Latest news with #phoneaddiction
CNET
06-07-2025
- CNET
Are You Phone-Snubbing Your Friends? There's an Easy Way to Stop
I'd have a hard time staying in touch with most of my friends if I didn't have my smartphone. But when we actually do spend time together, I often wish we didn't have phones at all -- especially if my friend can't stop looking at theirs. At some point, we've all been phone-snubbed. That's what happens when the person you're spending time with seems more interested in their phone than you. You might be sitting right across from someone, but when they're laughing at a video or meme only they can see, it feels like they're a million miles away. I've been guilty of paying more attention to my screen than my companion and felt bad about it afterward. There's nothing wrong with replying to an urgent Slack message or pulling up a funny TikTok to share. But I know I probably spend too much time staring at screens, and a lot of that time is unhealthy doomscrolling. These days, when I'm not using my phone, I try to be more deliberate about keeping it out of sight and out of mind. If I do need to keep my phone at hand, I always have it face down. It can protect your phone screen I have a few reasons for making sure my phone screen is turned away. The first one is practical: When my phone isn't in my pocket, it's probably sitting on a desk or table -- which means it's probably not far from a glass of water or mug of coffee. As a somewhat clumsy person, I've spilled beverages on my phone plenty of times. And even though most modern phones are water-resistant, why take chances? With my screen hidden, I can keep the most important part of my phone protected from splashes and other mishaps. For extra protection, I have a phone case with raised edges. This helps prevent the screen from coming in direct contact with crumbs and debris that might be left on the table. My colleague David Carnoy told me about an incident where he was charging his phone on his kitchen counter with the screen face up. Someone dropped a mug on top of it and cracked the screen. Unfortunately, he didn't have a screen protector on this device (he knows better now). It could help save your phone battery Another good reason to keep my phone face down is that it won't turn on each time I get a notification. That means I can save a little bit of battery charge. A single notification won't mean the difference between my phone lasting the whole day or dying in the afternoon but notifications can add up, especially if I've enabled them across all of my apps. If I'm in a lot of group chats, my screen might end up turning on dozens of times throughout the day (and that's on the low side -- many teenagers have hundreds of notifications a day). It also shows that you pay attention Keeping my phone face down is also a good rule of social etiquette: If I'm hanging out with someone, I keep my screen hidden from view as a subtle way of showing that I won't be distracted by it. I don't want incoming notifications to light up my screen every few seconds, especially if I'm in a bar or other dimly lit setting. I want to keep my eyes on the person I'm talking to. "Eye contact is one of the most powerful forms of human connection. Neuroscience research indicates that when two people make direct eye contact, their brain activity begins to synchronize, supporting more effective communication and increasing empathy. This synchrony can be disrupted when attention shifts to a phone, even briefly," says Michelle Davis, clinical psychologist at Headspace. When I'm with the people I've chosen to spend time with, I want to be fully present with them. A sudden notification will tempt me to glance at, or worse, pick up my phone in the middle of a conversation. It minimizes your phone's presence I also have a more personal reason for keeping my phone face down and I suspect that other people have had this same thought: My phone takes up too much space in my life. I mean that quite literally. My phone is bigger than it needs to be. That's been especially true since I upgraded from my iPhone Mini to a "normal-sized" iPhone. Yes, I got a much needed boost in battery life but I also got a screen with more pixels to lure me into the next news headline or autoplaying Instagram reel. A small smartphone isn't something that really exists anymore. My phone is bigger and better at grabbing my attention. It competes against my friends and family, books and movies, the entire world outside of its 6-inch screen. It often wins. But there's still one small thing I can do to minimize its presence: I can keep the screen turned away from me whenever possible. It can sometimes feel like there's no escaping from my phone. Whether that ever changes, or phones evolve into some new form factor, I can't say. I can't control everything about my phone but I can control whether the screen stares at me when I'm not staring at it.
