In today's world mobile phones, tablets and computers have become a necessity but more than that youth and adults alike are addicted by the digital world. Be it Netflix, Amazon Prime, TikTok, WhatsApp, YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, today's generation are mostly glued to their mobile phone devices throughout the day.
To tackle this 'addiction', tech giant Google has launched a new device called a 'Paper Phone', which it has described as a part of its series of experiments that will help people overcome 'digital detox'. In its blog post, Google wrote, "We hope this little experiment can help you try a digital detox from technology and help you focus on things that matter the most."
Paper Phone application, developed by London-based design studio 'Special Projects', allows users to opt all the information he/she might want offline, like contacts, messages, notes, memos and screenshots. Users can take a print out of this information and keep it, just like a mobile phone. An interesting feature in the new application is the paper apps like notepads help people get their things done. Google stated that the idea of this whole new experiment is to encourage people to give up their phones for a day and perform similar tasks with papers.
Google elaborates, "Paper Phone helps users to have a little break away from their digital world by printing a personal booklet of the key information you'll need that day." Apart from 'Paper Phone', other experiments included in Google's latest 'digital well-being' experiments include, 'Unlock Clock' and 'Desert Island'. Unlock Clock helps users consider his/her tech use, by counting and displaying the number of times they unlock their phones each day. Desert Clock, on the other hand, challenges to spend a day with only the most essential apps.
The series of experiments originate from various researches that detail the effects of technology and digital devices on our physical and mental health. Earlier this year, the World Health Organization (WHO) had released new guidelines for parents based on their study that analyzes behavioral and developmental issues in children who spent more time in front of mobile phones, tablets and computers.
Well, Paper Phone is not Google's first attempt at using paper products to explore the tech and digital world. In 2014, the firm had launched 'Google Cardboard', an app to view virtual reality application on mobile phone. In this digitally dominated world, it is encouraging that the tech giants are coming up with ideas that help today's generation and inspire the coming ones to explore the real world and spend time with our loved ones.
