The average American picks up their phone more than 200 times a day. Teens are pinged with some 250 notifications a day — during school, after school, and overnight. The apps meant to prevent you from checking apps have done little to stop the problem. Now, some of the tech companies that helped create our screen dependence are trying to disrupt it.
Later this year, OpenAI plans to debut a small, screenless device that Sam Altman describes as more “peaceful” than a smartphone. Apple, the Oz of screentime, is developing smart glasses, a pin, and AirPods with more AI built in, according to a Tuesday report from Bloomberg, with the rumored pendants featuring microphones and cameras to be the “eyes and ears” of the iPhone. Meta has teased its fully augmented reality Orion glasses since 2024. While that device doesn’t have a release date, the company last year sold some 7 million pairs of its smart glasses, which is the start of the post-smartphone future Mark Zuckerberg has predicted. Eventual smart specs could be more screen all-the-time than screenless, but they also rely on AI to make the experience much more hands-free than swiping and scrolling on a phone.
Could AI be what finally breaks our phone addiction?
Since 2007, no device out of Silicon Valley has captured universal imagination the way Steve Jobs did when he put your iPod, your phone, and the internet together on a 3.5-inch screen. Competitors have tried for a decade-plus to get people to shift us from the iPhone to smart glasses, and largely failed. The awe around smartphones has turned to derision, as excessive screen time is linked to disrupted sleep, anxiety, and fractured attention. Now, developers are hoping the AI boom can give us the next big thing.
Beating the smartphone would mean replacing a device that 91% of American adults now carry — a device for which millions of apps have been developed and people now depend on in lieu of wallets and cameras and health monitors. New AI devices can’t just copy what smartphones do, says Ramon Llamas, a research director at a technology intelligence firm IDC: They have to show they have a solution to an everyday problem. If they don’t, Llama says, “these things are just gonna really end up as solutions looking for a problem to solve.”
Critiques of screen time can be as blunt and smoothbrained as what the critics say excessive screen time makes you. A seven-hour daily log may seem like a staggering amount of dependence, but what did the person spend those seven hours doing? Doomscrolling late into the night, or FaceTiming with a far-away friend? With AI wearables, there’s the risk of becoming dependent on the device for different reasons.
“The screen may not be there, but what’s getting filled in the back is already this problem of AI companionship,” says Olivia Gambelin, an AI ethicist and author of the book “Responsible AI.” An AI device designed to do something very specific — like listen to a meeting and then send follow-up emails or messages related to action points discussed — could save people time and keep them from writing tedious emails and Slack messages from their desk. But that same device listening in to personal conversations with family and friends could compromise a relationship, and erode the positive effects that texting a friend to check-in can have on both people (already, my friends are tiring of AI summaries on the iPhone that summarize our group text and become an intermediary into our threads of gossip and jokes in the name of efficiency). Wearing microphones and cameras to social interactions and into businesses is likely to really weird out some of the people around you. More people are entering into romantic, dependent relationships with AI companions, and a swell of loud dissenters are criticizing the technology for taking jobs and attempting to replicate human relationships.
But OpenAI is betting that it can package its technology in a device in a way that calms the user. “When I use current devices or most applications, I feel like I am walking through Times Square in New York and constantly just dealing with all the little indignities along the way,” Altman said in November. OpenAI’s device, he said, would be less Time Square, more “sitting in the most beautiful cabin by a lake and in the mountains and sort of just enjoying the peace and calm.” That’s because the AI device would learn “contextual awareness of your whole life,” and when best to send you alerts.
The screen itself may not be the problem; it’s what’s summoning us to the screen.
Other AI wearables have failed by falling short of that goal. Humane AI sold a wearable pin, priced at $700 plus a monthly fee to connect it, but pulled it from the market a year ago. It failed perhaps because it tried too hard to replace our phones — it didn’t interact with them, but provided a shoddy replacement. Novelty wasn’t a factor that could outshine usability. The AI Friend pendant, which can’t search the internet or help with tasks outside of sending reminders and acts instead as an eavesdropping sycophant around its user’s neck, was mocked relentlessly and sold just a few thousand devices after it hit the market last year.
Companies trying to make AI hardware should focus on “transformative features,” Jason Low, research director at Omdia, tells me in an email. AI wearables must be more than “marginally more convenient,” should integrate with our existing products, and have a clear, stated value. For example, glasses that provide real-time language translation or devices for fitness and health tracking offer features our smartphones can’t do as well. The Oura ring continues to grow in popularity, particularly among women after starting out as a niche tech bro buy, for the novel insights it can offer; the company announced last fall it has sold 5.5 million rings since 2015, with more than 2.5 million sold between June 2024 and September 2025. “These devices often deliver a more polished user experience compared to general-purpose, do-it-all AI devices,” Low says.
Llamas tells me that the AI functions of a wearable have to be “contextual, personalized, and actionable,” like reminding the wearer to send birthday flowers or responding accurately to being asked to direct the user to the nearest Starbucks. A first attempt device shouldn’t try to replace the smartphone, but to integrate with the Apple or Google ecosystems, he says. Apple and OpenAI did not respond to requests for comment about their rumored products for this story.
If anything has hyped Silicon Valley like the iPhone, it’s been AI. But three years after the mainstream adoption of ChatGPT, the value generative AI in the white collar workforce has yet to be fully realized. That could make a product for consumers a hard sell, too. “Some of the overwhelm that’s coming with AI that I see in general users is you can use it for everything, or it’s promoted that way, which is actually quite stifling,” Gambelin says.
In our quest to find a peaceful equilibrium with tech, the screen itself may not be the problem; it’s what’s summoning us to the screen. Its bright colors, games, and infinite scroll give quick dopamine hits that entice us to stay glued to it. But much of what pings my phone throughout the day are useless notifications trying to get me to reopen one of the dozens of apps — a markdown moment on a clothing thrifting app, a like on the Instagram story I’ve posted of my dog from my best friend, and ironically, a report of how much time I’ve already logged. There’s a relentless business model at play to keep us on these apps. No screens would mean no infinite scroll through TikTok, no Candy Crush — but app developers and companies may need to find new ways to reach people if wearables caught on, and an always-there AI device and companion might not be as peaceful as Altman describes. Our collective screen time is a problem, but the AI wearable will have to surprise us all with something novel to be useful.
Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.
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