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""Smartphone notifications have turned us all into Pavlov's dogs," Greenfield says. 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.)"

"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 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."

"There is no iPhone equivalent for children, and there never has been. For the most part, kids are stuck with their parents' hand-me-down smartphones, and the onus is on the parent to install the necessary parental controls. So, why hasn't Silicon Valley successfully made a phone for children? And if it did, what would such a device actually look like?"

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.""

"If you find yourself watching the hit Fox sitcom 'New Girl' tonight, don't feel bad if your mind wanders to your smartphone or tablet during the show. Fox actually wants it that way. Instead of trying to capture your full attention the old-fashioned way, Fox Broadcasting has created a series of aps to provide extra content on your smartphone or tablet, to allow you to follow along during their broadcast shows. And on the sitcom "New Girl," the network is even trying to sell you stuff. David Wertheimer is the president of digital at Fox Broadcasting, and he explains that, for example, Cece (one of the characters on the show) will be wearing a set of bracelets, and they'll show up for sale on your second screen."

"Smartphone ownership has become a nearly ubiquitous element of teen life: 95% of teens now report they have a smartphone or access to one. These mobile connections are in turn fueling more-persistent online activities: 45% of teens now say they are online on a near-constant basis. The survey also finds there is no clear consensus among teens about the effect that social media has on the lives of young people today. Minorities of teens describe that effect as mostly positive (31%) or mostly negative (24%), but the largest share (45%) says that effect has been neither positive nor negative. These are some of the main findings from the Center's survey of U.S. teens conducted March 7-April 10, 2018. Throughout the report, "teens" refers to those ages 13 to 17."

"Another study, from 2018, looked at the impact of smartphones' presence on interactions between strangers. It found that strangers smiled at each other less, and smiled less intensely, when they had their smartphones with them than when they didn't. "People just don't feel that the person is paying attention to them, and then they report having a [worse] conversation," says John Hunter, a PhD candidate in psychological science at the University of California, Irvine, who conducted the smiling study with Kushlev and others. Even if your phone is not in use but still in front of you, "that makes the conversation worse, because the other person kind of feels that, well, that phone in front of you is maybe more important to you than the conversation we're having.""

"If, like an ever-growing majority of people in the U.S., you own a smartphone, you might have the sense that apps in the age of the pocket-sized computer are designed to keep your attention as long as possible. You might not have the sense that they're manipulating you one tap, swipe, or notification at a time. But Tristan Harris thinks that's just what's happening to the billions of us who use social networks like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter, and he's on a mission to steer us toward potential solutions - or at least to get us to acknowledge that this manipulation is, in fact, going on."

"ost of us understand by now that we're being followed across the web. But how much do we know about how the smartphone apps we use track our every move? Thanks to tiny pieces of code that millions of developers use to make their lives easier, an array of companies gets free access to data they can employ to understand your habits. The process is invisible, and it's worse news for you than you might think. When we browse the web through Google Chrome, for example, a dizzying array of companies follow us. Such is the Wild West of our modern web, but you still remain in control of which sites you visit and which social networks you log into. The shift to native apps changes this equation, however. Suddenly you're no longer in full control of what's loaded, nor of who is tracking you, and you must trust app developers to do the right thing."

"We evolved to want variable rewards. What happens when smartphones give them to us?"

"Smartphones have by now been implicated in so many crummy outcomes-car fatalities, sleep disturbances, empathy loss, relationship problems, failure to notice a clown on a unicycle-that it almost seems easier to list the things they don't mess up than the things they do. Our society may be reaching peak criticism of digital devices. Even so, emerging research suggests that a key problem remains underappreciated. It involves kids' development, but it's probably not what you think. More than screen-obsessed young children, we should be concerned about tuned-out parents."

"US psychologist Jean Twenge, who has claimed that social media is having a malign affect on the young, answers critics who accuse her of crying wolf"

"eople are known to walk, talk, and eat while sleeping. Increasingly, sleep texting is joining the list. A study from Villanova University found that the habit of using smartphones to message friends while still asleep - and having no memory of doing it - is a common technology trend among adolescents and young adults. The paper, "Interrupted sleep: College students sleeping with technology," was published last month in the Journal of American College Health. The study is the first nursing article to look at sleep texting. Researchers concluded it was a growing trend in the college student population."

"Phones have saturated teenage life: Ninety-five percent of Americans ages 13 to 17 have a smartphone or access to one, and nearly half report using the internet "almost constantly." But as recent survey data and interviews have suggested, many teens find much of that time to be unsatisfyingly spent. Constant usage shouldn't be mistaken for constant enjoyment, as any citizen of the internet can attest. A new nationally representative survey about "screen time and device distractions" from the Pew Research Center indicates that it's not just parents who think teenagers are worryingly inseparable from their phones-many teens themselves do, too. Fifty-four percent of the roughly 750 13-to-17-year-olds surveyed said they spend too much time absorbed in their phones, and 65 percent of parents said the same of their kids' device usage more generally."

"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."

"The study also showed that students who didn't use electronic devices but attended lectures where their use was allowed also performed worse on tests."

"When Tinder became available to all smartphone users in 2013, it ushered in a new era in the history of romance"

"A precipitous drop in the happiness, self-esteem and life satisfaction of American teens came as their ownership of smartphones rocketed from zero to 73% and they devoted an increasing share of their time online. Coincidence? New research suggests it is not. In a study published Monday in the journal Emotion, psychologists from San Diego State University and the University of Georgia used data on mood and media culled from roughly 1.1 million U.S. teens to figure out why a decades-long rise in happiness and satisfaction among U.S. teens suddenly shifted course in 2012 and declined sharply over the next four years."