Rick Vermeulen

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It’s 07.30h our phone wakes us up. You snooze twice, it’s 07.48h, you check your phone. WhatsApp, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook. We have breakfast, check the news. We hop into the shower and play some music on Spotify. It’s 08.40h and we take our bike to cylcle to class whilst listening to music – on our phone. It’s 09.00h and we store our phone to pay attention to an interesting lecture on information strategy. We’ve only been up 1,5 hours and our morning is dominated by our phones. Of course, this might not be this extreme for us ’90s kids, but the ’00s kids are controlled by their phones. More and more people are at risk of becoming addicted. (Statista, 2018)

Just some numbers from the Deloitte Global Mobile Consumer Survey:
– An average U.S. smartphone users checks their phone 47 times a day
-85% uses their phone while in social company
-Only halve the people who tried to cut down their smartphone usage succeeded.

An average American teen receives their smartphone at the age of 10(!) and spends 4.5 hours a day on it. Taken into account that around this age a child’s’ age is still developing rapidly is an unwelcome motive. This even worries some trusted Apple investors who are trying to make the company aware of the effect they have on children’s mental development. In this letter the encourage the tech giant to fund research into what their products are doing to a child’s brain. To emphasize the gravity of the situation, this letter was signed on behalf of investors who own almost 2 billion USD of Apple’s stock. (Dailybeast, 2018) This might have a serious impact even though it’s just 0,22% of the companies total value.

Another study from 2015 conducted in the U.S. concluded that young people who stopped using their phones performed worse on cognitive and mental tasks, suffering from ‘withdrawal’. This even showed in an increased heart rate and blood pressure. (Clayton, 2015) Another more recent study from 2017 even links smartphone usage to increased depression and suicide amongst adolescents. (Twenge, 2017) So all things considered this issue should not be taken lightheartedly. Parents should monitor their children’s screen-time more closely to prevent a digital pandemic.

Clayton, R., Leshner, G. and Almond, A. (2015), “The Extended iSelf: The Impact of iPhone Separation on Cognition, Emotion, and Physiology”. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication

Deloitte (2018), “Global Mobile Consumer Survey 2017: the Dutch edition

Living in a smartphone society” accessed via: https://view.deloitte.nl/TMT-201711-GMCS-2017_Register-page-download-GMCS.html

Statista (2018), “America’s Smartphone Addiction” accessed via: https://www.statista.com/chart/12403/smartphone-addiction/

The Daily Beast (2018), “Just How Bad Is Kids’ Smartphone Addiction?” accessed via: Just How Bad Is Kids’ Smartphone Addiction?

Twenge (2017), “Increases in Depressive Symptoms, Suicide-Related Outcomes, and Suicide Rates Among U.S. Adolescents After 2010 and Links to Increased New Media Screen Time”. Sage Journals

5/5 (2)

In our current day and age data is the key to success. Those companies with the most comprehensive image of their customer wins. It’s even come the point where we have become the product ourselves (1). Google barely makes any revenue on it’s users but still makes tons of money. This is because in some cases, companies like Google and Facebook know more and more about our preferences. Sometimes even better than we do. This makes these extensive data sets of our personal data worth loads to advertising companies. Already in 2013 Facebook made around 7.8 billion Dollar on ads (2).

In line with this is the acquiring of the immensely popular communications platform WhatsApp, which is basically another source of data for Facebook. Just for fun, go to settings > account > request account information and find out what they know about you. Luckily – also thanks to GDPR – our personal data is relatively well protected. Especially when it comes to companies whose Business Model is solely based on personal data.

However, for some companies safeguarding our data might not be a company wide priority. Last week, one of worlds leading airlines, British Airways suffered a major data breach. Luckily, the theft did not include passports. however, the details of around 380.000 payment cards had been compromised (3). This is especially troublesome for credit card users. Due to the new GDPR legislation BA might face fines up to 500 million pounds, if their behavior were to be judged negligent. This is just the most recent example. Another is Under Armour. They became a victim end of March after a breach in which roughly 150 million records were compromised (4).

With the emergence of all kinds of technologies there’s a bright future ahead. Same-day delivery, smart homes and even self-driving cars etc. However, as these capabilities develop, people with malicious intentions become increasingly smart as well. Therefore, the rapid development we’ve experienced shouldn’t lead to opportunities for the ‘bad guys’. On the contrary, companies should be encouraged to safe-keep personal data. So to all industry leaders, don’t join the dark side and protect your data.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/benkepes/2013/12/04/google-users-youre-the-product-not-the-customer/#5b5cf22276d6
https://www.business-management-degree.net/facebook
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/06/british-airways-customer-data-stolen-from-its-website
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/29/under-armour-stock-falls-after-company-admits-data-breach.html

Appdiction

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