Google now requires all Android manufacturers to include Digital Wellbeing and parental controls
Digital Wellbeing will track how long a person interacts with his Android phone over the course of a day. Like Screen Time, it also breaks this down by app and will show trends over the course of a week. It also keeps track of how many times a phone has been unlocked and how many notifications have been received. The Wind down setting starts to prepare users for bed by offering them several options to help them disconnect from their handset for the night. This includes removing all color from the screen by activating Grayscale, enabling Do Not Disturb to end interruptions, and turning on Night Light to remove blue light from the display “to better match the natural light of the user’s time of day and location.” Some studies have shown that viewing blue light in the evening could make it harder for someone to fall asleep.
How many of you actively use Screen Time or Digital Wellbeing?
With Family Link, parents can control the amount of time their kids spend each day on a particular app. Parents can even do this for themselves. Once the predetermined time has expired, the app closes and the icon dims. At midnight local time, the app will be available for use once again. And if a child needs some extra time on an app, the parents can award him or her with some bonus time.
Wind down starts the process of weaning users off of their Android phone in preparation for bed
The document says that new and existing products that launch with Android 9 or Android 10 after September 3, 2019, or are upgraded to either Android build after that date, “must have a digital wellbeing solution with parental controls at the top level of the settings app.” Google goes on to say that manufacturers can either install its Digital Wellbeing app or develop their own “custom wellbeing and parental controls solution.”
[img center [[351598]]:”Google orders Android manufacturers to include Digital Wellbeing or a custom app with parental controls with their phones and tablets”]
With both Apple and Google appearing to be sincere about limiting the usage of their own products before addiction sets in (and for many of us it might be too late), we wonder how many of our readers are actively using Screen Time or Digital Wellbeing. Let us know by dropping your comments in the box below.