss from the conversation is that there is a lot of good
things one can do with such device...and yes, also some bad ones...just like
with a scissors or a lighter.

It’s on parents to teach their kids how the world functions and how to
integrate into it...always has, always will!

And the latest craze (is this case smartphones) is simply that...the latest
thing a contemporary human has to learn how to use.

And our kids will have to teach their kids one day how to use (and moderate
personal use of) whatever the latest craze they have then.

~~~
Tempest1981
I generally agree about tablets vs. TV -- except it's easy to find some
terrible content on YouTube very quickly. Don't underestimate how
impressionable kids are--even teens--by some cool YouTube stars who set bad
examples.

~~~
freeflight
Which begs the question: If the interactions with the tablet boil down to just
passively consuming content, like on YouTube, are they really that different
to TVs?

As enjoyable as YouTube and similar streaming services are, they are pretty
much still TVs, just with millions upon millions of different channels to
chose from.

~~~
astura
I think TV is higher quality than what kids watch on YouTube. I know, there's
plenty of trash on TV but at least there isn't "Elsagate-type content,"
surprise egg openings, toy reviews, and other generally
"unsettling/shocking/scary" content.

------
seltzered_
Somewhat related, if you want to see some thoughts on designing computing
experiences to involve logging intentions / distractions better, check out
Joel Edelman's talk "Is Anything Worth Maximizing" (2016) :
[http://nxhx.org/maximizing/](http://nxhx.org/maximizing/)

Related medium post: [https://medium.com/what-to-build/is-anything-worth-
maximizin...](https://medium.com/what-to-build/is-anything-worth-
maximizing-d11e648eb56f)

------
pbkhrv
My toddler is allowed about a half hour of cartoons on Youtube on the big TV
per day. He's played with the iPad a few times in his life. Lots of books and
Legos and physical toys in our house. Waiting for longitudinal studies to come
out, not taking chances with the little brain.

------
uiri
Weird. I was expecting some wacko motion on the agenda for their annual
shareholders' meeting but it is just a letter to management from two major
investors.

I doubt anything will actually come of this.

------
debt
It is interesting that Apple still doesn’t allow you to block specific apps.

I do mean specific apps, not a whole class of apps based on rating. I mean
blocking just one app.

------
Pigo
These discussions I've been seeing on this lately have been making me wonder
if there's something odd about me. FB and Twitter simply do nothing for me, no
dopamine at all. I get on once a week, maybe for 5 minutes, and then easily
turn it off. I could give a damn about any of it really. Maybe I'm anti-social
or have a chemical imbalance.

~~~
bertil
It is more likely that you find other activity exciting: exercise, food are
two likely candidates, so are sexual gratifications. As you are active on
Hacker News, I suspect that something code-related could be where you find
fulfilment.

Most developers have strong opinions about the tool they use: key layout,
editor, code & test patterns, project methodology. This is because they learn
to use those effectively through neurological short-cuts. That makes not
having them incredibly frustrating. Having rewards at different time scales
(instant feedback from seeing your ideas on the screen, seeing code compile,
error rates go down, a product being launched) can play the role that social
media plays for people whose main activity is more conversational.

Or maybe, you just drink too much coffee.

~~~
Pigo
That made me laugh. I guess I do get some dopamine from seeing an upvote on
HN. But that's only because of the respect I have for the person most likely
attached to that vote.

I am code-related, and I go home feeling empty if I walk away from a day
without having built something. It can keep me up at night, actually. So there
is something to that. I started working with wood at night, because it's not
computer related and even with my poor skill it feels like an accomplishment.
Exercise has a feeling of accomplishment for me as well. It's just surprising
that the popular social medias can build up such a reward hit in people.

------
edwinyzh
On android phones I have used before I can set password for each individual
app, but you cannot do that on iPad or iPhone via iOS's parental control,
that's too bad after I realized that, am I missing something?

------
dragonsky67
1950's Can we have a study of Comic Book addiction in Children.

1960's Can we have a study of Television addiction in Children.

1970's Can we have a study of Dungeons and Dragons addiction in children

1980's Can we have a study of Console game addiction in Children.

1990's Can we have a study of Computer game addiction in Children.

2000's Can we have a study of Internet addiction in Children.

2010's Can we have a study of Facebook addiction in Children.

Oh would you please think of the children...

