What iPhone Designer Tony Fadell Thinks Apple Should Do About Tech Addiction
They say the first step to overcoming addiction is acknowledging the problem, but what if your addiction is to technology?
IPhone designer and Nest founder Tony Fadell told Cheddar people need tools to understand how they use their devices.
“Today we do not have the information at our fingertips to allow us to see what our digital life looks like,” he said. “All of these companies have a measurement of our digital life. They know how much time we spend in each of these apps.”
“Apple and Google create these platforms, and they are in the perfect position to give us this data this back to us, and blend it with our physical data.”
Fadell’s comments follow calls from two major Apple investors that the tech giant do more to combat smartphone addiction among children. Jana Partners and California’s teachers’ retirement fund wrote letter to the company over the weekend, saying overuse of the devices has lead to lack of concentration in classrooms.
Fadell argues, though, that the issue is not exclusive to children.
“We have to think broader,” he said. “When it comes to our family, we have tech-free Sundays, where the parents and the kids are not on technology, where we’re together as a family.”
For the full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/apple-ipod-co-inventor-tony-fadell-on-combating-addictive-quality-of-technology).
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