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On the heels of two large Apple investors urging the company to address kids' phone addiction, many parents may be wondering: How do I know if my child is addicted to his or her smartphone? And how can I prevent problematic overuse? There are reasons for concern. A 2016 survey from Common Sense Media found that half of teenagers felt addicted to their devices, and 78 percent checked their devices at least hourly. Seventy-two percent of teens felt pressured to respond immediately to texts, notifications and social media messaging. A 2015 Pew Research report found that 73 percent of 13- to 17-year-olds had their own smartphones or had access to one, and 24 percent said they were online "almost constantly.""

"Some experts think people can become addicted to playing video games, much in the same way people are addicted to physical substances, but is that really possible? If you are a gamer, what motivates you to play? How do you resist temptation when you need to? If you don't play video games, is there another behavior that you think it would be possible to be addicted to?"

" People have been addicted to substances for thousands of years, but for the past two decades, we've also been hooked on technologies, like Instagram, Netflix, Facebook, Fitbit, Twitter, and email-platforms we've adopted because we assume they'll make our lives better. These inventions have profound upsides, but their appeal isn't an accident. Technology companies and marketers have teams of engineers and researchers devoted to keeping us engaged. They know how to push our buttons, and how to coax us into using their products for hours, days, and weeks on end."

"People have been addicted to substances for thousands of years, but for the past two decades, we've also been hooked on technologies, like Instagram, Netflix, Facebook, Fitbit, Twitter, and email-platforms we've adopted because we assume they'll make our lives better. These inventions have profound upsides, but their appeal isn't an accident. Technology companies and marketers have teams of engineers and researchers devoted to keeping us engaged. They know how to push our buttons, and how to coax us into using their products for hours, days, and weeks on end. Tracing addiction through history, Alter shows that we're only just beginning to understand the epidemic of behavioral addiction gripping society. He takes us inside the human brain at the very moment we score points on a smartphone game, or see that someone has liked a photo we've posted on Instagram. But more than that, Alter heads the problem off at the pass, letting us know what we can do to step away from the screen. He lays out the options we have to address this problem before it truly consumes us. After all, who among us hasn't struggled to ignore the ding of a new email, the next episode in a TV series, or the desire to play a game just one more time?"

"Maybe you are. How exactly would you know? The digital police aren't going to flag you when you've met your technology threshold. On the other hand, constant use has become normalized. The toddler tinkering with a tablet, the teen locked away in their room tied to their computer, and to the adult buried in their phone at a social engagement are just a few examples of ordinary use. In our present day, the increase in popularity and integration of technology in our daily lives prompts one to ponder the potential of developing an addiction to technology. At what point are we at risk for crossing the fine line from general use to problematic use?"

"Are you addicted to technology? I'm certainly not. In my first sitting reading Adam Alter's Irresistible, an investigation into why we can't stop scrolling and clicking and surfing online, I only paused to check my phone four times. Because someone might have emailed me. Or texted me. One time I stopped to download an app Alter mentioned (research) and the final time I had to check the shares on my play brokerage app, Best Brokers (let's call this one "business")."

"Google, Twitter and Facebook workers who helped make technology so addictive are disconnecting themselves from the internet. Paul Lewis reports on the Silicon Valley refuseniks alarmed by a race for human attention"

"Can you read this entire article without checking your phone? Most teens can't. The majority of teens have a growing smartphone addiction, creating fear or anxiety when not using their devices. Repetitive smartphone use has led to health issues and new medical terminology such as "nomophobia," "text claw," and "iPosture." Unfortunately, many teens text or check social media while they drive, endangering themselves and others."

"The cost of being always available. The cost of having fragmented conversation. The cost of a rewired brain. The cost of our privacy. The literal, spiraling cost of buying the latest technology. For these and other economic reasons, sales of iPhones and other smartphones have recently plateaued and even declined. At the same time, some people have gone back to the simpler, less addictive phones used in the late 1990s and early 2000s: the flip phone, the "candybar" phone, and other basic "feature" phones that can only talk and text."

"In the modern economy of tablets and apps, our attention has become the most valuable commodity. Tech companies have armies of behavioral researchers whose sole job is to apply principles like Skinner's variable rewards to grab and hold our focus as often and long as possible. But some people are starting to fight back. A small but growing number of behavioral scientists and former Silicon Valley developers have begun trying to counterprogram those news alerts, friend requests and updates crowding our waking hours."

"The average adult checks their phone 50 to 300 times each day, Greenfield says. And smartphones use psychological tricks that encourage our continued high usage - some of the same tricks slot machines use to hook gamblers. "For example, every time you look at your phone, you don't know what you're going to find - how relevant or desirable a message is going to be," Greenfield says. "So you keep checking it over and over again because every once in a while, there's something good there." (This is called a variable ratio schedule of reinforcement. Animal studies suggest it makes dopamine skyrocket in the brain's reward circuity and is possibly one reason people keep playing slot machines.) A growing number of doctors and psychologists are concerned about our relationship with the phone. There's a debate about what to call the problem. Some say "disorder" or "problematic behavior." Others think over-reliance on a smartphone can become a behavioral addiction, like gambling."

"Studies have shown that spending too much time on your phone is bad for your focus and mental health. As 2018 kicks off, there are some easy ways to build better digital habits. Try turning off notifications, kicking your phone out of your bedroom and even turning on grayscale"

"That itch to glance at our phone is a natural reaction to apps and websites engineered to get us scrolling as frequently as possible. The attention economy, which showers profits on companies that seize our focus, has kicked off what Harris calls a "race to the bottom of the brain stem." "You could say that it's my responsibility" to exert self-control when it comes to digital usage, he explains, "but that's not acknowledging that there's a thousand people on the other side of the screen whose job is to break down whatever responsibility I can maintain." In short, we've lost control of our relationship with technology because technology has become better at controlling us."

"NEWARK - The fifth-graders of Yolanda Bromfield's digital-privacy class had just finished their lesson on ­online-offline balance when she asked them a tough question: How would they act when they left school and reentered a world of prying websites, addictive phones and online scams? Susan, a 10-year-old in pink sneakers who likes YouTube and the mobile game "Piano Tiles 2," quietly raised her hand. "I will make sure that I don't tell nobody my personal stuff," she said, "and be offline for at least two hours every night." Between their math and literacy classes, these elementary school kids were studying up on perhaps one of the most important and least understood school subjects in America - how to protect their privacy, save their brains and survive the big, bad Web. Classes such as these, though surprisingly rare, are spreading across the country amid hopes of preparing kids and parents for some of the core tensions of modern childhood: what limits to set around technologies whose long-term effects are unknown - and for whom young users are a prime audience.

"In the summer of 2013, three women fanned out into metropolitan Boston and, for two months, spent their weekdays dining alone at fast food restaurants. They ordered meals and slipped into seats as discreetly as possible, so as not to arouse suspicion. Then they began to spy. They were looking for groups of diners that included an adult and at least one child under the age of 10. The three women, academic researchers from the fields of pediatrics, child development, and anthropology, needed to get close enough to their subjects to notice changes in facial expressions and tones of voice. They took copious notes. Their assignment was to observe, in the minutest detail, how children and their caregivers interacted with their personal mobile devices and also with each other. The resulting study was groundbreaking; it was the first to explore how parents were using personal devices around children. And its headline discovery was disturbing: The more caregivers were absorbed by their smartphones, the more harshly they treated the children they were with."