For companies such as Google and Facebook, the more we use their products, the better it is for them as it means more time spent on their platform, which means more exposure to ads. However spending too much time with our devices can be bad for our health, which is also why companies such as Google and Facebook have introduced digital wellbeing initiatives.
Google’s digital wellbeing initiative was initially announced at I/O earlier this year, and was available as a beta back in August. The good news is that if such management features are of interest to you, then you might be pleased to learn that the app is now out of beta and is available to users of Pixel and Android One devices that are running on Android 9.0 Pie.
If you’ve ever seen Apple’s Screen Time feature in action, then Google’s digital wellbeing feature is more or less the same. It will provide users with information that lets them know how long they’ve spent on their device and which apps that they might be using the most. It also lets them manage notifications to help reduce distractions/interruptions, and also set time limits on how long you spend on apps per day.
Interestingly enough this isn’t Google’s first attempt at digital wellbeing, where earlier this year Google actually rolled out a similar feature to YouTube that let users know how long they’ve spent on the platform. Of course whether or not this will successfully help users cut down how much time they spend on their phones remains to be seen, but at the very least it draws attention to it.