Latest news with #screenaddiction
CNET
a day ago
- CNET
I Stopped Putting My Phone Face Up at the Table and It Made a Major Difference
Smartphones have changed everything over the last 18 years. From the way we interact with friends to how we communicate, and even the way we travel. Though they have plenty of benefits, being glued to the screen can also cause problems. Have you ever gone out to dinner with friends, only for the conversation to pause, or stop entirely, as everyone picks up their phone to check their notifications? You're not alone, and it's a bigger problem than you might think. This kind of subtle disconnect, often called "phubbing," happens more than we realize. Even when it's unintentional, it can leave the folks who aren't using their phones feeling invisible. If you want to be more present during hangouts or dinners, something as simple as leaving your phone face down can help you stay focused on the people right in front of you. I've been guilty of paying more attention to my screen than my companion, and I've 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 nearly 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.
WIRED
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- WIRED
Life Without Screens: This Camp Is a Teen's Worst Nightmare
Jul 21, 2025 6:00 AM Hidden burner phones. Hunger strikes. Runaways. The director of a digital detox program for kids spills about how hard it is to tear kids away from their devices. PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION: JOHANNA GOODMAN; GETTY IMAGES Summer. For teens not at work, it's hot, it's boring, and it's an ideal time to close the door and spend about every waking moment watching, playing, texting, streaming—anything but talking—on the phone. With almost half of teenagers in the US saying they're online almost constantly, the adults in their lives are growing more desperate to drag them off. Families are establishing screen-free zones in their homes, states are banning phones in schools, and a new kind of summer camp has emerged: digital detox camps, which can cost around $2,000 a week, and promise to wean attendees off screens by going cold turkey for the summer. WIRED spoke to the founder and director of one such organization. Taking a cue from your average summer camp, the program forces kids to swap their phones and gaming systems for some good old-fashioned social interaction. But in other ways, it's anything but traditional: It's staffed with onsite therapists equipped to handle screen addiction, the kids take financial literacy courses, and nearly all campers are completely miserable when they arrive. Most of the kids who come to our program are very socially stunted. They don't communicate very well. Everything is in abbreviations. They don't make eye contact. They can't finish a full sentence. Everything is mumbled. They don't want to have an in-person dialog. They would rather do it online or do it through text. Our camp is about 70 percent boys, 30 percent girls, from ages 13 to 17. Most of the boys are gamers. Most of the girls are addicted to social media—influencer wannabes. None of them want to be there. One kid ran away, and he actually made it down to the freeway, which was very unusual because we're not close to the freeway. He was picked up by the local highway patrol and brought back. He then went on a hunger strike for three days, and we actually ended up sending him to the hospital because he needed to eat. And then his mom did come and pick him up. When the kids arrive, we have them unpack to make sure they brought everything they were supposed to bring and that they didn't bring things they weren't supposed to bring. Like phones. One kid showed up with three cell phones: When he arrived, he turned in one. We found another cell phone in his bag. And then about three days later his roommate outed him, and we found the third phone. He thought it was funny that he got away with it for that long. That's most of our kids—if they can stick it to the man, then they're winning. Most of the kids are not aggressive, they're not acting out. More often, they're moping. But once they come out of their dorm room, we lock the doors. I say, 'Sitting in your dorm room moping is not a camp activity.' Their sleeping and eating habits are horrible. Most kids, especially the online gamers, are up until 2 or 3 in the morning. They don't get up until noon or later. It's a disaster. And their eating habits, they're equally horrible—Doritos and Gatorade, just horrible snack food. So we have them on a very specific schedule. They're in their dorm rooms by 9:30 and have their lights out by 10. And then we wake them up at 6:30. I always tell my staff, 'Plan on not sleeping much the first week.' They have one or two roommates in their dorm rooms. Typically, they are not happy about that. Most kids who come to our program have their own room at home. But what's funny is that it creates this us-against-them mentality, because they don't want to be there, and their roommate doesn't want to be there. They hate us, they hate their parents for sending them there, so they kind of bond without meaning to right off the bat. We do all the traditional summer camp activities. We take them to the beach once a week. It's not that much torture. During one of the first years, we had a kid who walked away from the beach day. And he didn't walk far, but he approached a couple who were taking a selfie and asked if he could use their phone. He ended up calling his mom, saying, 'Get me out of here.' His mom did not come and pick him up: The next year, she sent his little brother to camp too. We had more staff