shareholders want Big Tech to be accountable for its toxic effects on young children, just as Big Tobacco was compelled to pay for tobacco addiction,
“The iPhone has made Apple Inc. and Wall Street hundreds of billions of dollars. Now some big shareholders are asking at what cost, in an unusual campaign to make the company more socially responsible.
“A leading activist investor and a pension fund are saying the smartphone maker needs to respond to what some see as a growing public-health crisis of youth phone addiction.
“Jana Partners LLC and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, or Calstrs, which control about $2 billion of Apple shares, sent a letter to Apple on Saturday urging it to develop new software tools that would help parents control and limit phone use more easily and to study the impact of overuse on mental health.
“The Apple push is a preamble to a new several-billion-dollar fund Jana is seeking to raise this year to target companies it believes can be better corporate citizens. It is the first instance of a big Wall Street activist seeking to profit from the kind of social-responsibility campaign typically associated with a small fringe of investors.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hi Diane—did you see this reponse from some other investors? https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apple-shareholders-addiction-analysis/iphone-addiction-may-be-a-virtue-not-a-vice-for-investors-idUSKBN1EX2G2
“We invest in things that are addictive,” said Apple shareholder Ross Gerber, chief executive of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management.
He also owns stock in coffee retailer Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O), casino operator MGM Resorts International (MGM.N) and alcohol maker Constellation Brands Inc (STZ.N).
“Addictive things are very profitable,” Gerber said.
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Ah, Capitalism at its… most brutally honest.
It’s sort of like the CEO of Dollar General stores, who recently told Wall Street analysts that the company is doing well and expanding because, “… the economy is creating more of our customers,” i.e. poor people.
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I do not really think of any corporation as a “corporate citizen,” or that corporations are people. If they were, they should have to pay the same tax rate that other citizens pay. Today, their tax rate is capped at 21% while many people are paying as much as a 35% tax rate. Corporations’ largesse usually includes a hefty positive exposure for publicity. When Wallmart agrees to pay for the college tuition of a couple of poor students, it is usually done with a lot of positive publicity and press for the corporation.
I have a more cynical view of corporations. Many strive to cut corners, exploit the weak and try to squirm out from their obligations to their workers. Apple will be a “good citizen” when the cameras are rolling while they quietly hide their assets offshore and try to sell computers to babies. A good citizen wouldn’t behave like Apple. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/11/07/paradise-papers-apple-shifted-billions-offshore-avoid-tax/839565001/
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Frankly, parents deserve a large portion of the responsibility here. What parent in his/her right mind gives a kid an iPhone? My kid has a tracphone which is only used to to contact my husband or I when something unplanned comes up. I wouldn’t give my teenage daughter alcohol or cigarettes so why would I give her an electronic device that is just as addictive. Apple may be unethical, but parents are being irresponsible.
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I wholeheartedly agree. As an old dog who is selective about which new tricks to learn, I can assure parents it’s still possible to purchase a cell phone which has neither camera nor internet (just did so a couple of months ago when similar 11-y.o. flip phone bit the dust).
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I am in the same camp as retired teacher.
I think this bow toward corporate responsibility has everything to do with shoring up the value and marketability of Apple’s iPhone, iPad, Mac Computers and Apple software. It is also a move that can help forestall criticism of Apple’s plans to upgrade the Mac App Store, making it easier for customers to buy and use apps that work equally well on iPhones, iPads and Macs.
Consider some of the marketing pitches for Apple Education, not even mentioned as something parents should be aware of, and certainly in need of some socially responsible action.
—“iPad is an approved device for securely administering summative exams. iPad works with state online exams including tests from Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC), and ACT Aspire. There are also apps that let you track students’ progress as they move toward statewide testing.”
“The App Store’s new ‘Today, Games and Apps’ showcased breakout hits in 2017, including Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp, Monument Valley 2, King of Glory, Calm and Affinity Photo, Clash of Clans, Candy Crush Saga, Enlight Videoleap, 1Password and Hulu.
Pokémon GO has new augmented reality (AR) features, built on Apple’s ARKit framework. Apple has nearly 2,000 ARKit-enabled apps such as CSR Racing 2, Stack AR and Kings of Pool.
Apple also has shopping apps like Amazon and Wayfair; education apps including Night Sky and Thomas & Friends Minis; and social media apps including Pitu and Snapchat.
Apple is a brand for a corporation. Corporations are a legal version of artificial intelligence. They are legally entitled to act as if persons, but they are profit-driven.
From Bloomberg. https://www.bloomberg.com/technology and https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2018/01/app-store-kicks-off-2018-with-record-breaking-holiday-season/
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Let’s not forget while everyone speculates that all the social safety nets will be under fire due to a tax give away to the wealthy, no one ever mentions the amount of money we pay for corporate welfare. Corporations continuously lobby representatives for better deals for their businesses, which they get, while everyone else gets more of the tax burden shifted in their direction which includes all of us little people. http://www.masters-in-accounting.org/corporate-welfare/
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Second and third that. It took a huge campaign to make people aware of what the tobacco industry was doing to hide the truth. The same is needed for the tech industry. I want to see much more on this topic published for years to come.
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BUYER/USER BEWARE!
Many people I know, STOP DEAD in their TRACKS when that smart phone buzzes.
Others I know try to do business while using their devices … like no one else exists. Good grief. MANNERS?
