Screentime is an issue among school going kids. The problem stems from many aspects of our modern society. I guess the solution to keeping kids off mobile screens is to engage with them - play games with them, etc. Alternatively, they should be playing in the playground more than spending time on mobile or computer screens. But some families might struggle to do this. I suppose it is the kids in these families that spend a lot of time on screens.
There are negative effects of letting kids use mobile phones. But in this post, we won't be discussing them. The root of the problem is addiction. However, it is, (statistically speaking) not as serious as substance abuse. What I mean to say is parents don't run to doctors or hospitals for screen-addiction; parents might do it more likely for drug or substance abuse. However, addiction is just a part of the problem. As mentioned before - the relative society and family circumstances also contribute towards the problem. Perhaps there is no one to spend quality time with the children to keep them away from phones. Not everyone can afford nannies, and care takers. And incidentally these are the two reasons people quickly conclude on.
"They" (statistically speaking) don't blame the corporation(s) behind technology. "They" don't blame the developers responsible for the apps. And this is where I want to drive focus. There are many facets to this problem.
The engagement game
Take for example the app developers. They have made an enticing game. Your child cannot stay away from it. If you dialed back a little bit back perhaps 20 or 30 years before, there probably used to be a "muffin man" or an "ice cream man", who would have boisterously walked near to a playground of children. The little kids nagged at their parents for whatever they sold. And if this were a repeating pattern; for example the seller targeted the playground every evening, a lone parent, or a group of parents might confront the seller. In the modern day, do you think this is possible? At most you might find an email to the developer. Even if a parent or a group of parents mail the developer, what are the chances the developer(s) decide in the favor of the parents? (We have ushered into an era of faceless conversations). If the parent is determined enough, they would sue the company that developed the game. But would normal people go to that extent?
The operating systems of this era
These days phones run an operation system (or an OS). Operating systems have been around ever since (and a little long before) computers were commercialized. It is hard for people in my generation to imagine computers before all this commercialization, except for a small number of geeks or savants or old-timers. Today I would drool at a person who has a computer that runs Windows 3.1. This was a graphical OS created by Microsoft. At around the same time Macintosh (by Apple) also provided a graphical OS. This was the era when computers were just starting to become a house-hold item. Before this it was probably OS's like DOS, etc. And computers mostly remained in the defense or academic circles. Not inside households.
Computers grew smaller and smaller due to smaller chips. In fact, this is what enabled computers to become "personal". However, the form-factor alone would not have made it happen. The OS also must evolve to be graphical. And from “personal” things have become “handheld smartphones”. However, when things became graphical, we do see a plethora of games also developing around the same time. If you search the internet for retro games, you can see what I mean.
The engagement game - part 2
Humans became hooked to screens. The trend of addictive games latched onto smartphones eventually. The games themselves evolved. There is much to discuss here. Today there are game economies to learn about. But that won’t be discussed here in length.
It's hard for a layman to imagine what goes inside the mind of an OS developer or a desktop evangelist, or, even a game or app developer, or even a project manager. But one thing for certain it is never about purely reducing or restricting engagement. Imagine the backlash MS Word or Excel might receive if in the middle of the income tax deadline it shuts down and asks you to open the app after a few hours. Though what people might often report is that today it might ask you to subscribe to some plan. This is a pattern of limiting software use. The motive is however, to get a customer to pay for it. And once a customer purchases the software product, is it designed to be responsible to you? Does it take care of your health in some way? Does it say, maybe you have been typing away on this screen enough - look away? Does it remind you to rush to the grocery shop else you won’t have dinner tonight? Or even just blink?
All of this is in a disheveled sense, a ploy to increase your engagement. The more the engagement, the more the chances are you pay for the next product or billing cycle. Dis-engagement was never the principle to begin with.
The same philosophy applies for OTT entertainment. It is not in those companies best interest to limit your viewing-time - to dis-engage you from binging.
