Tag: screen addiction

"Screenagers" Doc Explores Teens' Relationship With Tech, Mental Health

Screenagers: Next Chapter zeroes in on how adults can aid teenagers when it comes to mental health.

Screens and teens: the combo has been discussed in-depth in recent years, and now a new documentary called Screenagers: Next Chapter is diving in even more deeply.

According to The Washington Post, the film is a follow-up to the 2016 documentary Screenagers: Growing Up in the Digital Age, by filmmaker and physician Delaney Ruston.

Screenagers: Next Chapter zeroes in on how adults can aid teenagers when it comes to mental health challenges. The documentary, which is being screened around the country, focuses on stress resilience, or the ability to cope with stressful emotions.

The Screenagers website states that the documentary “takes a deeply personal approach as [Ruston] probes into the vulnerable corners of family life, including her own, to explore struggles over social media, video games, academics and internet addiction.”

Ruston’s interest in the topic stems from her own daughter’s struggle with depression.

“I had no idea when to step in, what to say, and often it felt like anything I said made it worse,” she told Good Morning America. “It felt like I was just tiptoeing. If I say the wrong thing, it’ll make her never talk to me again. It’s emotional just thinking about it, just how stuck I was.”

According to the Post, lower levels of stress resilience are associated with “mood disorders and conditions such as heart disease and diabetes.”

However, when teens learn to feel their emotions and then regulate them, they are more likely to move past such conditions.

Communication Is Key

Educational psychologists Staci M. Zolkoski and Lyndal M. Bullock note that adults can assist adolescents in these circumstances by expressing care and teaching them how to communicate effectively.

Tessa, Ruston’s daughter, says this approach from her parents was helpful.

“Some of the things my parents said that really helped in the moments of hardship were, you’re doing the best you can for where you’re at and what tools you have, especially when I felt really low and incapable,” she told GMA. “My favorite quote that my dad said that actually really got me through the hard times that felt like forever is ‘This too shall pass.’”

In Screenagers: Next Chapter, Ruston talks with various researchers about how adults can help increase resilience in young people. One such researcher, Jessica Borelli from the University of California at Irvine, says sometimes parents’ attempts at intervening can actually be a negative. Psychologist Laura Kastner adds that rather than intervene in their child’s emotions, adults should learn to validate those emotions.

“It’s not approval, it’s not agreement—it’s seeing it from their perspective and accepting their feelings exactly the way they are, without trying to mess with them,” Kastner said.

When parents intervene, Ruston notes, it can affect a child’s ability to increase their resilience and learn how to cope on their own.

Screenings of Screenagers: Next Chapter, can be found at screenagersmovie.com.

View the original article at thefix.com

30 October 2019
Expert Offers Helpful Tips For How To Manage Digital Distractions

“There are only three reasons for a distraction. An internal trigger, an external trigger or a planning problem,” says Nir Eyal.

In the past, Nir Eyal has worked with apps and tech companies to help hook consumers. But now, the behavioral scientist and author of Indistractable: How To Control Your Attention And Choose Your Life, is sharing how to dodge distraction in the digital age.

He Knows How To Hook Consumers On Products

In tech and advertising circles, Eyal is known for his first book, Hooked: How To Build Habit Forming Products. In the book, he details the “hook model,” which leads a consumer to use a product by creating a connection between a product and emotional triggers.

However, he tells The Guardian, this wasn’t necessarily a negative thing as it encouraged companies to improve the lives of consumers.

Now, he tells the Guardian, people need to stop associating the word “addicted” with technology, as most people simply overuse it.

“Addiction, in people’s minds, means mind control,” he explained. “When you tell yourself, this is addicting me, this is hijacking my brain… you slough off responsibility. It’s called learned helplessness.”

Comic Books Vs Tech

Eyal compares the current buzz around the pitfalls of technology with that of comic books years ago.

“In the 1950s, fearmongers were saying the exact same thing about comic books, literally verbatim: it’s reducing kids’ attention spans; it’s causing them to commit suicide; it’s leading to mental health issues,” he said.

What it really comes down to, Eyal says, is distraction as a result of technology. His new book offers various pointers for managing such external distractions, and encourages readers to examine their internal triggers for turning to distractions.

One method Eyal recommends is called “timeboxing,” in which every moment of a day is planned out. If an urge to turn to a distraction arises, Eyal encourages readers to examine what is causing it.

“There are only three reasons for a distraction,” he notes. “An internal trigger, an external trigger or a planning problem.”

