Two Major Apple Investors Say iPhone Addiction Has Negative Effects On Mental Health In Children

Two major shareholders of American technology giant Apple have taken upon themselves to make the company more socially responsible. They are pushing the company to study the effect of iPhone addiction on the mental well-being of the upcoming generation.

Investors Jana Partners and California State Teachers’ Retirement System, which control about $2 billion of the company's market value of over $900 billion, have written to Apple, asking the firm to develop tools that let parents exercise more control and limit the usage of iPhones, the Wall Street Journal has reported.

The two activist investors said there is evidence to suggest that entrancing qualities of the iPhone are having unintentional negative consequences on some of the most frequent young users.

Academics, parents and even the people who helped create the iPhone have raised concerns about increased rates of depression and suicide in teenagers as a result of limited human interaction due to excessive phone usage.

Apple already has some parental control in place. It restricts access to some applications and offers options such the ‘Ask to Buy’, which requires parental approval to buy goods and services. The investors, however, want the company to do more.

The iPhone, backbone of Apple’s business, generated $48.35 billion in profit in 2017 and helped the company become the world’s largest publicly-listed firm by market value. Up to 43 per cent of smartphones in use in the United States are Apple phones. At least 86 million Americans over the age 13 own an iPhone.

The two investors have teamed up with Jean M Twenge, Professor of Psychology at San Diego State University, and Michael Rich, Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, to study the impact of the phone overuse on the mental health of children.

Both Twenge and Rich have worked on related issues in the past. Discussing the issue of smartphones and children in The Atlantic in September, Twenge wrote:

Talking about the issue in a recent interview, Dr Rich said:

According to the Wall Street Journal report, the investors want the content and the amount of time spent on phones to be tailored to youngsters.