JULIA MONTAG| COLUMN

I

t’s Monday night and your 
paper’s 
due 
sometime 
tomorrow. 
You 
spent 
your 
weekend 
unwinding 
– 
socializing, 
catching 
up 
on 
“Game of Thrones,” following 
your 
favorite 
NBA 
team 
– 
because let’s face it, you deserve 
some down time! So you sit down 
Monday, ready to begin this 
paper, and instead, you launch 
Instagram, just to get a brief 
idea of what you’ll be missing in 
your social circle tonight. Two 
hours later with zero progress 
made, you regret wasting your 
time.
This 
June, 
Apple, 
Inc. 
released new, groundbreaking 
software that aims to prevent 
this 
uniquely 
millennial 
circumstance from occurring. 
Apple’s 
annual 
Worldwide 
Developers Conference took 
place June 4, highlighting 
its platforms’ most recent 
iOS 12 software updates and 
forward-thinking initiatives. 
Users 
are 
getting 
excited 
about new ideas that will 
make iPhone harder to put 
down: 
group 
FaceTime, 
customizable 
animated 
emojis, an update to Siri’s 
intelligence and a 40-percent 
increase in overall speed. 
However, among the most 
radical 
of 
Apple’s 
2018 
announcements 
are 
those 
focusing 
on 
curbing 
our 
technolog y addiction.
Apple 
CEO 
Tim 
Cook 
admitted 
to 
CNNMoney’s 
Laurie 
Segall 
just 
how 
accidental 
the 
apparent 
iPhone addiction is.
“You know, we want people 
to be incredibly satisfied and 
empowered by the devices 
that we ship, but we never 
wanted people to spend a lot 
of time or all of their time on 
them,” Cook explained. “And 
we’re rolling out great tools 
to both make people aware 
of how much time they’re 
spending (on phones) and the 
apps that they’re spending it 
in, but also how many times 
they pick up their phone, 
how many notifications they 
get, who is sending them 
the 
notifications. 
(We’re) 
empowering people with the 
facts to decide themselves 
how they want to cut back or 
if they want to cut back.”
Companies like Apple and 

Google 
may 
be 
ironically 
seeking technolog y-limiting 
technolog y 
because 
of 
the 
recommendations 
of 
investors or because of the 
scientific 
findings 
that 
inform us just how greatly 
our health can suffer from 
staring at phones. Physically, 
screen time is detrimental to 
our eyes and neck, causing 
users to experience symptoms 
such as dry eyes, headaches, 
blurred vision and long-term 
shoulder and back pain. Sleep 
is often disrupted, especially 
when we fail to resist putting 
our phones away when getting 
ready for bed. The blue light 
emitted 
by 
iPhones 
can 
interrupt our bodies’ sleep 
cycles by interrupting the 
natural production of sleep-
inducing melatonin. Socially, 
immersion in social media 
can warp our sense of how 
person-to-person 
interactions 
are supposed to take place. 
Emotionally, increased phone 
exposure can make us more 
stressed, worried and prone to 
depressive symptoms.
The new iOS 12 features 
were designed to counter these 
health 
detriments, 
yet 
are 
falsely idyllic. They will pose 
questions about how much time 
spent on our phones is too much 
time, 
or 
whether awareness 
will be enough to curb our 
enthusiasm 
toward 
tech. 
So 
how will we as college students 
react to the accessibility of 
addiction curbing tools – to 
the accessibility of phone-use 
knowledge?
What 
are 
these 
“digital 
health” 
tools 
that 
will 
balance out the entertaining 
advancements of iOS 12 – 
the advancements that will 
further hook in users? One 
key 
digital 
health 
feature 
is the ability to pre-set “Do 
Not 
Disturb” 
time, 
which 
will allow us to sleep or work 
peacefully without receiving 
texts and email notifications. 
We will also have access to 
a weekly summary of our 
“Screen 
Time,” 
showing 
us exactly how much time 
we 
spend 
on 
our 
phone 
throughout the week, how 
many 
hours 
(and 
which 
specific 
hours) 
we 
spend 
mindlessly scrolling through 
each app. Finally, if these 