When an urge to follow a distraction arises, Eyal recommends determining what emotion promoted that distraction and to write it down. Then, he says, spend 10 minutes doing what he calls “surfing the urge.” In other words, don’t give in to the distraction and instead determine why you are experiencing the feelings you are. However, he says, if that time passes and a person still wants to give in to the distraction, then they should.

Another aspect of technology Eyal zeroes in on is email, which he refers to as the “mother of all habit-forming products.”

And, Eyal notes, it’s often a waste of time. He refers to a study which found that 25% of a person’s time on email is spent reading messages that should not have been sent and 25% is responding to items not requiring a response.

To combat this, Eyal recommends setting aside specific times each day to check email and sorting them by urgency.

Additional time management strategies he recommends are utilizing apps and add-ons that allow you to block certain websites, or scheduling time to work with peers and keep each other accountable.

View the original article at thefix.com

16 October 2019
South Korea Facing Digital Addiction Crisis

Almost 10 million people in South Korea are at serious risk of digital addiction.

Experts say that South Korea is facing a public health crisis, with nearly 20% of the population (almost 10 million people) at serious risk of Internet addiction, NPR reports. And they say the United States could be in trouble, too, if we are not proactive.

NPR focused on problematic Internet usage in South Korea, but countries like Japan, Switzerland and Brazil are also contending with rising numbers of internet “addicts.”

In May, the World Health Organization added “gaming disorder” to its International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), defining the condition as having impaired control over gaming, giving increasing priority to gaming over other activities, and doing so despite the negative consequences.

Firsthand Account

NPR interviewed Sungwon Roh, a psychiatrist at Hanyang University in Seoul, who sees firsthand the effects of gaming or Internet use disorder in South Korea.

“Here I see dramatic cases of both adolescents and adults come to seek professional help because they started to have serious problems in their health, relationships with their family or studies at school from game addiction,” said Roh. “Some students will refuse to go to school or even inflict physical force on their parents.”

Facilities like the National Center for Youth Internet Addiction Treatment give South Koreans, many of them teenagers, a place to separate from electronic devices and engage in other activities like board games, art class and volunteering.

“We help students find a new hobby. Students who are overly dependent on Internet and smartphones will be doing only that [using their phones] when they have extra time. So, we are showing them many other options so they can spend their free time in a healthier way,” said Yong-chool Shim, director of the National Center.

Treatment Programs

Teenagers who arrive at the National Center for Youth Internet Addiction Treatment go device-free from the day they arrive and for the remainder of the 2-4 week program.

“My hands get shaky, I can’t concentrate. When I go back to the dormitory to get some rest, I keep thinking of Facebook,” said one 14-year-old girl at the National Center.

Another girl, 16, had better luck with digital detox. At first she told NPR, “I’ve had my phone since my first year in elementary school, I’ve never been without it since. So I was worried.” But five days in, she said she was feeling more comfortable being without her phone.

Shim says the problem in South Korea is only growing, and more facilities are opening to accommodate the demand.

“The percentage of teenagers dependent on Internet and smartphones is actually increasing,” said Shim. “So, our organization is expanding and trying to get ready to accept more students.”

View the original article at thefix.com

16 August 2019
Goodbye Autoplay: New Bill Aims To Curb Social Media Addiction

The bill aims to ban potentially addictive features such as the “infinite scroll” and “autoplay.”

Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri recently introduced a bill that’s meant to address social media features that he believes are designed to make the platforms addictive.

The bill, named the Social Media Addiction Reduction Technology (SMART) Act, would ban established features of the most popular social media platform such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Snapchat, claiming that these features “exploit human psychology or brain physiology to substantially impede freedom of choice.”

Infinite Scoll & Autoplay

Features targeted in this bill include the “infinite scroll” that has been part of Facebook and Twitter for years and which continuously loads new content as the user scrolls down, as well as YouTube’s “autoplay” that loads a new video as soon as one has finished. Additionally, it addresses Snapchat’s “streaks” that rewards users for sending more and more photos to their friends in a row.

Hawley argues that these features are designed to be addictive, keeping users glued to their screens for as long as possible.

“Big tech has embraced a business model of addiction,” he said in a statement. “Too much of the ‘innovation’ in this space is designed not to create better products, but to capture more attention by using psychological tricks that make it difficult to look away. This legislation will put an end to that and encourage true innovation by tech companies.”

Critics Speak Out

The freshman senator has made a name for himself as a leading critic of major technology companies, and this bill has some major opposition from organizations like the trade group known as the Internet Association (IA) and others from Silicon Valley as well as free market conservatives, according to The Hill.

