Mother Jones illustration; Plexi Images/Universal Images Group/Getty
My cellphone’s apps serve as my alarm clock, meteorologist, GPS, and e-reader. FaceTime is the portal to my nieces who live 500 miles away. Chase Mobile is the reason I seldom deposit checks at a physical bank. Hinge has provided me with an overabundance of dating horror stories and—after copious swiping—an incredible partner.
Let me declare at the onset, these apps are useful—even pretty good! This screed is not about them.
My grievance focuses on every company in the world believing its products either should or must be accessed through a standalone app. Want to buy a single Major League Baseball ticket on your smartphone? Add that app to your already chaotic home screen! Need to charge your electric-powered rental car? Hah! Don’t think that only one app will do. Each of the various charging companies uses a different app.
My app annoyance blossomed into sheer disdain after a recent trip through a McDonald’s drive-thru for a medium Diet Coke and a small order of fries—a passing indulgence before RFK Jr. tries to pry them from my salty fingertips. “Will you be using the McDonald’s app for your purchase?” the innocent associate asked on her headset. “No,” I thought to myself, “I’m using the drive-thru for my purchase.” Like a normal person, I used my credit card for the routine transaction. My order tasted just as good—maybe even better—than it would have had I taken the additional step of involving technology.
Some of the tens of millions of McDonald’s app users will tell you that the app is useful; by downloading it, they can reap the rewards of 50-cent double cheeseburgers and the occasional free Happy Meal. Here’s where I become the resident buzzkill and remind you, reader, that if a corporation is offering you a product for free, it’s because it appreciates the fact that you are the product. When you download an app and enter your email address, phone number, and physical location, you are effectively gift-wrapping your personal information and handing it over to corporate megalords for exploitation. At best, they’ll use your purchase history and contact information to market to you even more strategically and relentlessly. At worst, they’ll sell it or lose it in a hack.
This theft of our information—and our phone storage space—is not just potentially ruinous, it’s also exclusionary. About 10 percent of Americans don’t own smartphones, according to the Pew Research Center. Perhaps they can’t afford one or don’t know how to use the technology. I’d wager that the average unhoused person or grandma on a fixed income needs the app-exclusive coupons more than the upper-middle-class teen with the latest iPhone model. Instead, these folks are charged a premium for ordering burgers the old-fashioned way. In at least some McDonald’s locations, customers may not even be able to see a full menu without downloading the app.
The everything-has-an-app culture is exasperating to me and apparently to many others. People wrote to me complaining about apps connected to their ovens, coffee-mug warmers, laundry machines, grocery stores, and even toothbrushes. I’m not a frequent Reddit user but found even more excessive-app gripes there. And amid the grievances, still another piece of evidence for how out of control this all is: On the third webpage I tapped, a prompt popped up, blocked a third of my phone screen, and suggested I download the Reddit app to keep reading. Lord, give me strength. Or maybe a meditation app.
