Wired:
Sometimes our smart phones are our friends, sometimes they seem like our lovers, and sometimes they’re our dope dealers. And no one, in the past 12 months at least, has done more than Tristan Harris to explain the complexity of this relationship.
Harris is a former product manager at Google who has gone viral repeatedly by critiquing the way that the big platforms—Apple, Facebook, Google, YouTube, Snapchat, Twitter, Instagram—suck us into their products and take time that, in retrospect, we may wish we did not give. He’s also launched a nonprofit called Time Well Spent, which is devoted to stopping “tech companies from hijacking our minds.”
Today, the TED talk he gave last April was released online. In it, he proposes a renaissance in online design that can free us from being controlled and manipulated by apps, websites, advertisers, and notifications.
Is Harris tilting at windmills or do you think there’s a chance Apple may be able to do what he suggests?
I no longer participate in any social media for this very reason. It’s a time suck that has no benefit. But tho think that any of these companies are going to alter their mission is crazy talk. Their very existence depends on it. I am now proud to say, “i don’t have facebook, you’re gonna have to call or text me”, works for me.
Or….you could just exercise a little self-control and NOT spend all your time on your smartphone. Only people in Silicon Valley, who are so far out of touch of life outside the tech bubble, could suggest that smartphone vendors are stealing your time from you.
I have several friends, family members, and coworkers who are not interested in technology, do not want to use technology, and therefore they don’t. Simple as that. You want to talk, call them on their landline. These people get by just fine in their life.
its not that hard. And you only have yourself to blame for “wasted time.”
Some people do the same with their TV’s. People are capable of dividing their time as they wish. Wasting time is a decision of free will. It’s the content on the devices that can control, manipulate, or divide in any event, for those susceptible to such things.
Technology has good and bad. The proliferation of technology has made unimaginable things a reality. For all the time that gets wasted posting selfies, there’s also a father on the other side of the world watching his childbirth through FaceTime.
Even with all the crap that is on YouTube, there is also an explosion of ENTERTAINING educational content that is consistently some of the highest viewed on YouTube. Such as Vsauce, or Veritasium. Science never had this sort of entertaining, mainstream appeal.
Its a double edged sword. But my point is that it ultimately is up to the user. A user who has no interest in stimulating their mind, probably would neglect that regardless of the technology. You could at least say that teenagers who entertain themselves through Snapchat might be staying out of trouble they might have found otherwise if they are getting bored and mischievous.
Protip: when an app wants to send you push notifications, just say no. Disable push email. Check social media and messages when it is convenient to you and at no other time. Just doing that renders at least half to 3/4 of the problem this guy is trying to solve moot.
Without clicking through and reading the article, I’m going to guess that Harris built his own windmill to tilt at.