Our view: Don’t single out Apple for smartphone addiction
Anxiety and depression have spiked recently among young people, and researchers believe that heavy usage of wireless devices is a main reason why.
To help combat this trend, a couple of large investors — Jana Partners and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System — have turned to shareholder activism.
Specifically, they’ve targeted Apple, demanding that the iPhone maker develop software giving parents more power to limit the time their kids can be active on their phones. The two investors also want Apple to commission a study of the link between smartphone usage and mental health issues.
The sentiment is right. The number of major depressive episodes among adolescents rose nearly 30% from 2005 to 2014, according to a study in the journal Pediatrics.
Other studies have specifically linked the rise to use of social media. One, published in Computers in Human Behavior, found that users of multiple social media platforms were three times as likely to suffer from anxiety and depression as those with more modest usage.
Even so, the investors’ particular tactic is suspect. For starters, if activists wanted to single out one company, it would have to be Facebook rather than Apple. The mental health problems did not spike in the era of television, video games and the first decade of the World Wide Web. They spiked in the era of social media, as kids have obsessively taken to interactive platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.
More broadly, the tactic of singling out a company seems more like a publicity stunt than an actual way of addressing a problem. Tech companies are in the midst of a full-fledged backlash these days as critics on both the left and right find fault with them.
A better way to address the issue of smartphone addiction starts with parents. To some degree, this means individual parents setting limits individually on the screen time of their children, and using their financial leverage as payers of smartphone bills to enforce those limits.
Apple and other device makers already make software that can be used to limit the times a child can be active. Parents can and should be involved on the social media platforms that their kids are on, allowing them to monitor the total time they are on and the types of interactions they have.
But the problem goes beyond individual parents, who can sometimes feel a sense of powerlessness in an era of rapidly expanding technology. More public service campaigns and programs in school, educating students as well as parents about the link between social media usage and mental health issues, would be extraordinarily helpful. The rise in anxiety and depression is serious, but many of those at risk simply don’t know about it.
Tech companies, for their part, can always be called on to be better corporate citizens. But focusing on Apple is more about those doing the targeting than finding real solutions.