Digital wellbeing – Trick or Treat?

2 min read

Digital Wellbeing is coming into full view as Facebook, Instagram, Google’s Android and Apple iOS 12 are all introducing digital wellbeing dashboards and features to their operating systems. Basically, Digital Wellbeing enables users to understand their digital habits, control the demands technology places on their attention, and focus on what actually matters.

Google introduced a set of features named ‘Digital Wellbeing’ with it’s Android 9 Pie OS. The new features include a Dashboard, to monitor how long you’ve been using your phone and specific apps; App timer, to help users tap into the apps they are using and set a time limit on it for daily usage; Do Not Disturb to prevent users from hearing any kind of notification from text or emails and Wind down, which turns your screen to grayscale making the apps less tempting as your bedtime approaches.

Apple went a step further than Google when it comes to parental controls. While Google’s usage dashboard and limits seem primarily designed for users to limit their own behavior, Apple’s will let parents remotely manage their kid’s usage from their own devices. Facebook is also not far behind with new tool dubbed, “Your Time on Facebook,” to help users manage their time spent in the Facebook app on each of the last seven days, as well as see their average time spent per day.

However, there is no proven research on these features. Much of what we know is based not on peer-reviewed research but on anecdotal data. Sometimes educational apps and videos meant for young children also contain ads on topics which are irrelevant to the learning objective. These ads may potentially soil the mind of young children. There is a growing pressure from public interest groups for the FTC and other government bodies to launch an investigation against these apps and hold developers accountable for their practices.

Overall, Digital Wellbeing features sound like a real step forward taken by these tech giants in making the phones less addictive. If done right, this would help users focus on what actually matters and may definitely prove to be a TREAT. But for now, we are reserving our judgement.