Google's Plan to Make Tech Less Addictive

> Big Pharma's Plan to Make Prescription Drugs Less Addictive

> Local Heroin Dealers' Plan to Make Heroin Less Addictive

> Coca Cola's Plan to Make Soda Less Addictive

LGTM.

I am inherently suspicious of these types of nanny-tech initiatives. Nintendo did something similar recently in many of their games — warning you that you've been playing for X amount of time, mayba take a break? — and it came off very grating and presumptive, to the point that there were many popular memes created to make fun of it.

It's hard to do these types of warnings with a naive implementation because the system doesn't know the context in hich you are using the progress, it can only guess, and when it guesses wrong, it leaves a bad impression.

Maybe Google can do a better job with its execution, and maybe making it 'opt-in' will solve that disconnect. I guess we'll find out.

Regardless of how serious google is about this (their main customers are advertisers not android users), I don’t find the measures convincing

- shush: if you place your phone on the table you’ll pick it up from time to time anyways, it won’t be out of sight

- colors: I’ve turned my smartphone screen B&W, I haven’t noticed a big difference yet, but maybe there is some research out there

- monitoring: I installed a monitor app a while back. While I was observing my usage in the beginning regularly, today, I just don’t care about the numbers anymore

I highly doubt that these measures will be effective

They don't have to be effective on you, if they are effective on even a small percent, it might be worth it.

We hear this every time there's a new public safety campaign: Drunk driving, seat belts, texting and driving, safe sex, stop smoking, gun safety, etc

Every single time, the cry is "but but, this won't solve all the problems, it won't work on everyone." But we have reduced drunk driving deaths, we have reduced highway deaths with mandatory seat belts and airbags, we have lowered the spread of STDs.

Sure, you can give people a label listing calories and tell them to eat healthy and many won't. But an increasing percentage of people are becoming more aware, and awareness is really the first step.

There's way too much cynicism, and way too much, I dunno, either alpha-male macho behavior that chafes at being told to eat your Brussels Sprouts, but being nudged by your phone to stop using it once in a while isn't a bad idea.

Something has to break people out of their skinner box once in a while, besides hunger or bankruptcy.

Corporation's are made of people and people don't only have the direct interests of the company in mind.

I don't understand the commenters responding negativepy to these proposals; by all means be circumspect, but don't criticize a company for making a positive change just because you think it doesn't go far enough.