Because they rely on habit forming to capture attention rather than spending the time and money to keep it changing enough to keep it interesting. It's true of quite a lot of capitalistic practices, like going to an office, and it's why capitalism doesn't work well for many of us.

If these apps are like the ones ive already tried years ago, they failed (read : I failed) on step 1.

You get 20 points for brushing your teeth. But either you just say you did it and get the points for free, or your toothbrushing routine just involved remembering opening an app and going through a list and checking a box. Brushing my teeth before bed was proving to be too much work for my lazy lazy brain. Adding work did not help.

Well duh. You can't gamify what's needed in an app. It's neurodivergence, not stupidity.

Color me shocked. From my experience with apples focuses, the first 3-5y were garbage. Only recently has it gotten better but it’s still not great enough to use reliably. If I feel anxious and turn on the “intelligent breakthrough,” I get every notification but normally blocked ones are shown with a priority banner. No option (that I’ve seen) to give feedback of “no/not important.” Honestly, though, given how little “AI” is in iOS, I’m kinda scared to imagine how Googles Android is with all the force feeding they do with their features

The floor here seems to be made out of floor

Adding more distractions to the distraction rectangle does not help people with distraction problems, new study finds

Wow. Shocker. Who knew that focusing on a screen will cause more screen time?

My kids asked me for some app called "Finch" the other day. It's supposedly a mental health app, and rewards you by letting you raise a virtual pet of some sort. Except it has in-app purchases...it's just freemium data mining.

This is because traditionally the brain is used to focus, but now humans are being trained to outsource thinking for convenience sake.