“Screen 
Time” 
summaries 
rattle your tech-conscience 
and make you want to use 
apps less, “App Limits” will 
allow you to set an exact time 
limit per day and only permit 
you to use the app until you’ve 
reached it. Additionally, you 
can’t work around the limit 
by using your iPad instead for 
the limits and summaries can 
be synced across devices.
What troubles me about 
these new iPhone features is 
the users’ capability to turn 
on or shut off the technolog y 
limits. 
Cook 
thinks 
“ultimately, each person has 
to make the decision, when 
they get their numbers, as 
to what they would like to 
do. 
I 
encourage 
everyone 
to look and everyone to make 
an informed decision, and ask 
themselves, if they’re picking 
up their phone 10 to 20 times 
an hour, maybe they could do 
it less … But I think the power 
is now shifted to the user. And 
that has been what Apple has 
always been about, is giving 
the power from the institution 
to the user.” So now the user 
has the power to limit how 
much 
time 
they 
spend 
on 
Instagram or Facebook; the 
issue, however, is that the App 
Limit is not only voluntary, but 
the user also has the power to 
extend it.
Will college students pass 
or fail? These new software 
features seem to say to us as 
tech-users that our iPhone 
addiction isn’t our fault, but 
is instead due to the simple 
architecture of the updates 
from the previous operating 
systems. 
Will 
we 
harness 
the new-and-improved “Siri 
Shortcuts” that monitor our 
habits and suggest we mobile-
order a coffee based on the 
predicted traffic? Or, will we 
utilize the “Do Not Disturb” 
features, the “Screen Time” 
summaries, the “App Limits” 
that comprise the up and 
coming 
Digital 
Health 
Initiative? We will find out 
later 
this 
summer 
when 
the iOS 12 update becomes 
available to the public. 

5
OPINION

Thursday, June 14, 2018
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

Alas, Washington floundered, 
and California was left to remedy 
its now-prolonged dilemma by 
facing reality. Undocumented 
immigrants 
began 
to 
be 
integrated into normal policy 
concerns, reflecting a national 
reluctance 
to 
truly 
take 
action. 
S.B. 
54’s 
protection 
of nonviolent undocumented 
immigrants from federal agents, 
on the grounds that local law 
enforcement is more effective 
when less of the populace is 
afraid to cooperate, is justified 
when Washington’s inaction is 
taken into account.
Calling 
back 
on 
recent 
legislative failures may help 
explain the current legal 
dilemma, but the only concern 
for many is that sanctuary 
protection 
invalidates 
the 
rule of law. No matter the 
convenience afforded to law 
enforcement due to sanctuary 
policies, nor the injustice 
imposed on undocumented 
immigrants by the severe 
backlog 
of 
American 
immigration procedures, the 
argument goes, welcoming 
undocumented 
immigrants 
as they are sends the message 
that 
U.S. 
immigration 
laws 
are 
pliable. 
While 
Trump’s 
misleading 
and 
race-baiting statements on 
immigration, 
along 
with 
a 
shift 
toward 
nativist 
policies and preferences for 
immigrants 
with 
specific 
traits and backgrounds, are 
inexcusable, 
these 
critics 
are right that circumventing 
Congress is not sustainable 
nor desirable. 
However, 
upon 
closer 
inspection, calls for a return 
to the rule of law also reveal 
that the true problem lies in 
failure to act at a national 
level. California’s S.B. 54 
stridently disregards federal 
law only in the sense that it 

actively prevents state and 
local law enforcement from 
sharing 
information 
with 
federal immigration officers, a 
provision directly at odds with 
federal immigration law, as 
outlined in 8 U.S. Code section 
1373. Other components of the 
law, namely the requirement 
that 
state 
and 
local 
officials 
release 
nonviolent 
undocumented 
immigrants 
in the face of orders from 
federal immigration officials, 
frustrate federal objectives 
yet exercise the perfectly legal 
practice of noncooperation. 
California’s pushback on 
federal policy, much like the 
aforementioned Arizona law, 
is only possible because much 
of the immigration issue has 
not 
been 
comprehensively 
addressed 
by 
Congress. 
Recent failures by Congress 
to come to consensus were 
met 
by 
President 
Barack 
Obama’s executive “stopgap” 
measure, Deferred Action for 
Childhood 
Arrivals, 
which 
has since been followed only 
by extensive indecision and 
refusal to move forward on 
the part of Trump. 
This stagnation decisively 
illustrates the need for new 
national legislation and policy 
that faces up to the struggles 
burdening the states. It also 
shows how bickering over 
the supremacy of federal 
law or the ability of states to 
avoid compliance amounts 
to wasted time and energy. 
 
Rather, 
comprehensive 
immigration 
reform 
by 
Congress is the only real 
solution when it comes to 
resolving the concerns of 
states like California and 
places like Orange County. 

How will college students respond to the Digital Health Initiative?

Julia Montag can be reached at 

jtmon@umich.edu

Ethan Kessler can be reached at 

ethankes@umich.edu.

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A state divided by Ethan Kessler continued below:

