You have control over it so it’ll soon be just like all the other pre-installed crap that you never use, but still eats up limited storage space.

With the addition, Google isn’t only thinking of users’ well-being, of course.

It’s reacting to increasing regulatory pressure around social media harms and algorithmic dangers. Today, many countries and U.S. states have created laws to restrict or ban minors from using social media, as the impacts of these apps on young people’s mental well-being have become better understood.

Google can now point to a feature like Pause Point to claim it’s part of the solution, not the problem.

Ahhh - there it is.

The thing that is much more concerning to me, tho: if this is pre-installed as a standard part of Android, then it could potentially be abused by work, carriers, governments, malware, etc. to control what you can and can’t easily do.