members come to beach day after that. We also do educational programs and a financial literacy class. We have to break it to these kids that tech companies don't care about their fun and enjoyment; they're after their time and their money. We've had several kids who have been given credit cards that they then charge up, buying in-app activities or 'skins' in games like Fortnite . And then when they can't spend any more on that card, they'll use their friend's card, their mom's card. We had one kid use their friend's grandmother's card. But we never tell a kid, 'Never play a video game again, never be online again, never check your email again.' That's just not the reality of the world we live in. When we started this program, we didn't really expect to have returning campers. We figured we'd get you cured, and then next summer you go to surf camp or sail camp or horseback camp or something. But every year we have one or two kids who want to come back—not because they've gone back to the dark side of tech addiction; it's because they want to help the next batch of campers. They want to say to a mopey new camper, 'I was you last year. I was exactly where you are, and I turned out OK.' —As told to Elana Klein
Yahoo
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Katherine Heigl Set These Phone Rules For Her 3 Kids and 'Felt So Much Relief'
Katherine Heigl and her husband, Josh Kelley, have instilled a set of rules for their three children when it comes to their phones. Heigl said that she noticed her three kids, Naleigh, 16, Adalaide, 13, and Joshua, 8, were becoming 'little addicts' with their phones, leading her to create some new rules for their household, she told People in July. 'We started back in September because grades were slipping,' Heigl told the outlet. '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.' As a result, Heigl and Kelley made the decision to put some limits on their children's phone usage. The "Grey's Anatomy" star said her kids don't have access to their phones at all three days out of the week, specifically Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. 'Saturday they get it after lunch,' she said. 'And they would only get them Monday, Wednesday and Friday after school, after homework, until bedtime — we start that process at 8 p.m." She added that her kids cannot bring their phones to their rooms at night "ever," and they put their phones in their parents' bedroom to charge. When it came to her children's reaction to the rules, Heigl described it as 'withdrawal for the first couple of weeks,' sharing that her kids expressed 'anger,' 'boredom' and 'frustration' before they got used to the schedule. After the adjustment period, Heigl said her kids 'started developing other interests." 'I felt so much relief," she said. "Kids have not yet learned how to self regulate and self discipline, so we have to teach them.' During the interview, Heigl shared that she and her husband waited until their older daughter, Naleigh, was 12 to get her a phone, noting that they were 'going to try to wait until 16.' As for her two younger kids, Adalaide was around 10 when Heigl caved and got her a phone, and Joshua got one when he was much younger. Heigl previously opened up to "E! News" in April about how she navigates phone rules, sharing that it's a way to 'mitigate' how much time her children spend on the internet and encourages them to find alternative ways to entertain themselves. 'Modern moms have to really deal with that in a way that our mothers did not,' Heigl said at the time. 'I have always felt like I can't take it away completely, because then they aren't really in the world. All their friends are on it and all their the schoolwork is on it.' She also opened up about the new skills that her kids picked up with their free time, sharing that Naleigh took up baking and cooking and Adalaide expressed a desire to be an actor. It's also helped her children bond. '(Adalaide) and her brother have been starting to play music together," she said. "Adalaide is playing the electric guitar, Joshua's playing the drums — and they're actually really good.' This article was originally published on
Yahoo
03-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
'I Still Feel Responsibility,' Says Ex-Apple Executive Sir Jony Ive, Pledging to Fix Tech's Harms With $6.4 Billion AI Device
"I still feel responsibility," former Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) design chief Jony Ive told the Financial Times in an interview earlier this month. OpenAI announced in May it would acquire his hardware startup for $6.4 billion to develop an AI device aimed at addressing the negative effects of smartphones. The Apple legend added that "humanity deserves better," promising a gadget that counters screen addiction and anxiety while reviving Silicon Valley's original sense of mission. OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman announced on May 21 an all-stock deal to buy Ive's year-old startup io Products for about $6.5 billion, elevating the designer to group creative director. Don't Miss: Invest early in CancerVax's breakthrough tech aiming to disrupt a $231B market. Named a TIME Best Invention and Backed by 5,000+ Users, Kara's Air-to-Water Pod Cuts Plastic and Costs — The transaction would fold Ive's 15-person LoveFrom industrial-design team into OpenAI's San Francisco campus, where engineers plan to fuse large-language-model software with custom silicon for natural voice dialogue. However, the agreement may be in limbo. A trademark lawsuit filed by a separate startup called iyO has prompted a federal judge to temporarily bar OpenAI from