“There are a wealth of existing tools that allow users to make choices about how they engage online,” IA President and CEO Michael Beckerman said in a statement opposing the SMART Act.

However, Hawley argues that the options to turn off potentially addictive social media features are often difficult to locate. His bill would change that by requiring it to be easy to opt out of features like autoplay as well as forcing social media platforms to offer tools that help users limit their time on their sites and apps.

If passed, companies would have a few months to make these changes before the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and state attorneys could take action against them.

Hawley’s SMART Act has not yet gained and co-sponsors, but his past bills addressing consumer data protection and what some believe is “political censorship” have drawn some bipartisan interest.

View the original article at thefix.com

6 August 2019
Candy Crush Exec Doesn't Think Players Are Addicted To The Game

The Candy Crush exec was questioned about the excessive amounts of money and time players spend on the best-selling phone game.

The mobile game Candy Crush is still going strong, according to a top executive at the maker of the game, King.

The Guardian reports that King executive Alex Dale told a committee researching “immersive and addictive technologies” that he does not think there is an “addiction problem” for those who play the game.

Nearly 500,000 Players Spend 6 Or More Hours Playing Each Day

Dale says that the game has 270 million players. Of those, 9.2 million, or 3.4%, play for three or more hours daily. He also noted that 0.16%, or 432,000 players, spend six or more hours playing each day. The average player, however, spends 38 minutes per day playing.

According to Dale, these numbers are impacted by those playing the game who have “plenty of time on their hands.”

“Excessive time, it is very difficult to know what excessive is,” he said, according to The Guardian. “We have a fair number of people in their 60s, 70s and 80s playing Candy Crush. We do want people to play more. There are going to be people that like to play our games a lot.”

Dale told the committee that in 2018, one player spent $2,600 in one day on a currency aspect of the game that can allow players to move through it faster. However, he said it should not be assumed the player has a problem since he spent the money on a game currency during a “sale” and used the currency over seven months. The same person spent an additional $1,060 on the game.

“That sounds, and is, a large amount of money,” Dale said. “There was a sale on at the time so they were making a rational decision. It is down to player choice if that is what they want to do.”

Telling Players How Much They Spend Deemed “Too Intrusive”

In the past, Dale said, if players spent more than $250 in a week they would be notified via email, but some players felt this was too intrusive and said they would not spend the money if they couldn’t afford to.

According to The Guardian, Committee Chair Damian Collins implied that King was not confronting the possibility of people having a problem with playing the game.

“What I’m not getting is any sense that you feel you have a responsibility as a company to identify people that are addicted,” he said. “You are only happy for them to refer themselves to you if they think they have a problem.”

Dale says King will again look into the idea of communicating with players about spending, but that it hadn’t gone well in the past.

“We will look at the whole area again but we have done it before and they didn’t like it,” he said. “We have customer support available in 24 languages. Among 270 million players we have between two and three contacts a month from people concerned about having spent too much money or time on the game.”

View the original article at thefix.com

14 July 2019
Apple Takes Down Smartphone Addiction Apps, Puts Up Their Own

Apps meant to help users limit screen time for themselves or their kids are having permissions revoked, or removed entirely.

Developers of screen addiction-fighting apps say that Apple has been squeezing them out. The company behind the iPhone has been revoking permissions from some of these apps and outright removing others.

The crackdown comes after Apple released its own screen time-reducing feature, and some don’t think this is a coincidence.

According to app developers, Apple has been forcing them to remove usage-tracking features, even those intended for parents to limit how much time or what kinds of apps their children can access on their own devices.

Fred Stutzman, chief executive at Freedom, sees this as a conflict of interest considering Apple’s own usage-limiting features are not as aggressive or convenient as what apps like Freedom provided.

“Their incentives aren’t really aligned for helping people solve their problem,” Stutzman said. “Can you really trust that Apple wants people to spend less time on their phones?”

Freedom had 770,000 downloads from the App Store before it was removed in August. Whether users want or depend on the apps doesn’t seem to matter to Apple, considering they removed OurPact, the most popular parental control app with more than 3 million downloads.

“They yanked us out of the blue with no warning,” said Amir Moussavian, OurPact’s chief executive. “They are systematically killing the industry.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook touted their suite of screen time-related features at a conference this month, saying they intend to fight smartphone addiction. “We don’t want people using their phones all the time,” Cook said. “This has never been an objective for us.”

Representatives say that the timing is purely coincidence.

“We treat all apps the same, including those that compete with our own services,” said Apple spokesperson Tammy Levine. “Our incentive is to have a vibrant app ecosystem that provides consumers access to as many quality apps as possible.”

