A Barbie-branded cellphone has been launched within the UK and Europe with the intention – its makers say – of serving to younger individuals take a break from their smartphones.
It’s a very pink and basically very primary gadget, with no entrance digital camera, just one sport and really restricted entry to the web.
Producer HMD, which additionally makes telephones for Nokia, says it is making an attempt to faucet into what it calls a “surge” of individuals wanting a smaller “digital influence” on their lives.
However others say that will be higher achieved by educating individuals how you can use their gadgets in a more healthy and extra managed approach.
There are rising calls from mother and father and campaigners to restrict the time youngsters spend on smartphones, and even ban the gadgets utterly.
Their considerations vary from the suspicion youngsters will find yourself with shorter consideration spans, to the concern that they is likely to be uncovered to dangerous or unlawful content material.
Some colleges are taking motion, maybe most eye-catchingly the UK’s finest recognized fee-paying faculty, Eton Faculty. It’s offering a few of its pupils with “brick” telephones – additionally typically referred to as function telephones – which may solely ship and obtain texts and calls.
It says it needs to “stability the advantages and challenges that expertise brings to colleges.”
And this week cell community EE waded into the talk by advising mother and father to not enable their under-11s smartphones in any respect.
Lars Silberbauer, a senior government at HMD, says it’s these developments his agency is responding to.
“We have seen this surge which began within the US coming to Europe, that an increasing number of individuals truly wish to not be having a digital expertise on a regular basis,” he mentioned.
Some could also be sceptical about how really noble Mr Silberbauer’s motives are – and he did concede he would “love” to have the ability to incorporate a messaging platform like WhatsApp into the Barbie cellphone.
However I spent a day utilizing it and, for now, there’s little doubt that as a digital detox it was definitely efficient due to its very restricted performance.
It’s mirror-fronted flip cellphone and has no app retailer or contact display. I had no social media in any respect, and the cellphone can’t obtain something extra superior than SMS messages.
Meaning no textual content messages with “learn receipts” or the operate to see when somebody is typing. It’s the default setting on many smartphones – so I didn’t get many textual content messages both.
Even with predictive textual content enabled I discovered the numbers and letters keypad a lot slower than a touchscreen keyboard and because of this I ended up calling extra individuals than standard, which maybe was no dangerous factor.
And I found there are solely so many instances you’ll be able to play the retro Nokia sport Snake, even when it’s referred to as Malibu Snake and it is pink.
However the handset definitely attracted lots of consideration, particularly from women and younger ladies, as I walked round Glasgow metropolis centre with it.
There may be after all the hazard that as a substitute of being pestered for a smartphone, mother and father will discover themselves being pestered for a chunk of Barbie merchandise – which can be simply as unwelcome.
The cellphone has a launch value of £99 within the UK – twice what you’ll pay for a non-branded Nokia function cellphone. There are many different telephones available on the market that provide the identical restricted performance, however with none sort of huge company tie in.
“I’d think about fairly a number of individuals can be tempted to purchase it as a little bit of enjoyable, however in actuality, everyone seems to be so depending on their smartphones that something greater than the odd day of detox can be a stretch,” says Ben Wooden, a cellphone professional who has his personal museum of gadgets launched over time.
Nonetheless, he says, there’s a marketplace for what are typically referred to as “dumbphones”. His agency, CCS Perception, estimates that round 400,000 can be offered within the UK this yr.
“That is a beautiful area of interest for an organization like HMD”, he says.
Some specialists counsel that withdrawing smartphones is not any actual resolution – they’re woven into our lives, in any case – and as a substitute youngsters have to be taught how you can use them in a wholesome and protected approach.
“What we ought to be doing as a substitute is considering, how can we construct actually good, actually long run, sustainable digital literacy abilities in that technology,” says Pete Etchells, professor of psychology and science communication at Tub Spa college, who has written extensively in regards to the challenge of display time.
“I feel we might all be higher at utilizing our telephones in a more healthy and extra resilient approach,” he mentioned.
HMD can also be engaged on a separate challenge, a brand new gadget which it’s designing in collaboration with mother and father. It says greater than 1,000 individuals have signed as much as work on it up to now.
And Mr Silberbaum concedes that the ensuing handset could effectively find yourself being one thing that sits someplace between a dumbphone and a smartphone.
“Do I would like the smartphone with all of the bells and whistles, or do I wish to have one thing that may truly assist me have a extra thought-about method to digital? That is the selection we wish to ship,” he mentioned.