From concert tickets to hotel reservations, everything you want to do now requires an infuriating app

More people are wanting to cut back on their smartphone use. But we've made it nearly impossible to leave our phones behind.

Jasmin Merdan/Getty Images; Jenny Chang-Rodriguez/Insider

From concert tickets to hotel reservations, everything you want to do now requires an infuriating app

When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, the internet was typically tethered to a desk. You had to use your bulky desktop computer to get online, and as soon as you walked away, you were offline again. But the development of smartphones — along with the rollout of broadband internet, greater access to WiFi, and data plans — ensured people could always be online. 

At the time, Apple's pitch focused on how the device would enable users to read their emails, browse the web, and listen to music on the go. Compared to everything we use our phones for now — from ordering food to finding our way through new cities — Apple's initial pitch sounds quaint. Once the vast realm of the internet went mobile, it started infiltrating all parts of our lives. Today, 97% of Americans report having a smartphone and 58% believe they use them too much. 

After a decade-plus of growing ubiquity, people have started to reckon with the negative effects of smartphones — especially their addictive nature. It's resulted in a growing push to reduce smartphone use, especially after the early pandemic lockdowns caused people to spend more time online. But the new wave of smartphone pushback is running up against a big problem.

Even as we recognize the drawbacks of our excessive use of smartphones, the world around us is increasingly designed to force us to use them for essential tasks. In many ways, we've so thoroughly integrated the devices into our lives, it's become impossible to break free.

Breaking free from the small rectangle

When smartphones first came out, everyone was focused on the cool things their new gadgets could do. Questions about screen limits or the potential effect on kids were drowned out by the "oohs" and "aahs" as people fawned over the latest features the gods of Silicon Valley handed down. But now that they are hooked on their screens, people are finally starting to pay attention to the questions many doubters raised all those years ago. 

For one, the design of the most popular apps — with features like pull-to-refresh and infinite scrolling — take cues from gambling and slot machines to ensure people get the dopamine hits that keep them coming back. As a result, smartphone use has been found to affect people's sleep schedules. And excessive social-media use — in part due to addictive engagement metrics that people take as an indication of their self-worth — has caused harmful mental-health effects, especially on teenagers. 

Lola Shub said that one of the immediate benefits of using a flip phone was having moments of silence when she would've once pulled out her smartphone.

It's not just people's personal lives that are affected, but their work lives, too. Since almost everyone has always-on devices in their pockets, more employers expect us to be available to respond to messages or emails at all hours of the day and night — even if we're not paid overtime for it. And when we are at work, we can become distracted from the task at hand by intrusive notifications or the addictive appeal of social media.

As a result, a whole cottage industry has sprung up with tips on how to free yourself from the compulsion to check your phones, from turning off notifications and setting app time limits to blocking access to certain apps and buying a second "dumb" phone. Device manufacturers and app developers jumped in with features of their own, expecting us to ignore how they created the problem in the first place. In a piece for Insider last year, Lola Shub, a Brooklyn high-school student, wrote about a group she founded with her friends, affectionately called the Luddite Club. Club members aim to reduce their smartphone use, and some even switched to flip phones. Shub said that one of the immediate benefits of using a flip phone was having moments of silence when she would've once pulled out her smartphone. She acknowledged that it can be difficult for some people, but she found her thoughts and memories became more vivid and said it was a "wonderful thing to practice and learn how to do." In December, The New York Times reported that the trend was spreading to other schools in New York City.

While hopeful, these individual solutions don't work for everyone. Sure, people can try and limit their smartphone use during downtimes, but when it comes to ditching these addictive devices altogether, we've built a world that has made true freedom near impossible.

Forcing smartphones on the public

In 2018, Amazon launched a new retail concept: AmazonGo. The convenience stores offered basic staples and some prepared meals, but with a twist: There was no cashier. To enter the store, customers need to download a separate app, connect it to their Amazon account, load a credit card, and swipe into the location. Once a customer has gone through those hoops and entered the store, cameras covering every inch of the facility track what customers take from the shelves so they can be charged once they walk out — human interaction not required. While supposedly more convenient (and cheaper for Amazon than hiring checkout workers), the technological hurdles required made many potential customers decide that it was simply not worth the hassle. 

When the first stores opened in London, a journalist spoke to an elderly gentleman who tried to enter but was told he'd need to download an app and input his banking details. "Oh, fuck that, no, no, no — can't be bothered," he said, before heading off to another grocery store. Earlier this year, that Amazon Go store was closed as part of a cost-cutting drive, along with two more in the United Kingdom and another eight in the United States.