Licensing woes
Many softwares do ask people for licenses (or subscription plans), and the concerned software might deny many features or refuse to function without this. Even their EULAs go to the extent of holding you for a punishable offence if you somehow find a loophole which obviates licenses. My emphasis is on “limiting software usage”. So in a sense, this has already been done before. That was more motivated by capitalism. Most of these kinds of software are in the space called productivity applications. Mobile games roughly fall in the entertainment category. Licensing software patterns aren’t the norm here. There is absolutely no trace of an un-intended regulation towards engagement. For productivity apps, it was the licensing that would discourage some people from using them. The equivalent for games does not exist.
One could argue that this is a reason why mobile gaming is addictive among children. However, the problem doesn’t stop there. If anything, many systems around the whole gaming industry are to drive engagement - not limit it.
Ads and screentime
This is a symptom of an economy replete with members who are pro-enticement. Because the current mathematics is that the more screentime, the more the profit from ad revenue alone. Most of the OS developers and companies behind popular OS’s of today invest a great deal in gamifying developers through ads and analytics programmes. Unfortunately the design of this system or programme is such that the more screentime the more the ad revenue, and hence more profit.
A stone to my head
Some developer out there is annoyed that I wrote this. I am basically saying to stop making the game enticing! Some may read it a bit extremely to mean, stop earning and starve to death. I am only writing this from the perspective of somehow ensuring that our societies are healthier. Thus is the reason to write on topics like this. And also to get views and readership. But setting that aside, asking a game developer or a gaming company to stop enhancing the games is something like a knee-jerk reaction. However, I do not see any other alternative. There may be camps averse to the camp of anti-engagement, aka, the pro-engagement camps. People here might actually argue the relative positives of mobile gaming - it keeps children away from drug use, or other similar evils. It makes children think creatively, etc. Some extremist developer or ceo in the pro-engagement camp might want to throw a stone at me. However, my purpose was only awareness on this topic. To bring to light that the system is primarily pro-engagement driven. People - the developers, gaming companies, parents, and their children inadvertently fall into it.
The anti-engagement drive
The anti-engagement drive shouldn’t be something that pro-engagement campers hate. It is just a force of life shaping us to be healthy to yourself and everyone else around you. Is it anti-capitalism? Not quite. What if this “drive” or “movement” was a kind of symbol? Have you ever seen the EA Sports logo? What if that was mirrored? That could be a probable candidate of symbolify anti-engagement! It is meant to educate people that unchecked-gaming is addictive. Developers must design games around this principle of anti-engagement. It should not mean limiting the software use for profitability reasons; it should mean that the limiting is a means to increasing welfare in family and society. Parents should understand what excessive gaming and screentime can do to their kids. Kids themselves must have an avenue to understand it. Parents should invest time to determine other ways to engage their children and not lose hope.
Perhaps people can build a whole community. Will you join? What can you do? What will you do?
The smartphone operating systems
For the longest time, I wondered why the phones of today do not have anti-engagement principles. Why can’t they incorporate it somehow? For e.g. the latest Android release currently is 16. So it has been in this world for more than a decade. Why haven’t people figured this out? Maybe you allow your kid to play with the phone, warn him or her of the limited use. After the usage period, the phone should become unusable for the kid. The kid better understands the limited usage. Hopefully. It's sociologically improbable, but we can still have that dumb hope, right?
The Playstore. Why doesn’t the playstore have a preventive mechanism against downloading and installing software? Especially games? It is what happens frequently when parents give kids their phones. Most of the games kids install are not age appropriate. Playstore has done something to that end. But I personally feel that it isn’t enough. Android is an easy metaphor to relate to - I am not incriminating the company or its developers here. There are several companies like or unlike Android - for e.g. Apple! (And many others). No one seems to have designed phones with a safe-for-kids mode that actually works.
These are features all good to have from the perspective of AE. As said before, that symbol should also be a way for a parent to discover how to engage with their children effectively when the phones are meant to be kept away. It is not just the apps or ecosystems.
