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'I worry about the world I helped create', says Android founder
The co-founder of Android has said he is worried about the impact mobile phones are having on children.
Rich Miner, who helped build the Android operating system, said he feared for the “interrupt driven world I helped create" and the impact it will have on younger generations.
"I worry about the smartphone centric interrupt driven world I helped created and how it is going to impact people who grew up thinking this is just how things are," he said.
It came in response to a photo posted on Twitter showing how a class of schoolchildren received hundreds of smartphone notifications during a class.
The Google-owned Android operating system is found on the majority of phones sold around the world.
Mr Miner co-founded Android along with Andy Rubin before it was acquired by Google in 2007, but left the division in 2009 to work at its venture capital arm GV. Mr Rubin left Google in 2014.
Mr Miner is not the first former Google executive to raise the alarm on the negative impact technology might have on young people.
Google designer Tristan Harris has blown the whistle on Silicon Valley’s “slot machine” tactics to manipulate phone owners into constantly checking their phones and engage with their apps.
A study by Google's own researchers last year found that phones were turning owners into addicts thanks to the "trigger, action, reward" pattern on apps to keep owners checking their phones.
Other technology executives including early Facebook president Sean Parker have worries about the effects of social media on children.
In 2017, Facebook admitted that passive scrolling through the social network made users more miserable, citing research from the University of Michigan, which found that students randomly assigned to read Facebook for 10 minutes were in a worse mood at the end of the day than those who talked to friends or posted on the website.