A Phone That Asks: Is That Tweet Necessary?

Even some of the folks who have gotten rich off the technology boom are starting to have second thoughts.

One of the iPhone’s creators called it “addictive.” A Twitter founder said the “internet is broken.” And an early Facebook investor worries about the impact of social media on children’s brains.

Two big Wall Street investors — Jana Partners and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System — are pushing Apple to study the health effects of iPhones and iPads and make it easier to limit their use, The Times reported.

“Companies have a role to play in helping to address these issues,” Barry Rosenstein, managing partner of Jana, wrote to Apple in early January. “As more and more found- ers of the biggest tech companies are acknowledging today, the days of just throwing technology out there and washing your hands of the potential impact are over.”

These large investors reflect the growing anxiety among parents about their children’s preoccupation with devices, at the expense of activities like reading and sports.

“Over the past 10 years, there’s been a bottom-up backlash,” said Sherry Turkle, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who wrote “Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other.” “You see it in things like people not sending their kids to schools that use iPads, and kids telling their parents to put their phones down.”

A Times technology columnist, Farhad Manjoo, says Apple should create a device that encourages more thoughtful, and less frequent, use.

“I do think this is their time to step up,” Tristan Harris said of Apple. He is a former design ethicist at Google who now runs Time Well Spent, which works to improve technology’s impact on society. “In fact,” Mr. Harris told The Times, “they may be our only hope.”

Mr. Manjoo points out that addiction to its devices is not essential to Apple’s business model since its prices are high and so are its profit margins.

Apple devices could give people feedback about usage, such as how much time they are using social media. A phone could make fun of you:

“‘Farhad, you spent half your week scrolling through Twitter. Do you really feel proud of that?’ ” Mr. Manjoo wrote. It could offer to help: “‘If I notice you spending too much time on Snapchat next week, would you like me to remind you?’ ”

Nellie Bowles, a technology reporter for The Times, took matters into her own hands.

“I’ve joined a small group of people turning their phone screens to grayscale,” Ms. Bowles wrote, “cutting out the colors and going with a range of shades from white to black.”

Facebook and Google have enlist- ed neuroscientists to find out what is pleasurable and keeps us looking, and these scientists have learned that color is essential to our priorities and emotions.

Neurons, a company in Copenhagen, uses brain scans and eye tracking technology to study apps, updates and future technology. It also measures the electrical activity of the brain while a consumer is texting or scrolling Facebook, the company’s biggest client.

“Color and shape, these are the icebreakers when it comes to grabbing people’s attention, and attention is the new currency,” Thomas Z. Ramsoy, chief executive of Neurons, told The Times. The company walks a “fine line” to draw consumers in and inspire happy emotions without disturbing them.

Ms. Bowles said the gray screen helped her manage her “twitchy phone checking.”

It turns out “we’re simple animals, excited by bright colors,” she wrote.