Enough With Smartphone Addiction Already

The new luddites are ever with us, of course, but I must say that the constant harping on smartphone addiction is becoming tiresome. Actually, it became tiresome some time ago; now it’s infuriating.

I was saddened to see that Tony Fadell has joined the cacophony and is agitating for Apple—of course—to do something about it. As I argued before, it’s not up to Apple or anyone else to solve this problem for you. If you think you have a problem—something I find unlikely—then it’s up to you to find a solution, not Apple or any other smartphone provider.

The TechCrunch article on Fadell’s remarks notes that he makes an analogy with healthy eating. Just as we listen when the nutrition experts tell us what constitutes a healthy diet, we should also listen when the tech addiction experts tell us what constitutes healthy behavior. Maybe I’m just feeling curmudgeonly today but that statement infuriates me.

In the first place, those nutritional experts have been telling us for 50 years to avoid fats and eat carbs instead. Except, oops, they were wrong and we ended up with a nation (or world) of overweight people. Now we’ve got a bunch of “experts” from a field that can’t even manage a 50% reproducibility rate in their studies¹ telling us how we’re behaving unhealthily with our phones. My attitude is, “Get back to me when you can show me some reproducible studies.”

Fadell notes that Apple can already provide use tracking to help iPhone users use their phones responsibly. Does anyone else find that condescending and annoying? Apple, Fadell says, is willing to provide this capability for young people so parents can monitor their iPhone use. Just what we need: another way for parents to spy on their kids. I’m a long way from being a kid but that enrages me even so.

I wish these people would throw their phones away and go live on a farm. Maybe carrying water from the well will keep them busy enough that they’ll leave the rest of us alone to enjoy the benefits that technology brings.