Apple needs you to turn off your iPhone (but not too much)
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The constant dings, the endless scrolling, the privacy worries, the neck aches.
How can anyone love a phone anymore?
It's become this expensive tool that is vital for your success, and yet also leaves you feeling awful about yourself.
And now the companies that make phones are having to make software to help you not hate their products.
How did we get here?
I'm Bridgette Carey.
Let's break it down.
Ten years ago, when the iPhone's app store launched, we were told there is an app for anything you can imagine.
There's a map for just about anything, only on the iPhone.
Fast forward to today.
Now it's, well I'm sorry, do you suffer from phone addiction?
Don't worry, now there's an app for that.
Both Google and Apple introduced new settings in apps to put time limits on your use to remind you to take a break.
You'll also be able to get reports on how much you're using the phone And silence notifications anytime you just wanna be left alone.
When Apple unveiled these new options this week at WWDC, it threw plenty of shade at apps like Facebook for being the problem, and with good reason.
Apps today are purposefully designed to manipulate our lizard brains with just the right lights, and sounds, and swipes to keep us clicking, and liking, and watching.
But Apple created the device that lets the problem flourish.
The iPhone is the playground for apps, but the apps have gotten out of control.
There's just too much hitting you and drawing you in for more.
Facebook is poisoning the Apple and we're all getting sick.
But when Apple comes out with these new screen limits, it's not because Apple wants to save us.
Apple needs to do this to save for the iPhone, to save itself, because if you hate your phone, if you hate how it makes you feel, if you despise the whole experience of being dependent on a phone, well then, who cares what you buy, or if you need a new phone at all.
Once you reach that point the game is over for Apple.
Let me say that I do love that we're finally getting more controls to curb our dependence.
And it's also fantastic that parents have more ways to limit and track their kids' usage.
But next time Apple paints Facebook as the villain, when these phone makers say they really now care about your digital health Just don't forget, Apple still needs Facebook, and Instagram, and YouTube, and all the rest.
They want you to buy that new phone with the better camera to share your shouts on Instagram and watch those great movies on their shiny new screens.
These companies need you to back off but only so that you don't hate them They don't want to cure your addiction completely.
Afterall, you got to stay a little addicted to keep buying a new phone every year, right?
