Barbie can beat smartphone addiction, says firm

A Barbie-branded phone has been launched in the UK and Europe in a bid, its creators say, to help young people take a break from their smartphones.

It’s a very pink and basically very basic device, with no front camera, only one game and very limited internet access.

Manufacturer HMD, which also makes phones for Nokia, says it is trying to tap into what it calls a “wave” of people wanting less “digital impact” on their lives.

But others believe it would be easier to achieve this by teaching people how to use their devices in a healthier and more controlled way.

Parents and activists are increasingly calling for children to limit the time they spend on their smartphones, or even ban the devices altogether.

Their concerns range from suspicion that children will eventually have shorter attention spans to fear of being exposed to harmful or illegal content.

Some schools are taking action, perhaps most strikingly The UK’s most famous fee-paying school, Eton CollegeThe school provides some of its students with “brick” phones – sometimes called feature phones – that can only send and receive text messages and calls.

The organization says it wants to “balance the benefits and challenges that technology brings to schools.”

And this week Mobile network EE has intervened in the debate advising parents not to allow smartphones at all for their children under 11.

Lars Silberbauer, a senior executive at HMD, says it is these trends that his company is responding to.

“We’ve seen this wave that started in the US and has spread to Europe: more and more people want to stop having to have a digital experience all the time,” he said.

Some may be skeptical about the nobility of Mr. Silberbauer’s motives — and he conceded that he would “love” to be able to integrate a messaging platform like WhatsApp into the Barbie phone.

But I spent a day using it and so far there’s no doubt that as a digital detox it’s certainly been effective given its very limited features.

It’s a flip phone with a mirrored screen and no app store or touchscreen. I had no social media and the phone couldn’t receive anything more advanced than SMS messages.

This means there are no “read receipt” text messages or any feature to see when someone is typing. This is the default setting on many smartphones, so I didn’t get many text messages either.

Even with predictive text enabled, I found the numeric and alphabetic keyboard to be much slower than a touchscreen keyboard, and as a result, I ended up calling more people than usual, which may not have been a bad thing.

And I discovered that there are only so many times you can play the retro Nokia Snake game, even when it’s called Malibu Snake and it’s pink.

But the phone certainly attracted a lot of attention, particularly from girls and young women, as I walked around Glasgow city centre with it.

There is, of course, the risk that instead of being hassled for a smartphone, parents will find themselves hassled for a Barbie collectible – which could be just as undesirable.

The phone is being sold in the UK at an introductory price of £99, which is twice what you would pay for a regular Nokia phone. There are plenty of other phones on the market that offer the same limited features, but without any connection to a major company.

“I imagine a lot of people will be tempted to buy it for fun, but in reality, everyone is so addicted to their smartphone that anything more than an occasional detox day will be a bit of a stretch,” says Ben Wood, a phone expert who has his own museum of devices released over the years.

Still, there is a market for what are sometimes called “dumb phones”. His company, CCS Insight, estimates that around 400,000 devices will be sold in the UK this year.

“It’s an attractive niche for a company like HMD,” he said.

Some experts suggest that removing smartphones isn’t a real solution – after all, they’re an integral part of our lives – and that instead we should teach children how to use them in healthy and safe ways.

“What we should be doing instead is thinking about how we can develop really good, sustainable, long-term digital literacy skills for this generation,” says Pete Etchells, professor of psychology and science communication at Bath Spa University, who has written extensively on the issue of screen time.

“I think we could all do better by using our phones in healthier, more resilient ways,” he said.

HMD is also working on another project, a new device that it is designing in collaboration with parents. According to the company, more than 1,000 people have signed up to work on this project.

And Mr. Silberbaum admits that the resulting phone could well be something somewhere between a cellphone and a smartphone.

“Do I want a smartphone with all the features or do I want to have something that can actually help me have a more thoughtful approach to digital? That’s the choice we want to offer,” he said.