Lately, there has been a lot of hoopla around smartphone addiction. And tech giants like Google and Apple seem to have taken this talk quite seriously. To fight this technology addiction, Apple has introduced new digital wellness features. The announcement was made at their Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) 2018 in San Jose. These new features will be included in their iOS 12 operating system update.
Users will be able to keep track of their phone usage. These details about app usage will be built into the Settings menu in iOS 12. The idea being that users will be able to control their phone usage once they can view the statistics of phone usage. Apple has refurbished the ‘Do Not Disturb’ feature and the Notification feature. A new feature called bedtime mode and the ability to set times has been added to the DND feature. The bedtime mode feature will disable notifications whenever its activated until the user decides to allow the alerts.
They have also introduced new App Limits, and a summary of all the activities will be sent out on a weekly basis. App limits will let users set a time limit on usage of a particular app, and as they get closer to the set time, they will receive a notification stating the same. The weekly summary will also give the users details about how they use their phones. The review would also include a time breakdown of how and when they use their phone and also provide a report on the number of notifications received.
There is a bonus for parents with these features. Parents will be able to keep track of their kids’ phone usage. The weekly reports will be sent to the parent’s devices, and they will also be able to set time allowances on their kids’ devices.
Some additional iOS 12 new features introduced are related to snoozing notifications, stocks, video calls, and Animojis.
Similar features were announced by Google in May this year for their Android operating system. The new Android features include time limit apps and a dashboard that gives details about a user’s phone usage concerning time spent.
