Your phone shouldn't know how you feel
The European Union is preparing a law that prohibits chatbots from simulating emotions with minors, while a survey reveals the cost of doomscrolling.
In an article on the Plugged In blog, Bret reviews three news stories about your phone and your mood: chatbots that simulate emotions, doomscrolling, and silent mode.
The European Union wants to prohibit chatbots from faking feelings or personal relationships when talking with minors. The measure is part of a broader child protection law. I read that and think of the chat that at 2 a.m. replies "I understand you" without having understood anything. Does it accompany you or does it read you?
No law can resolve that question. An app can imitate listening, but it cannot love. And that's the point: we get used to something answering us. Talking with people is tiring, because people reply late, make mistakes, get distracted. The machine never gets tired because it never gets involved.
«An app can imitate listening, but it cannot love.»
A law late for an old loneliness
Prohibiting a program from simulating affection with a minor seems right to me. It also seems short. If a kid in Bogotá or Miami ends up telling a chatbot about their nights, the useful question has less to do with the algorithm and more to do with who was available to listen.
Scripture says something no interface improves: "It is not good that the man should be alone" (Genesis 2:18, ESV). We were made for risky bonds: someone who can leave, who can fail, who can forgive. A bot offers a version without risk and, for that very reason, without love.
Doomscrolling informs and also tires
A survey by Hopelab and Data for Progress found that 76% of people aged 13 to 24 believe that doomscrolling helps them stay informed. In that same group, six out of ten say that habit leaves them anxious, exhausted, overwhelmed, angry, or hopeless.
Both figures can be true in the same person. Finding out what's happening is a good; living with a tight stomach every night is not the mandatory price. I distinguish between being informed and being flooded, even if the finger keeps scrolling on its own.
Bret suggests taking the phone out of the room at night, and I agree. I add another simple habit: check news twice a day, at set times, and not before sleeping.
Silent mode doesn't turn off doubt
A recent study found that those who have their phone on silent mode check it almost twice as much as those who keep sound or vibration on. The explanation the study gives is sensible: by removing the sound, the doubt about what's happening on the screen remains. And that doubt weighs more than a ring.
Behind the muted notification there is something bigger: the habit of living looking. Silencing the notification doesn't silence the urge to check who wrote, who posted, who ignored you.
My column is titled with a phrase that sounds like a law: your phone shouldn't know how you feel. I stand by it, even though the real work doesn't happen on the screen. What decides what I do with that screen lives elsewhere. The Bible calls it the heart: "Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life" (Proverbs 4:23, ESV).
So I propose a concrete step for this week. Choose the app that pushes you most to compare, to look without reason, or to come back every five minutes. Delete it for seven days. Don't deactivate it: delete it. Tell two friends you did it, so you can say it out loud.
If on the third day you miss it more than you expected, you just learned something about yourself and not about the app. And if you have extra time, write to someone real.
Which one would you delete this week? Tell me in the comments.
