We know that Internet TV is booming. And yet the interesting fact is that conventional TV viewing isn’t dropping in proportion. It’s dropping only a little. That means that the sum of the two, in daily viewing hours, is increasing. It also explains why cord-cutting is often pooh-poohed as minor. Something’s keeping those cable TV subscriptions fairly attractive. No data caps? Local news and sports? DVR capability? The chart doesn’t explain; it just shows the data. Very interesting indeed.

Writing for Quartz, Nir Eyal opines on the reason why Apple made Screen Time on iOS 12, as well as Google’s Digital Health platform. Mr. Eyal studied the psychological techniques that companies use to get people hooked, and he wrote a book too. He says that Apple and Google don’t want you to get addicted, but instead form a healthy relationship with your devices.

As they often do with successful apps built on their platforms, Apple and Google took note of what consumers wanted and decided to incorporate these features as standard…They also went beyond what app makers can do by adding features only the operating system makers can offer, like batch notifications to reduce the frequency of intraday interruptions and the ability to put the phone in “shush” mode by flipping it over.

With few exceptions, when a product harms people, consumers tend to use it less often or find better alternatives. The feature fight between these two tech rivals benefits everyone. The move to help users create healthy habits with their devices is an example of competition making products better.