*Worried Your Child is Already a Screen Addict? There’s Hope!!!*

The "pervasive design" addictive features that the article naively attributes to "screens" are implemented by software: partly in the operating system and partly in some apps. They can be designed to do nasty things because they are non-free software: their code is controlled by some "owner", in this case a powerful company, rather than by the users. If they were free programs, the user community could reprogram them so as to be less addictive.

We must free ourselves from the idea that giant companies have the "right" to require users' connection to their "services" to go through software under their control. We should have the right to use our free software to do that.