And …
If you didn’t know about the NEW Televisions check this out.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/09/wikileaks-cia-spying-americans-tv-smartphones-james-comey-privacy
https://www.propublica.org/article/own-a-vizio-smart-tv-its-watching-you
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If I made a living as a comedian, I could get hours and hours of humor out of simply imitating the people I hear in public loudly discussing their lives and problems on phones — totally oblivious to the world around them.
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“… I could get hours and hours of humor out of simply imitating the people I hear in public…”
I wish I had a like button.
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Middle-class kids today live on their phones. The extent to which this is so is truly astonishing. I’ve seen teenagers cry hysterically, as though a friend had just been murdered, when their phones were taken from them for a brief time by teachers. However, people tend to overplay how savvy kids are about using technology. Many kids don’t recognize, for example, that when they put something on their phones, it’s out there forever and could easily become public and harm them. They don’t know that whatever they say in a text might easily become common knowledge.
Being on the phone ALL THE TIME, being CONSTANTLY CONNECTED, cannot but bring about enormous sociocultural change, and I don’t think we fully understand, yet, what changes are occurrings. A few possibilities, based on my observations, as a teacher, of teens and their phone use, some good, some bad. (The media tend to play up the bad because doing so is sensational and captures eyeballs.)
Social sanction is extraordinarily powerful. Online, in threads with multiple members (very common these days), when people say really egregious stuff, others pile on, and the offender soon learns a lesson. As a result, I think that highly connected kids tend to be more tolerant than were kids were in the past and more sensitive to social faux pas. If someone makes a homophobic or sexist comment, he or she is likely to be immediately shamed for it by others on a given thread. This happens very quickly, and people soon learn to keep their ugliness to themselves. So, there’s a socially adaptive component to what’s happening.
Being constantly connected is not, I think, giving kids shorter attention spans (teens have always had short attention spans), but it is changing the nature of attention. Kids will get on a thread and keep with it for extended periods of time–giving it a lot of sustained attention, but that thread will have a LOT of varied stuff in it and can easily wander about, returning from time to time to whatever started it. So, kids are learning to juggle lots of comments, ideas, etc.–to keep a lot of balls in the air. And, they tend to know a little about a lot rather than a lot about a little, for they are constantly following associative threads all over cyberspace.
Image, and all its attendant issues, has become extraordinarily important. Kids today spend a LOT of time managing their online images. One teenager I know posted some pics of herself on Instagram and almost immediately went to almost 10,000 subscribers. That can’t be good. A lot of that attention is probably not healthy. In general, kids are reading less and consuming graphic media more. However, they do read a LOT. It’s just that that reading comes in short bursts, a few words at a time. They tend to know lots and lots and lots and lots of memes and catchphrases.
It’s easy for kids to fall into subcultures these days–isolated online islands of people with particular enthusiasms. We hear about the wackos–the ones who are converted to white supremacy or jihadism, for example, online, because those cases are sensational. But what also happens is that kids with particular interests (anime) or issues (gender identity) get into supportive online subcultures and go with these big time. Enthusiasms get magnified, and people find community.
I’m sure that there is a lot more that is happening here that I am unaware of or haven’t thought about. One thing for sure: this stuff is changing people, and not necessarily in the ways that one typically reads about in the media, which tend to run negative stories about the online world because those capture eyeballs. One doesn’t read a lot in the media, for example, about groups of classical guitarists who share scores with one another online, breast cancer survivors who help others going through diagnosis and treatment, and so on. But there’s a LOT–a LOT–of that kind of thing happening–community.
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“when their phones were taken from them for a brief time by teachers” – Are kids at the school where you teach connected to social media on school grounds?
I was wondering this myself about our local district. I found a “TAPInto” piece posted by a local hisch student just a day ago, complaining about internet restrictions. Apparently our district wifi prevents connection to social media, shopping & music-streaming sites. The student wrote that some get around this by installing a “VPN” app [but he also complained about how ‘slow’ it was LOL].
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Most students at my school were connected to WiFi. They had accounts that allowed them to make use of roaming connections. This is quite common.
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Yes parents are the first line of defense, but as a society we use laws and regulation to ban minors from using harmful things that are otherwise legal. Kids may not drink or smoke, or purchase spray cans, drive cars or watch adult movies.
So let’s get real. I have seen students who are up all night on computers or devices or video games and their brains are frazzled. Sometimes it’s misguided parents, but often they are doing this stuff on the sly. Sometimes parents are not around.
I’m sure the stats on ADD/ADHD (real or misdiagnosed) bear this out. Yes, there are great advantages to instant access to info and communications, but there is major harm to kids happening.
If a 7th grader is up till 2am playing fast-paced shooting games while cranking music videos and live chatting all at the same time, they get accustomed to intense sensory stimulation. The next morning at 8am they are in a classroom with books that don’t move or make noises, and they cannot focus on basic tasks. Compound this with a diet of sugary snacks, chips and iced tea and these kids are basically uneducable, acting out or crashing as they limp through the day only to do it all again at night.
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I am with you, Jake. When was it that we all decided that instant access to the cyber world was a necessity. Even just relying on them for phone contact has gotten ridiculous. I do not care to listen to everyone’s phone calls. I object to someone breaking off a conversation to talk or text with someone else they deem more important. Can’t anyone enjoy a walk to the park with a toddler or even the dog without gluing a phone to their ear? When I was teaching, the school’s refusal to limit access to phones led to daily skirmishes with students who found their phones more interesting than class.
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Apple knows all this – they know more about these kids than their parents because of the datamining.
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Did anyone see this !? Shocking. https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5a5610d3e4b0d614e48b5266/comments
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