While Amazon's "smartphone-required" shopping experience hit a snag, other companies have also tried to take advantage of the presumed ubiquity of smartphones but are running into similar challenges. In the UK, the grocery chain Sainsbury's trialed a cashless store in 2021, only to close it when it realized customers weren't ready. Instead, it lets customers register to scan their own items while they shop and pay from their phone. Its competitor Tesco tried a similar cashless experiment but had to rehire cashiers in its "grab and go" stores. 

In May, the Washington Examiner reported that the National Zoo in Washington, DC, despite being free to enter, required visitors reserve tickets in advance that could only be accessed with a smartphone. The local baseball team, the Washington Nationals, is doing something similar: Spectators can no longer print their tickets to enter; they have to show them on a smartphone to get into games. That story kicked off a conversation on social media, where people shared experiences of not being able to book a hotel room at a hotel front desk but were required to book from the website instead. And more hotels expect customers to check themselves in, switching to mobile keys on your smartphone instead of room keys.

When internet connections aren't reliable, phone batteries run low, or you don't have a smartphone, these changes actually make everything much harder.

Apple has been pushing the idea that the iPhone should be at the center of our lives. It launched Apple Pay in 2014, allowing users to add their credit cards to their phone so they didn't have to carry a physical card. The company is trying to entice state governments to put identity documents on our phones, and it even wants your phone to become your car key. During the pandemic, Apple and Google teamed up on mobile contact tracing, making smartphones central to the pandemic response — though it didn't work very well. COVID-19 also helped cement smartphone use with vaccine passports, QR menus, and travel declarations. Canada and the US now have apps that aren't mandatory but allow travelers who submit advance declarations to pass through border control more quickly. And Australia requires international visitors to download an app to apply for their tourist e-visa.

These shifts are largely made in the name of convenience: Using your smartphone is supposed to save you time and save organizations the hassle of hiring and training employees to deal with customers. But when internet connections aren't reliable, phone batteries run low, or you don't have a smartphone, these changes actually make everything much harder. And for those who want to cut back on their smartphone use? Forget it.

One of the bigger risks is that as more of the things we do are mediated by smartphones, digital systems and their algorithms reduce our personal agency and can make it harder to turn to a human for help. Take Uber drivers: Many have been complaining for years about how they can be deactivated by the app with no explanation and have little recourse if it happens. They have no human manager — just the app. And when it kicks them out, they may be permanently cut off from the income they depended on. Now imagine that kind of blunt and unaccountable decision-making extending throughout society. It's a nightmare in the making.

Smartphones shouldn't be mandatory

There's a clear conflict here. On the one hand, we recognize that becoming too dependent on our smartphones can have consequences for our relationships, our mental health, and our working lives. But on the other hand, companies and governments are increasingly building smartphones into the infrastructure of our lives, making it hard — if not impossible — to live without one. Device manufacturers and app developers would love to see us continue to make smartphones essential so that we will always be tied to them. It's unlikely people are going to ditch their smartphones en masse, but that doesn't mean we can't get a better grip on the social impact of using them and make it easier for people to opt out.

And there are encouraging signs that pushback can change things. Take cashless stores: Shops that only allow customers to pay with a credit or debit card have been growing in number for years but really took off during the pandemic. While supposedly more convenient for customers and safer for store employees who don't need to keep cash handy, the move excludes people without bank accounts and credit cards and those who prefer to use cash for a whole host of reasons. Fortunately, many places have recognized that denying people the option to use cash isn't OK, and in response, New York City, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and several other major cities have taken action to protect people's right to pay with cash. Similar initiatives are cropping up around the country, and they've even forced Amazon to add cash and app-free options to its "cashierless" Go stores in places like San Francisco.

Going smartphone-free should be a person's right. Our phones are presented as the means to a more convenient and social life, but in reality they've had a detrimental impact on people's attention spans and relationships while allowing the tech industry to entrench a more unequal society where work is more precarious and digital barriers have proliferated. At this point, rebalancing our relationship with smartphones is essential.

---

Paris Marx is a tech writer and host of the Tech Won't Save Us podcast. He also writes the Disconnect newsletter and is the author of Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation.

Read the original article on Business Insider

from All Content from Business Insider https://www.businessinsider.com/impossible-to-break-phone-addiction-iphone-required-apps-2023-8
via gqrds