Your phone’s lock screen is the hottest new real estate in tech. Apple has made the iPhone lock screen a centerpiece of iOS 16, giving users more control over how theirs looks and works. But while Apple talked about beautiful watchface fonts and nifty color-matched wallpapers, it also showed a world where your lock screen is more than just a security measure: it becomes another surface on which companies can put information, apps and even ads. Apple is far from the only company thinking about this. TechCrunch reports that Glance, a lock screen content company (which is apparently a thing!) is already in talks with US carriers and plans to launch on some Android phones in the US in the next two months.
The competition for your eyes and attention is now out of the apps and onto your home screen, through widgets and notifications. Now it looks like it’s gone one step further: to the first thing you see when you turn on your phone, before you even pick it up or unlock it. This may be at least one step too far.
If you’ve never seen a device with Glance before, one way to imagine the app is sort of like a Snapchat Discover feed on your phone’s lock screen. The company serves up a rotating set of news headlines, videos, quizzes, games and photos that appear every time your phone’s screen turns on. Glance calls these content cards “glances,” naturally, and says users use these glances an average of 65 times a day.
Glance is an endless content engine on your lock screen Image: Glance
And, of course, everything is full of ads. Glance is a subsidiary of InMobi Group, an Indian advertising technology company. It has partnerships with a number of manufacturers, including Samsung and Xiaomi, and the company says its software is embedded in more than 400 million phones in Asia. Google is an investor in the company; also Peter Thiel.
In a certain light, Glance or something like that is a perfectly reasonable idea. You don’t have to constantly go in and out of apps looking for news and information, you don’t even have to unlock your phone, you just trust your device to bring you something interesting every time you turn it on. And a few unobtrusive ads wouldn’t hurt, right? Still, I bought a Kindle with ads on the lock screen to save a few bucks and it doesn’t bother me. (Although I would never buy the Prime exclusive phones that come with ads on the lock screen, and apparently no one else would either.)
Your lock screen can help you use your phone less — or it can be a new source of distraction
Apple echoed that idea, talking about how it sees a more feature-rich lock screen as a way to help you use your phone less. Apple software chief Craig Federighi called the lock screen “the face of your phone” and said features like Live Activities can make it easier to get quick information without having to unlock your phone and open yourself up to all the distractions inside. “If you can get the answer at a glance, then you’re not unlocking,” he said, “and once you unlock your phone, you almost forget why you’re there in the first place!”
Letting you customize your lock screen is a good idea! Image: Apple
But by opening up that space, these companies offer apps and advertisers a chance to get even closer to you. The developers are sure to create live activities that stay useful long after they’re done, the better to grab you every time your phone lights up. Platforms will find ways to push more of their content onto lock screens, trying to hook you into the feed before you even press a button.
Generally speaking, most users don’t change their settings, and you better believe that developers will use this to their advantage. “Consumers will move from searching for content to consuming what is shown to them,” InMobi CEO Naveen Tewari told Forbes when Glance launched. This is super dark! And it’s probably true!
Most of all, the future, like Glance, is a way to turn smartphones even more into consumption-only devices. And is “easier access to endless feeds of moderately interesting content” really a worthwhile goal? As we look to rebuild our relationship with technology, I’d say we need to find places to add friction, to give you what you need when you’re looking at your phone… but also to help you realize that you didn’t have to look at your phone at all. And if, as Federighi said, the job of the lock screen is to help you avoid distractions, I can’t think of a worse idea than putting a TikTok-style video feed between you and the home screen.
Glance will certainly have competition, but it’s already a good example of where this is all going. In June, it held Glance Live Fest, a virtual three-day festival that took place entirely on users’ lock screens. It streamed concerts and interactive challenges, live tutorials and interviews, and lots of live shopping content to more than 70 million users. It’s like a rejection music festival that you’re transported to every time someone texts you. That sounds distracting, frustrating and just plain exhausting.
There’s no doubt that our lock screens could be better. The whole “current list of notifications” thing isn’t great, and pushing for more customization will make a lot of users happy. But this space should belong to users and users alone, and not become another ground for distraction and advertising. We need to take back control of our phones, not give more of them away.
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