Organisations are increasingly insisting that you download an app because ‘it makes your life easier’. But should you really need an app on your phone to get a coffee in a garden centre’s café, to order food in an eatery, or to gain entrance to the changing rooms at a pool after a child’s swimming lesson? No. The Badger, perhaps, is just being grumpy about the epidemic of apps that is increasingly changing facets of everyday life.
The Badger’s young grandson attends a course of weekly swimming lessons. His parents have pre-paid for the course, and they and the Badger take it in turns to take him to the pool. All the kids and their accompanying adults congregate in the free poolside viewing area when they arrive. The kids, who all wear their swimming costumes under their normal clothes, disrobe. The instructor does a rollcall and then opens a glass gate to move the group of excited kids into the pool, and adults stay in the viewing area to watch proceedings. When the lesson finishes, the instructor sends the kids to the changing room the other side of the pool, and the adults go to the pool’s manned reception where the receptionist lets them through a turnstile to the changing area on mentioning the swimming lesson. This process has been long-standing. It works well, and it accommodates a reality, namely that there might be different accompanying adults each week. Three weeks ago, however, everything changed because a mandatory app that had to be used to operate the turnstiles to the changing room was introduced.
The Badger’s daughter-in-law, who had booked and paid for the course in the first place, downloaded the app and used it successfully to access the changing room after her son’s swimming lesson. The following week, the Badger’s son, who had also downloaded the app, was refused access at the turnstile because his phone wasn’t registered to the person who booked the course in the first place, i.e. his wife! Other accompanying adults experienced the same thing. After frosty exchanges with the receptionist, they were all let through. This week the Badger, who has consciously not downloaded the app, was his grandson’s accompanying adult. The receptionist simply sighed and let the Badger through the turnstile. One can but wonder how on earth this app has ‘made your life easier’.
An app collects all kinds of data about you and your behaviour that provides an organisation with advertising/notification opportunities, tighter control over their operations, and more profit. With the current epidemic of ‘apps for everything’ it’s worth remembering two things. Firstly, that every organisation pressing you to download an app has their interests at heart, not yours, and secondly that when you download an app you are trading some of your privacy and freedom for a convenience that doesn’t always really materialise…
