Life As We Knew It

Google wants to give us back some of the time stolen by our smartphones.

- Peter Griffin

Forget television: the smartphone is the new vampire sucking away our time. And the tech giants are beginning to understand that more time on the small screen isn’t necessarily a good thing for us – or them.

The next update of Android, the operating system on more than 80% of the world’s smartphones, will have tools to help limit smartphone usage and cut down on distracting notifications that keep us unlocking our phones a hundred or more times a day.

These features have long existed in third-party apps for Android, but Google’s decision to build them into Android P, which is expected by August, is the first major acknowledgement of the importance of digital well-being.

Using the Anti-Social smartphone app, I discovered that I spent nearly 42 hours attending to my smartphone in February, and I’m by no means a heavy user. All of those quick glances at your newsfeed or Instagram photo stream add up.

Android P has a dashboard that displays what apps you use and for how long, the time of day you use your phone, how many times you unlock it and the number of notifications you receive each day.