The app developers aren’t buying it. Popular parental control apps Kidslox and Qustodio are taking it up to the European Union’s competition office.

Two of Apple’s big shareholders urged the company to personally take responsibility for the “toxic” effects of excessive smartphone use early last year—though they probably didn’t mean it like this.

View the original article at thefix.com

30 April 2019
Break Your Smartphone Addiction In Three Steps, Says Habit Coach

Habit Coach Niklas Göke claims by using three essential steps “you can escape your phone’s toxic grasp in the next five minutes.”

Smartphone addiction has been an increasingly popular subject as 77% of the adult population in the U.S. has come to rely on these devices. Naturally, cautions against overuse of smartphones as well as advice on how to break an addiction to them have followed.

Diagnostic criteria for this kind of addiction, which is not yet included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), varies. However, one 2014 study estimated that 84% of people worldwide are addicted to their smartphones.

In an article for Fast Company, writer and “habit coach” Niklas Göke lays out three essential steps to breaking oneself of a smartphone addiction. He draws upon his own experiences and behavioral psychology to claim that “you can escape your phone’s toxic grasp in the next five minutes.”

The first step is simply “don’t give up before you start,” by which Göke means, don’t automatically dismiss the suggestions he’s about to make. The next step is to “change the default,” drawing on the book Nudge by behavioral economist and Nobel laureate Richard Thaler. Both Thaler and Geoke argue that humans will stay in their default mode unless seriously compelled to change it.

“In Austria, 99% of people are organ donors,” Göke writes. “In Germany, that number is just 12%. Why? Germany has an opt-in system. You have to fill in a little card and carry it in your wallet. But that takes effort, so most people never do it. Austria has an opt-out system. You’re a donor by default, and most people never change it.”

He therefore recommends not only putting your phone on silent, but changing the settings so that it doesn’t vibrate when on silent mode.

The third step is to “make yourself take one extra step” by doing things like turning off the “raise to wake” setting so that you have to push a button to wake up the phone and removing notifications from your home screen. This way, Göke argues, there’s less of a reason to be picking the phone up every few seconds.

Unfortunately, being separated from one’s smartphone can cause its own form of stress.

Dr. Dale Archer talked about nomophobia—fear of being without your smartphone—in 2013. Citing studies which found that, among other things, 70% of women feel anxious when they don’t have immediate access to their phones, Archer argued that smartphone addiction is a real and growing problem.

“If checking and rechecking your phone comes as naturally to you as breathing, or if you feel anxious or restless any time your phone is not on or near you, you may have a technology addiction,” he said.

View the original article at thefix.com

10 April 2019
First-Ever Case Of Netflix Addiction Being Treated In India

The man would turn on Netflix first thing in the morning and binge-watch shows and movies for more than seven hours every day.

Internet addiction disorder is not officially recognized in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), but it’s very much a reality for some.

A serious case of digital addiction in India highlights the serious effects of getting hooked on technology. According to The Hindu, last week a 26-year-old man became the first “Netflix addict” to seek treatment at the Service for Healthy Use of Technology (SHUT) clinic at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bangalore.

The man would turn on Netflix first thing in the morning and binge-watch shows and movies for more than seven hours every day to escape the reality of being unemployed. He did this for six months, the Hindu reports.

“Whenever his family pressurized him to earn a living, or when he saw his friends doing well, he would watch the shows on offer continuously,” said Manoj Kumar Sharma, a clinical psychologist at SHUT. “It was a method of escapism. He could forget about his problems, and he derived immense pleasure from it.”

SHUT was established in 2014 to help people experiencing a “pattern of excessive use of technology.” Sharma and his team help address the problematic use of technology and replace the technology with healthy activities, build coping skills and strengthen a patient’s support network.

The unidentified patient—who experienced fatigue, disturbed sleep and eye strain as a result of his Netflix habit—was put on a regimen of relaxation exercises, therapy and career counseling at SHUT, according to the Print.

Sharma said that many of his patients who excessively watch TV and movies on streaming platforms also struggle with gaming addiction. “The best advice is to avoid the use of technology if it becomes a coping mechanism,” said Sharma.

While not officially recognized as a mental disorder in the DSM-5, internet addiction disorder affects many—young and old.

The Hindu notes that children also struggle with digital addiction. “The addiction interferes with the child’s academic performance and counselors are advising students and parents to keep a close watch on the duration and the shows they watch,” said Mansoor Khan, a school official in Bangalore who said they have begun noticing the problem in young students.

View the original article at thefix.com

10 October 2018