A San Francisco start up has brought out a tiny phone that wants us to stay away from our main phones. The Palm, measuring just 3.3 inches long, is recommended for weekend use, to keep us away from apps like Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook.
The ultimate goal is to cut down how much time we spend on on our phones, and according to a Deloitte report, around 40% of us think that is way too much. Having said that, the same report suggests that not all of that 40% (only 83%) want to do anything about it. Around 56% of parents who took part in the survey also thought their children used their phones too much. Over half of the respondents owned up to using their phones for personal reasons while at work, but only 23% added that they thought this distracted them from that work. The results were based on a sample of 4150 smart phone users in the UK.
But does the Palm go far enough? You can still download and access the same social media apps as you can on your ‘main phone’, but because it’s so small the thinking is that you won’t bother so much. It also costs around £270 and can only be bought as an add on to your Verizon contract – if you have one.
What a waste of money! To me this looks like Verizon jumping on the panic around phone use in order to palm some more money. And given that this 4G device promises “the full Android experience”, it probably won’t affect how much time you spend on social media anyway!
If you really want to stay away from apps, why not buy an old school Nokia phone? They cost far less (some as low as £20) and don’t have any of the temptations that the Palm is supposed to keep us from.
Also the Deloitte report shows that under half of us think we use our phones too much anyway, and surely we can set out own limits if we want to. I’m from the age group that is supposed to use their phone most (16-24 year olds) and chose not to have Instagram or Facebook because I knew they would waste my time. And I did not need to spend £275 for a device to persuade me to do that.
Also, Android phones offer the “Digital Wellbeing” app to help you fine tune your – or your child’s – phone usage; and the most recent iOS and Android updates have also added ‘screen time’ options that allow users to see how time is spent on specific apps and to set daily limits.
I just checked my iPhone ’screen time’ and see that I only spent 56-minutes on social networks today, which is not a lot, particularly given what I use them for. Because social networking can be used to share useful things as well – such as recipes! Screen time cannot be judged on minutes alone!
