Are there alternative methods to reducing screen addiction that have been successful?

Question

I was reading an article about the ways that children are getting around Apple's Screen Time to continue feeding their screen addiction habits. It seems to indicate that trying to make apps engaging/addictive will always counter any efforts to reduce device usage time as it is not really getting to the root cause of the problem, which is the lack of design ethics and consideration for the impact of designing to keep users on the app.

Maybe there's some research that indicates the different behaviours between adult and children when it comes to Screen Time, and that adults see it as a way to modify their behaviours while children see it as a challenge that they have to overcome.

Should we be getting back to the basics and applying design principles like Calm Technology which encourages us to design applications in a different way? Or has anyone seen some examples of either device related or app related solutions that has been able to create positive screen usage and attitude towards screen addiction.

Answer 1

Some device-/ software-related examples:

• Light phone: a minimalistic phone
• Ratio / Bllock Zero: an Android launcher that's supposed to distract users less
• News Feed Eradicator for Facebook: a Chrome extension that hides your Facebook news feed. Used this while writing my Master thesis to avoid procrastinating and it really helped ;)

Not a scientific experiment, but I've heard from people who switched their phone to greyscale mode and it made them use social media less and less.

Answer 2

A really interesting question. I read it a few times and had a think, one area which I felt worth raising is the assumption in the question that screen time is bad.

The reason I phrase it that way is that whether or not screen time is bad, and what usage patterns are classified as addictive is highly subjective.

A few examples to illustrate my point. Some apps which focus on mental well-being, such as Headspace, Calm, yu-life etc have design patterns you might classify as pushing engagement through repetitive habit-forming use which could be construed as addictive. Is forming a habit of daily meditation a negative addictive behaviour? or a positive step in mental wellbeing?

Another example would be a learning tool like DuoLingo, where people boast about their "streak" which again might encourage compulsive usage, but the net result is learning a language which most people would view as a positive skill.

A final example regarding screen time itself as a negative. Consider a user who isn't physically able to engage in the types of activities that most would consider more positive than sitting in front of a screen.

The assertation that screen time is negative is highly dependant on what the alternatives are. Perhaps you are a student remote learning, perhaps you have mental health issues and playing an online role-playing game gives you mental escapism and social connection which is preventing you from self harm.

I do understand your core point, but thought it's worth giving some alternative context to counter the more screen time == bad viewpoint, which I feel is a very generalised way to look at the problem.