Yahoo
05-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Katherine Heigl and Josh Kelley Imposed These Tough Rules to Break Their Kids' ‘Unhealthy' Phone Habits: ‘They Were Little Addicts' (Exclusive)
Katherine Heigl and her husband Josh Kelley decided to set strict rules for phone use for their three children, aged 16, 13 and 8 The actress says they made the changes after seeing how attached they were to their phones: "They were little addicts" Sticking with their plan was tough, but Heigl says it helped "break the addiction"Katherine Heigl says she knew she and husband, singer Josh Kelley, needed to make some changes at home when they realized that their kids were becoming "little addicts" with their phones. "We started back in September because grades were slipping," says Heigl, 46, who shares three children with Kelley: daughters Naleigh, 16, and Adalaide, 13, and son Joshua, 8. "We always said no phones at bedtime, but there was sneaking devices and staying up really late and not getting good sleep and being unbearably cranky the next day. And it was just like, this isn't healthy." The Grey's Anatomy alum says she and Kelley held out on giving their eldest a phone until she was 12. "I was going to try to wait until 16, and I realized it's not possible. Not in the world we live in right now," she says. "She was just taking friends' phones and they were letting her use their phones. And then I have no idea what she's up to. And then if she wasn't on at all, couldn't participate in cafeteria conversation and didn't have any idea what other kids were talking about. So I was like, "Okay, let's find a balance." The Firefly Lane actress says a friend helped her put strict restrictions on Naleigh's phone, "and it made me feel a little bit safer." But, she admits it was a slippery slope with her other kids: "When Adalaide was like nine or 10 and I was like, 'Fine, I'll get you a phone.' And Joshua has had a phone since he was like three," she says. "it's ridiculous." It got to the point where "they were little addicts" with the devices, she says. So several months ago, she and Kelley got tough. "They don't get their devices at all on Tuesday, Thursdays or Sundays. Saturday they get it after lunch. And they would only get them Monday, Wednesday and Friday after school, after homework, until bedtime — we start that process at 8 p.m. And they cannot take them to their rooms ever at night. They have to put their phones in our bedroom to charge." The new rules weren't immediately welcome. "It was like withdrawal for the first couple of weeks," she says. "There was a lot of anger and boredom and frustration. We just had to get through it. Josh and I would just give each other a pep talk, like, 'It's going to get better.'" And over time, "it did. And they started developing other interests. I felt so much relief," she says. "Kids have not yet learned how to self regulate and self discipline, so we have to teach them." Read the original article on People
WIRED
24-06-2025
- WIRED
A Phone (That's Not a Phone) to Help You Stop Using Your Phone
Jun 24, 2025 6:00 AM The Methaphone—a clear slab of smartphone-shaped acrylic—is part cheeky art project, part helpful tool for those looking to curb their phone addiction. The Methaphone. Courtesy of Eric Antonow All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. Earlier this year, Eric Antonow was in a coffee shop with his family when he felt the familiar, twitchy urge to reach for his phone. He patted his pockets for relief—the cool, thin slab was still there. He joked to his family that, like an addict jonesing for a hit, he would one day need a medical-grade solution to detox from his phone. Opioid addicts had methadone. iPhone addicts would need … metha phones . 'It was a joke, but I got two laughs from my two teenagers, which is gold,' Antonow says. 'I was like, 'I'm going to commit to the bit.'' Antonow, a former marketing executive at Google and Facebook, has been committing to bits for half a decade, making what he calls 'mindless toys.' His online shop features projects like a 'listening switch' to indicate when one is paying attention, and a vinyl for silent meditation, with 20 minutes of recorded silence on each side (record player not required). So within days of his latest joke, he had enlisted ChatGPT to mock up an image of a gadget in the shape of a phone, without all of the contents: a translucent rectangle that one could look at, or through. From that original generative sketch emerged a more realized design: a 6-inch slab of clear acrylic with rounded corners, like the iPhone, and green edges that resembled glass. Antonow placed an order for samples, and started an Indiegogo campaign for the Methaphone: to 'leave your phone without the cravings or withdrawal.' The first Methaphones were sold for $25 through a crowdfunding campaign. Courtesy of Eric Antonow The dilemma of the smartphone is that we all want to use our phones less, but few of us actually do. Apple and Google offered a few life preservers in 2018, in the form of self-regulation tools like screen time limits, but most of that went out the window during the pandemic years when screens became a window into the outside world. Now, a person hoping to reclaim their attention is trapped between two unappealing choices: downgrade to a minimalist 'dumb phone,' or surrender to the dopamine drip-feed of infinite content. Either way, the phone wins. In response, a cottage industry has emerged to offer detachment tools. There are apps with symbolic names, like Freedom and Focus, that block distracting content. Startups like Brick and Unpluq offer physical NFC 'keys' to lock and unlock