This week I got an Apple Watch and saw a 50% drop in my screen time almost immediately.
Perhaps adding more screens might be the best way to reduce our screen time overall. Here’s my unsolicited thoughts…
Most of us do pretty much all of our work and many leisure activities on our phones & laptops. They can do everything, and that’s the problem: if you open your phone to respond to an urgent text, there’s a good chance you’ll then be distracted by another notification or reflexively open a social app. The devices that can do everything are inherently pushing for more screen time.
When I receive a notification on my Watch, the screen size limits the actions I can take easily; so many notifications are ignored until later. Notifications are also less distracting, they don’t dominate the Watch face, and I don’t find myself going into Watch apps to “clear” notifications.
As everything in the home and office becomes a smart device, there’s a real danger we might be surrounded by 30 iPhones at all times. The utopian alternative could be achieved if these new screens remain specialized and limited, that should be both a better experience for customers and device makers.
I expect Voice is the key. Are we comfortable with limited utility from most of the screens around us if we have voice access to a powerful computer?
