Apple is removing or restricting apps that are designed to prevent people from becoming addicted to their iPhones.
“Over the past year, Apple has removed or restricted at least 11 of the 17 most downloaded screen-time and parental-control apps,” reports the New York Times.
“In some cases, Apple forced companies to remove features that allowed parents to control their children’s devices or that blocked children’s access to certain apps and adult content. In other cases, it simply pulled the apps from its App Store,” writes Jack Nicas.
“Can you really trust that Apple wants people to spend less time on their phones?” asked Fred Stutzman, chief executive of Freedom, a screen-time app that had more than 770,000 downloads before Apple removed it last summer.
The effort is completely at odds with Apple’s publicly stated desire to help people reduce their phone obsession.
“It is clear that there are certain apps that people can get in the mindset of just scrolling through mindlessly and continuously picking up their phones and looking to see what is happening this second,” said Apple CEO Tim Cook earlier this month.
However, Apple’s own behavior in punishing app creators who try to curb phone addiction proves Cook is being dishonest.
As the video below documents, while companies like Apple want to keep you addicted, tech elites deliberately keep their own children away from the same technology.
