AS OF YESTERDAY, iPhone users can download and install iOS 12.
This update will speed up the performance and responsiveness in iPhones that have been released in the last five years (so basically, the 5S and beyond), allows users to engage in group Facetime calls, as well as improving lock-screen notifications and the ‘Do Not Disturb’ feature.
However, the feature that most of the buzz is surrounding this year is called Screen Time. It’s a vaguely terrifying new monitoring tool that will remind you just how much time you have wasted scrolling through Instagram, Twitter and DailyEdge.ie.
The app will allow you to set a schedule or limit for how much time you spend on certain apps each day, and send you a notification five minutes before the limit expires to make you feel bad about being on Twitter for three hours before you’ve even had lunch.
Screen Time is going to be painful: pic.twitter.com/orhTtZ9vt1
— Michael Agger (@magger) September 17, 2018
If you exceed the time limit, nothing happens. The phone does not lock you out and tell you to get a life or anything, don’t worry. The entire app depends on your own personal willpower.
Of course this isn’t a new idea at all. Apps for reducing screen time have existed for years, not only on Android and iOS, but on Mac and PC too. Now it’s just a built in feature on the iPhone. This might be a good thing – there are very few of us out there who would not benefit from being told to put the phone down for a few minutes.
However, it could also turn into a bad thing. It’s easy to see this blending into the background and desensitizing us to the fact that we are spending very significant portions of our waking life refreshing Instagram and hate-reading comment sections.
