New feature to help iPhone addicts limit screen time
Even as people have embraced the smartphone as one of the most powerful tech products, they are keeping a wary eye on the addictiveness of turning on the device to check for social media updates, read websites and play games. Some studies have tied extended screen time to distraction in classrooms, sleep deprivation and depression.
I, for one, probably have a problem with compulsively picking up my phone. So when Apple announced new software to help people restrict the amount of time they spend on iPhones, I knew I had to test it on myself. I also wanted to try it on a “screenager,” a teenager who is addicted to screens — exactly the kind of person generating so much concern.
Just one problem: I do not have a child, so I needed to borrow one. Fortunately, my editor gleefully volunteered her 14-year-old, Sophie, to be a test subject. So last month, I lent Sophie an iPhone X loaded with an unfinished version of iOS 12, Apple’s new operating system, that included the Screen Time feature, which is set for release this fall. We set up the account so that I was a parent, with the ability to set limits, and she was my child.
Over the last three weeks, I studied Sophie’s phone use patterns along with mine. After determining the apps that we spent extraordinary amounts of time on — Sophie spent hours each day chatting with friends on Snapchat, and I wasted too much of my life reading Twitter — I placed a few time limits on each of us.
Here is how that turned out. During Week 2, when she was trying to withdraw from her phone, strange things started happening to Sophie. After the screenager first used up all her time on Snapchat on a Tuesday, she told her mother that she felt “triggered” (which I would learn is slang for feeling annoyed or incensed). She later told me that she had realized she would open her phone and just stare blankly at the app icons to avoid using up her limit on Snapchat.
“It was just a pattern for me — to open my phone and I would have nowhere to go,” she said. “I was just looking at a screen. It was kind of weird, so I’m trying not to do that.”
In the end, the results were satisfying. Sophie’s average daily phone use plummeted by about half, from over 6 hours during Week 1 to about 3 hours and 4 minutes during Week 3. My average phone use decreased 15 minutes a day, to about 3 1/2 hours. I still think we spend too much time on our phones, but Sophie’s progress made this faux parent proud (and ashamed of himself ).
The early results should be welcome news to people who are growing increasingly concerned about long-term addiction to smartphones. There have been other ways to limit use, including apps like Moments, which have many of the same features as Screen Time. But none of them have been embedded into a phone like Apple’s new software.