addictive apps. (Unpluq's cofounder, Jorn Rigter, says people use the device equally to block social apps, like Instagram, and work apps, like Slack, which have become just as sticky.) There's Yondr, a lockable pouch to prevent phone use in courtrooms and concert halls. And there's a growing lineup of 'dumb phones,' some at premium, postmodern prices. You can buy stickers that look like app icons. Courtesy of Eric Antonow Unlike those solutions, the Methaphone doesn't do much of anything. It's more of a statement: ceci n'est pas un phone . But in a culture of technological excess, the project has resonated widely, like Ozempic in an epidemic of screen obesity. In May, when the first batch of Methaphones arrived, Antonow sent them to a dozen friends to get their reactions. One recipient was Catherine Goetze, who quickly posted a video about the Methaphone to her 400,000 followers on TikTok. In the video, Goetze is standing in line at a San Francisco boba shop, hunched over just like everyone else—but instead of scrolling her phone, she's scrolling … a slab of clear acrylic. Commenters went wild with speculation. Was it a Nokia prototype? A Black Mirror trailer? Within five days, the video had more than 53 million views. After Goetze's video, Antonow says the Methaphone 'massively sold out.' (He had initially ordered a run of 100 units, sold as a limited release, for $25.) While he plans to restock, he says the future of the Methaphone is less about individual purchases than larger-scale experiments—say, a restaurant that offers a Methaphone on the menu so that people can dine without distractions. Phones are more than just portals to other people, they're portals to another dimension. 'So the counterbalance also needs to be more important than just, 'Oh, I need to remember not to use my phone at the table,'' he says. Anna Lembke, an addiction researcher at the Stanford's School of Medicine and the author of Dopamine Nation, agrees. 'Our phones have really become like pacifiers,' she says. 'We keep them close to our bodies, we touch them countless times a day.' A tool like the Methaphone, she suggests, could help short-circuit the habit loop: You still go through the motions, but without the payoff. She compares it to a smoker using a zero-nicotine vape: 'The ritual remains, but the hit is gone.' (She adds that this is not, in fact, how methadone works.) Antonow isn't the first to parody phone addiction. The NoPhone, launched in 2014, is a plastic brick that bills itself as 'a fake phone for people addicted to real phones.' It now comes in three flavors: Original (no screen, no battery, no charger, $20), Selfie (with a mirror, $23), and Air (an empty bag, yours for $9). Antonow has recently taken his own design further: He now sells the Methaphone with an optional sticker pack featuring 'analog apps,' like Walk, Read, See Friends, and Daydream. Each one turns the blank screen into a low-tech reminder that life exists outside the rectangle. Antonow sent me a Methaphone of my own. It arrived in a paper sleeve along with illustrations for use: to doomscroll in bed, to avert boredom while drinking alone, even floating in a pool. (Naturally, it's waterproof.) Antonow encouraged me to treat it like a set of rosary beads—something to touch instead of my phone, whenever the impulse struck. One morning, I brought it with me to a coffee shop. When I felt the familiar itch to pull out my phone, I reached for the Methaphone instead. I let my thumb graze its surface mindlessly and waited for someone—anyone—to ask what I was doing. No one did. Everyone else was glued to their own screens, too deep in their digital loops to pay me any attention. I looked through the clear screen of the Methaphone and surveyed the world I had long been ignoring. Then I slipped it back into my pocket for good.
BreakingNews.ie
26-05-2025
- Health
- BreakingNews.ie
Ireland will need dedicated clinic to deal with phone addiction, says professor
There is no question Ireland will need a dedicated clinic to deal with phone overuse or addiction, professor of psychiatry at University College Dublin, Colin O'Gara said. The number of mobile phones has spiralled with figures showing that there were 5.76 million devices in Ireland which is the equivalent of 1.1 per person in 2023 more than the current Irish population. Advertisement In the US, this figure is 1.2 mobile phones per person, according to figures from Professor O'Gara, clinical professor of psychiatry at UCD says he has 'no doubt that there will be mobile phone detox (addiction) and rehabilitation clinics, and out-patient clinics dealing with this,' here in less than 15 year's time. 'This (dealing with mobile device overuse or addiction) will be a mainstay treatment." 'There is an existential change in personal device usage due to the amount of GP referrals that have become more and more difficult to keep up with. Advertisement "Plainly, this is a massive issue and it will be bigger and bigger in time and such clinics will be needed without a doubt.' Prof O'Gara said he has been seeing this at the cold-face of addiction since 2013 and said we are all on the spectrum to overuse (diagnosed as internet use disorder) in some way and some people are using it way too much. The apps on phones are also allowing people to partake in gambling, gaming, pornography and shopping which are addictions themselves. Within mobile phone usage, are what Prof O'Gara calls, 'sub classifications' where the device is used as a distraction, an emotional regulator, impactor on tolerance and primacy being a decline in other activities. Advertisement 'As a result of this there is psychiatric comorbidity of anxiety and a decline in a person's own well-being.' For gambling and gaming addictions some individuals are clinically prescribed an opioid to help with their treatment, it is now believed by some clinicians, that the use of such medication will not be far off when it comes to treating extreme phone overuse. Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures show that the majority of internet users or 94 per cent used the internet daily while almost all internet users aged 16 to 44 years had gone online everyday or almost daily, 96 per cent of people aged between 45 to 59 years used the internet daily. This compared with 72 per cent of older internet users aged 75 years plus. Almost half of us (47 per cent) use our smartphones during meals and 70 per cent spend too much time on devices, a new Deloitte survey has found. Advertisement A survey of 1,000 people in Ireland was carried out as part of Deloitte's Digital Consumer Trends report earlier this year which also shows that three-quarters of adults or 74 per cent tend to use their mobile phones as soon as they wake up while 54 per cent say they tend to stay awake later than planned because of their devices. Over one third (34 per cent) check their phone at least 50 times a day and 15 per cent do so more than 100 times. Almost half of those surveyed or 47 per cent admit they now use their smartphone or smartwatch to pay for goods and services in-store through digital wallets, up from 36 per cent in 2023. Alex Cooney, chief executive of CyberSafeKids noted that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has not classed over-use of social media as an addiction which is in itself 'controversial' she believes. 'That's not to say we shouldn't be challenging this. (the use of the word addiction),' said Ms Cooney. Advertisement She believes that 'it's all about the money for social media companies that is created through the design and the harmful features attached. That's what needs to be tackled, not telling people they are spending too much time on social media or by companies putting up messages or blocks on age groups. It's all about the metrics and algorithms.' Ms Conney stressed that devices used by children and indeed adults interfere with work, sleep, exercise, education and socialisation. 'In extreme cases I have heard of people wearing nappies when they are gaming so they will not have to stop what they are doing and go to the bathroom.' The Department of Health in response to the 'crisis' in phone over use, last September established an Online Health Taskforce (OHT), in recognition of the growing body of evidence, from Ireland and internationally, showing the links between certain types of online activity and physical and mental health harms to children and young people. A Department of Health spokesperson said the taskforce is developing a 'strategic public health response to these harms and will bring forward evidence-informed interventions and recommendations. 'These recommendations may include, but are not limited to, legislation, regulation, national guidelines, education, awareness campaigns, as well as additional health and social care supports.'
Fast Company
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Fast Company
It turns out TikTok's viral clear phone is just plastic. Meet the ‘Methaphone'
A viral clip of a woman scrolling on a completely clear phone with no user interface briefly confused—and amused—the internet. But the truth turned out to be far more literal than most expected. Originally posted to TikTok by user CatGPT, the video quickly racked up over 52.9 million views. In the comments, some speculated it was a Nokia model; others guessed it came from the Nickelodeon show Henry Danger. 'This looks like a social commentary or a walking art exhibit. I'm too uncultured to understand,' one user commented. 'It's from a Black Mirror episode,' another wrote. Turns out, it was none of the above. Just a piece of plastic. The woman seen in line is also the one who uploaded the clip. In a follow-up video posted days later, she shared the 'true story.' 'This is a Methaphone,' she explains. 'It is exactly what it looks like, a clear piece of acrylic shaped like an iPhone.' The 'device' was invented by her friend as a response to phone addiction. 'He told me that what he wanted to test was, if we're all so addicted to our phones, then could you potentially curb somebody's addiction by replacing the feeling of having a phone in your pocket with something that feels exactly the same?' she continued. 'This little piece of acrylic feels like a physical artifact that directly responds to this collective tension we all feel about how our devices, which are meant to make us more connected, are actually having the exact opposite effect.' A 2023 study by found that nearly 57% of Americans reported feeling addicted to their phones. Some admitted to checking their phones over 100 times a day, and 75% said they feel uneasy when they realize they've left their phone at home. In the comments, many questioned whether pretending to scroll on a chunk of plastic could actually help with phone addiction. 'This sounds like [an] SNL sketch,' one user wrote. 'What stage of capitalism is this?' another asked. Some were simply disappointed it wasn't a real phone. Despite the skepticism, the Methaphone raised $1,100 on Indiegogo. The campaign has since closed, though the creator says more may be produced if demand is high. Priced at $20, with a neon pink version going for $25, the Methaphone 'looks like a simple acrylic slab—and it is,' the page reads. 'But it's also a stand-in, a totem, and an alibi. It's the first step on the road to freedom.'
