I write for a living, which means I reflexively spend a good chunk of my day trying to avoid writing. Computers are perfect for this: I have quick access to every distraction you can possibly dream of, all on the device I should in theory be using to write. Perhaps the best part of this whole arrangement is how easy it is to feel guilty about all of the writing I'm not doing.
The best tool for this is the screen time feature offered on and devices, which allow you to review how much time you've spent using each app on your device. These are perfect applications for feeling guilty in a way that doesn't really inspire any kind of self reflection or change: they just make me feel bad. And you know what? I think me feeling guilty, and not doing anything about it, is on some level the reason these apps are built into phone operating systems.
Such features subtly push the blame away from the intentionally addictive and habit forming applications I use and toward me. To make this argument, I'm going to talk about littering. Please don't leave.
Littering is obviously bad—I'm not going to pretend that it isn't. But a lot of the anti-littering messaging you've seen is funded by the companies that produce the wasteful packaging that ends up on the ground. Put simply: there wouldn't be as much litter if regulations forced companies not to over-package everything, but that would cut into profits.
Anti-littering campaigns were a specific corporate tactic to prevent regulation. Here's Bra.
