Parents and teens alike are trading in their smartphones for "dumber" models to help stay offline.

Adults and teens concerned about their screen time are turning in their smartphones for “dumber” models.

Buried in the settings of many smartphones is the option to look up how much on average you are staring at your phone per day.

It can bring an uncomfortable realisation, that what was supposed to be a useful piece of technology has become an obsession.

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According to a study by Harvard University, using social networking sites lights up the same part of the brain that is also triggered when taking an addictive substance. This has raised concerns about phone habits among youth.

In the UK, research by Ofcom estimates that around a quarter of children aged five to seven years old now have their own smartphone.

Links have been shown in some studies between use of social media and a negative effect on mental health - especially in children.

  • Cognitive_Dissident@lemm.ee
    1·
    5 months ago

    Are people really so addicted to social media that they can’t use their own willpower to simply not have those apps installed?

    So-called “”“social media”“” is something that was a good idea in the beginning, but when you live in a capitalist society that has businesses that chant “profit above all else” every day, sucking money out of peoples’ wallets becomes more important than being responsible to society as a whole. So social media sites like Facebook go out of their way to make using it as addictive as possible. Then they scrape your posts and what you’re looking at to profile you and use that data to sell ad space to other companies, and you get “”'targeted"“” ads shoved in your face. Something like Facebook literally can’t stop making themselves as addictive as possible to the end users because that’s how Zuckerberg makes his billions. Meanwhile none of them really care what this does to our society and civilization.