marketing the product under the "io" name. In response, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted screenshots of email exchanges with iyO founder Jason Rugolo, showing that Rugolo had first approached him about an acquisition. Altman declined, citing a competing product, and called the lawsuit "silly, disappointing and wrong." A now-pulled 9-minute promotional video—removed after a trademark lawsuit—showed Altman calling their prototype "the coolest piece of technology the world will have ever seen.' Trending: Maximize saving for your retirement and cut down on taxes: TF International Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo expects the screen-free device to resemble a neck-worn iPod Shuffle with microphones and cameras that read a user's surroundings, according to her May X post. Altman also told employees the unit would be "unobtrusive" and "fully aware" of a user's surroundings, designed to sit on a desk or in a pocket and function without a traditional screen, according to The Wall Street Journal. "Many of us would say we have an uneasy relationship with technology at the moment... While some of the less positive consequences were unintentional, I still feel responsibility... The manifestation of that is a determination to try and be useful," Ive told the FT. Public-health data amplify the stakes: 11% of U.S. children ages 3–17 have diagnosed anxiety, according to recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics. A survey released in April by the American Psychological Association found only 58.5% of teens say they routinely receive needed emotional support. A separate Pew Research Center report shows that 34% of teen girls feel social media makes them worse about their lives. Philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs echoed those concerns during the same FT interview, warning that technology's "dark uses" have sent youth mental-health trends "sideways."OpenAI's war chest has swelled with ChatGPT demand. A spokesperson for OpenAI told CNBC that its annual recurring revenue recently climbed to $10 billion, up from approximately $5.5 billion in 2024. This month the Pentagon awarded the firm a $200 million contract to prototype AI tools. Whether this $6.4 billion vision redefines the future or simply begins to mend it, one thing is clear: Ive is back—this time, to design technology with humanity at its heart. Read Next: Here's what Americans think you need to be considered wealthy. Image: Shutterstock UNLOCKED: 5 NEW TRADES EVERY WEEK. Click now to get top trade ideas daily, plus unlimited access to cutting-edge tools and strategies to gain an edge in the markets. Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga? This article 'I Still Feel Responsibility,' Says Ex-Apple Executive Sir Jony Ive, Pledging to Fix Tech's Harms With $6.4 Billion AI Device originally appeared on © 2025 Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
The Sun
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
One in 10 Brits would rather doomscroll than have sex with their partner, new study finds
ONE in 10 Brits admit choosing doomscrolling over sex with their partner, according to research. A poll of 2,000 adults explored the impact of consuming 'endless' negative stories on the web – finding the UK collectively spends 67.4 million hours a day doomscrolling. 1 That's 96 minutes every day in total – the equivalent of two days during the course of an average month. And this not only affects productivity (46 per cent) and creativity (28 per cent) but for 10 per cent has even resulted in turning down sex. Their fascination with such content has also led to 28 per cent feeling tired or drained, and 22 per cent anxious or overwhelmed. The research was commissioned by OnePlus, which has also launched Brain Rot Blaster – a retro first-person shooter web game which champions the anti-scroll. The game, which self-destructs after one play, holds up a mirror to the UK's obsession with doomscrolling by highlighting the most toxic internet behaviours. Spokesperson for the smartphone brand, Celina Shi said: 'It's easy to fall into mindless scrolling - at home, at work, even around loved ones. 'We're encouraging people to take back control of their screen time and use their phones with more purpose." The research also revealed 44 per cent of those polled regularly lose track of time when scrolling, and 22 per cent have no idea how much they scroll at all. But for the 52 per cent who wish they had more hours in the day, cutting back on scrolling could help them make time for the things they say matter most. This ranges from seeing family (40 per cent) and spending time in nature (36 per cent), to being creative (25 per cent) or learning a new language (19 per cent). Why is Facebook making sounds when scrolling? Four in 10 (41 per cent) scrollers admit to doing so on the toilet, and 49 per cent do it while spending time with friends and family. Some have also indulged in the online negative swirls while at a wedding (12 per cent), at a school event (13 per cent), and even funerals (six per cent) With the top 'toxic topics' include negative world events (32 per cent) and reality TV or celebrity drama (32 per cent). Celina Shi, from OnePlus – which developed the game featuring digital demons like the 'Blockchain Bro' and 'Tin Foil Hat' to be blasted away with its Nord 5 smartphone, released on Tuesday 8 July – added: 'Why lose hours to the scroll, when you could be creating something that inspires you instead? 'Brain Rot Blaster takes on the creativity-crushing, productivity-sapping scroll, challenging users to rethink their habits and up their game.'