~~~
ModernMech
I've seen versions of several of these ruin people's lives very close to me.
For example, I knew someone who played WOW to the detriment of his schooling,
health, and social life. WOW is another product that is explicitly engineered
to be addictive. The difference between then and now is cell phones and social
media are consumed at a scale that affects almost everyone, to a degree that
hasn't been seen before. It's worth studying whether this is something we
should worry about or not.

~~~
thomastjeffery
I'm wary of the proposed solutions.

I spent very significant time during my childhood using computers. At the
time, I would have had scarcely anything to prove that time was in any way
"useful". I would have been hard pressed to convince others that my behavior
was not detrimental.

Because I did spend so much time _freely_ using computers, I learned how to
use them. I learned about Linux, partitioning, bootloaders, programming, 3D
modeling, etc.

My childhood learning experience happened over the course of more than a
decade. It was full of totally pointless endeavors, a _very_ significant part
of it was just paying video games (which evolved into modding video games
years later), and _none_ of it would have happened with overbearing parents
obsessed with the merits of my interests.

~~~
whywhywhywhy
Is an (Android or Apple) tablet a computer though?

~~~
FussyZeus
I fail to see how the technical minutia that differentiate desktop PCs,
laptops, tablets and phones affects their ability to create dopamine-producing
feedback loops on demand. Everything past that is just semantics between
platforms and interaction styles.

------
jokoon
If the market of iPhone users are older, I think that this study will impact
apple much less than android.

------
jacksmith21006
Thing is that really pretty much no matter what is found nothing is going to
change.

------
anonytrary
Apple shareholders should push for study of bad parenting.

------
myaso
Just for parents? Why not just give all users the ability to block certain
usage patterns and access to applications -- kinda like the StayFocusd plugin
for Chrome. Hell, charge a monthly fee to access the web interface to manage
it; you get a mechanism to induce friction and you get a subscription business
-- I would pay for this shit since I value my attention more than someone who
you pick off the street. How does 300$ a year sound? like weight watchers for
attention (we know that model works already). You get a nice upsell on an
already expensive device. Maybe this will be a nice way to maintain profits
given that people aren't replacing their devices as often anymore, keep trying
the stunt of billing incremental features as revolutionary and people will
stop believing you.

------
rayuela
This seems like a weird request. Are iPhones supposed to be more addictive
than Android phones or something?

~~~
alphonsegaston
I suppose its possible to argue that they are by virtue of the superiority of
their UI design and a more robust app ecosystem. In my own experience, I find
myself far more impulsive about phone use on an iPhone than when I was using
android devices.

~~~
nicolashahn
I've had a couple iPhones and now currently use Android, but I never noticed
this in myself. Can you give a little bit more detail?

~~~
innagadadavida
I’ve seen kids ask silly questions to Siri and having a ball getting silly
answers back. Is G-now any fun?

~~~
cryptoz
I think this is a super silly debate, but yes, Google Now is tons of fun. It
will tell stories to you (way more than Siri knows), it will play games with
you (way more games than Siri can play), it will do all kinds of unexpected
and fun, nearly-natural things that are not just search.

Siri's answers are monotonous and boring compared to Google's.

------
zitterbewegung
This almost feels like a virtue signaling PR piece.

~~~
geofft
I have yet to see a use of "virtue signaling" that usefully distinguishes it
from "believing that certain things are good and certain things are bad, and
publicly saying as much, and advocating for a society that supports the good
things and not the bad things," something that every generation in humanity
has considered essential (and something that has traditionally been a thing
conservatives have accused liberals of _not_ doing, incidentally).

~~~
i_am_nomad
I suspect “virtue signaling” implies shallowness or insincerity, and that one
is stating a position for affiliation instead of advocacy.

~~~
musage
Couldn't that be rewritten as "advocating a position for affiliation instead
of advocacy"?

And if I point out a potential bug in your or our program, is the claim "you
only do this to impress people who hate this type of bug" (which can rarely be
proven or refuted) a good enough reason to not even look into it?

~~~
geofft
Right - even if the "virtue signaling" activity is being done to promote
goodness out of a desire for social status than an inherent belief in that
goodness, what's wrong with it, as long as it's done effectively?

(If it's done ineffectively or fraudulently, that's a problem, but the problem
there seems to be the fraud.)

------
aresant
Could we start with conclusive studies about impact of radiation on children &
adult's soft tissue ?

~~~
exhilaration
Already done, Google CEFALO:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/21795665/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/21795665/)

------
lerie82
It's a waste of money and time. What will they really have achieved from this
study? "Societal unease", what does that even mean? They never even addressed
the issue at all in the article from what I read.

It will no doubt be another biased study distracting us from something else we
should be investing our time and monies on.

------
mrsea
The innovative and battery preserving e-ink screens, such as those used in the
Yotaphone, would help with this problem massively. In fact, I bet it would fix
it. There are many undiscovered problems we're all suffering from when we use
these bright, colorful screens. E-ink technology fixes most of them.

