In 2018, smartphone makers, users, and some academics began to appreciate the effects of excessive smartphone use, leading to iOS' Screen Time and other tools
Context & Ripple Effects
The 2018 reckoning had a measurable prelude: comScore found apps already consumed half of US users' online time by 2016, up from 41% two years earlier (comScore's app-time share). The catalyst was shareholder pressure — two Apple investors holding roughly $2B in stock publicly demanded the company study phone overuse among children and give parents real controls.
First-order effects
- Apple answered within months with iOS Screen Time, giving users per-app usage data and the ability to set limits for themselves or their kids (Screen Time's per-app controls), while Google matched it with its own Digital Wellbeing initiative announced at I/O (the Screen Time vs. Digital Wellbeing comparison).
Second-order effects
- Both companies now own the measurement layer for their own harms: Wired reported independent researchers still cannot get device-usage data from the tech giants, leaving the platforms as gatekeepers of the evidence about their products' mental-health effects.
Third-order effects
- Voluntary self-measurement has structural limits — during pandemic isolation, Screen Time horrified users with skyrocketing reports it could do nothing to fix (pandemic-era Screen Time spikes) — pointing toward a future where regulators and researchers demand data access rather than trusting platform dashboards.
The trend: Smartphone platforms are absorbing digital wellbeing as a built-in self-reporting feature, a pattern that keeps the definition and measurement of 'excessive use' inside the companies being measured.