Apple Inc. has been urged by two of its largest investors to consider taking some form of action to combat the issue of addiction of iPhones among children. There are growing worries about how the youth are impacted and influenced by technology and social media.
Apple needs to take more steps to prevent children from getting addicted to its gadgets, said New York-based Jana Partners and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) in an open letter to the company.
“There is a developing consensus around the world including Silicon Valley that the potential long-term consequences of new technologies need to be factored in at the outset, and no company can outsource that responsibility,” said the investors. These two investors have control over $2 billion worth of stocks of Apple.
“Apple can play a defining role in signalling to the industry that paying special attention to the health and development of the next generation is both good business and the right thing to do.”
Parents need to be provided with more choices to prevent the health of their children being affected by excessive use of the gadgets by usage monitoring and offer tools that can aid children to prevent addiction, the group urged Apple. Limited access to specific types of content, tools and features like location sharing and certain restrictions on apps are among the offers that Apple’s iOS already makes to parents.
But more is demanded by the Apple investors. Starting with blocking of social media, limiting the screen time or the amount of time in a day that the phone can be used and setting up of age of the user of the phone n the setup, are among the measures that they demanded.
Annual reports also should be produced by a an expert committee comprising of child development specialist, the investors proposed and demanded that the vast pool of available with Apple be made accessible to researchers on the issue.
Recent studies and researches on the negative impacts on the health of children – both physical and mental, due to excessive use of smartphones and social median were cited by the investors.
The manner in which child users are impacted in the long-term form the increased use of technology like smartphones and social media is reflected in the open letter. While it is just recently that participants in the Silicon Valley and honchos have begun to raise the issues of children, the tech firms have not made public acknowledgement of such issues as of yet. Facebook was defined as the site that has been made to exploit vulnerability in humans by former Facebook president Sean Parker. “God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains”, Parker said.
“I can control my decision, which is that I don’t use that shit. I can control my kids’ decisions, which is that they’re not allowed to use that shit,” said former Facebook executive, Chamath Palihapitiya.
(Source:www.theguardian.com)
Apple needs to take more steps to prevent children from getting addicted to its gadgets, said New York-based Jana Partners and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS) in an open letter to the company.
“There is a developing consensus around the world including Silicon Valley that the potential long-term consequences of new technologies need to be factored in at the outset, and no company can outsource that responsibility,” said the investors. These two investors have control over $2 billion worth of stocks of Apple.
“Apple can play a defining role in signalling to the industry that paying special attention to the health and development of the next generation is both good business and the right thing to do.”
Parents need to be provided with more choices to prevent the health of their children being affected by excessive use of the gadgets by usage monitoring and offer tools that can aid children to prevent addiction, the group urged Apple. Limited access to specific types of content, tools and features like location sharing and certain restrictions on apps are among the offers that Apple’s iOS already makes to parents.
But more is demanded by the Apple investors. Starting with blocking of social media, limiting the screen time or the amount of time in a day that the phone can be used and setting up of age of the user of the phone n the setup, are among the measures that they demanded.
Annual reports also should be produced by a an expert committee comprising of child development specialist, the investors proposed and demanded that the vast pool of available with Apple be made accessible to researchers on the issue.
Recent studies and researches on the negative impacts on the health of children – both physical and mental, due to excessive use of smartphones and social median were cited by the investors.
The manner in which child users are impacted in the long-term form the increased use of technology like smartphones and social media is reflected in the open letter. While it is just recently that participants in the Silicon Valley and honchos have begun to raise the issues of children, the tech firms have not made public acknowledgement of such issues as of yet. Facebook was defined as the site that has been made to exploit vulnerability in humans by former Facebook president Sean Parker. “God only knows what it’s doing to our children’s brains”, Parker said.
“I can control my decision, which is that I don’t use that shit. I can control my kids’ decisions, which is that they’re not allowed to use that shit,” said former Facebook executive, Chamath Palihapitiya.
(Source:www.theguardian.com)
