Read on and make your own decision.
Do more of the same, or take a stance to just BE.
NEW YORK POST
“You’re going to think I’m crazy.” A mother recently leaned across the table to speak to me at a dinner for families thinking of sending their kids to an overnight camp in the Berkshires.
“You see those pitchers over there with the soup in them?” she asked, increasingly agitated. “Don’t these people know you’re not supposed to put hot liquids in plastic? All of the chemicals seep into the liquid. I can’t send my children here.”
This is the level of crazy we’re dealing with. There are well-educated, well-off parents out there who read something on a mommy blog about the risk of BPA to children (when no scientific study has shown any such thing) and conclude that their 8- and 10-year-olds are at risk from vegetable soup.
WeForm.org
By Teresa Belton
From books, arts and sports classes to iPads and television, many parents do everything in their power to entertain and educate their children. But what would happen if children were just left to be bored from time to time? How would it affect their development?
I began to think about boredom and children when I was researching the influence of television on children’s storytelling in the 1990s. Surprised at the lack of imagination in many of the hundreds of stories I read by ten to 12 year-old children in five different Norfolk schools, I wondered if this might partly be an effect of TV viewing. Findings of earlier research had revealed that television does indeed reduce children’s imaginative capacities.
For instance, a large scale study carried out in Canada in the 1980s as television was gradually being extended across the country, compared children in three communities – one which had four TV channels, one with one channel and one with none. The researchers studied these communities on two occasions, just before one of the towns obtained television for the first time, and again two years later. The children in the no-TV town scored significantly higher than the others on divergent thinking skills, a measure of imaginativeness. This was until they, too, got TV – when their skills dropped to the same level as that of the other children.
CNN
By Sandee LaMotte, CNN
Taking away screens and reading to our children during the formative years of birth to age 5 boosts brain development. We all know that's true, but now science can convince us with startling images. This is the brain of a preschooler who is often read to by a caregiver. The red areas in this scan show growth in organized white matter in the language and literacy areas of the child's brain, areas that will support learning in school.
This is the brain of a preschooler who likely spends an average of two hours a day playing on screens.
The blue in this image shows massive underdevelopment and disorganization of white matter in the same areas needed to support learning in school.
MEDIUM
By Denise Lisi DeRosa
Working from home can be exhausting, especially if your entire family is also home due to a global pandemic. Staying focused on any single task can be nearly impossible. I do not know how parents of toddlers or young kids get anything accomplished because I have self-sufficient teens at home and I struggle with productivity. Some days it feels like I am on a hamster wheel, out of breath and getting nowhere. Is technology to blame for my shorter attention span? Maybe, but the problem goes deeper than that. Here is my best advice on how to improve productivity while at home.
Sos safety magazine
BY SOS SAFETY MAGAZINE
“I just want them to be happy.” Have you ever found yourself saying this in regards to your kids? If so, you’re like almost every parent ever. We live our lives like human pacifiers, striving to meet our kids every need and want. Sure there are times where they experience momentary disappointment, but you’re always right there. You rush in to soothe them and find a way to make it all better. It seems so obvious that you would comfort them – after all, why let them suffer when it is so easy for you to take the pain away?
Dr. Robin Berman, a psychiatrist and associate professor of psychiatry at UCLA, says that this desire to make our kids happier can have even farther reaching consequences than more parents can imagine. By rushing to fill your child’s every need, you are essentially becoming your child’s first co-dependent relationship – which can lead them to look for other co-dependent relationships in the future. Furthermore, when you try to constantly protect your child’s emotions, you take away the opportunity for them to learn to self-regulate.
TIME
By Dr Nicholas Kardaras
As the dog days of summer wane, most parents are preparing to send their kids back to school. In years past, this has meant buying notebooks and pencils, perhaps even a new backpack. But over the past decade or so, the back-to-school checklist has for many also included an array of screen devices that many parents dutifully stuff into their children’s bag.
The screen revolution has seen pedagogy undergo a seismic shift as technology now dominates the educational landscape. In almost every classroom in America today, you will find some type of screen—smartboards, Chromebooks, tablets, smartphones. From inner-city schools to those in rural and remote towns, we have accepted tech in the classroom as a necessary and beneficial evolution in education.
This is a lie.
MEDIUM
By Brian Pennie
Powerful scientific evidence from an addict turned neuroscientist. Ever since I was a child, I was consumed by anxiety and tormented by my mind. As I got older, my anxiety got worse, and so did my urge to escape it.
I began using drugs when I was 14 years old, and by the time I was 20, I was a heroin addict. I spent the next 15 years destroying my body and mind. But I was lucky. Pummeled into submission by the most painful night of my life, I was forced to look at the world from a completely new perspective.
Life gave me a second chance, and I devoured every second of it. Some might say that I switched addictions. But I like to call it intense curiosity, as I was bitten by the bug of life.
That was in October 2013, and since then, I’ve become a PhD student, an author, a life change strategist, and a lecturer at the top two universities in Ireland, all in the area of neuroscience.
THE TAB
By Hayley Soen
Last week Netflix released The Social Dilemma – a documentary all about the evolution of social media and how it basically controls all of our lives now. It’s one of those Black Mirror style docs that will make you never want to look at a screen ever again – until you open Twitter to see if everyone else feels the same. But one thing you can’t help but think about as you’re watching is, what are the net worths of some interviewees on The Social Dilemma?
I mean, they’ve got the guy who literally invented the Facebook “like” button, some of the early team at Instagram and the tech experts behind some of the biggest algorithms in the social media world – surely they are all worth millions and millions now?
Here are the net worths of the people featured in Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma. Brb, trying to think of an app everyone can become addicted to.
MEDIUM
By Anthony Fieldman
Our behaviors are leading to a clinical disorder of attention deficit; and is all, spectacularly, backfiring. It’s time to start reversing course, while we still have a choice to make.
In 1971, long before we first surfed the Internet, and years before he went on to win both a Nobel Prize and a Turing Award (aka the ‘Nobel Prize for computing’) — a feat no one else has duplicated — Herbert Simon, one of the world’s great experts in “the architecture of complexity”, and a pioneer of many domains, including artificial intelligence, organizational theory, decision-making, problem-solving and information processing, warned us:
“In an information-rich world, the wealth of information means a dearth of something else: a scarcity of whatever it is that information consumes. What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.”
If only he could see us now.
TECHNOLOGY REVIEW
By Karen Hao
Algorithms can change the course of children’s lives. Kids are interacting with Alexas that can record their voice data and influence their speech and social development. They’re binging videos on TikTok and YouTube pushed to them by recommendation systems that end up shaping their worldviews.
Algorithms are also increasingly used to determine what their education is like, whether they’ll receive health care, and even whether their parents are deemed fit to care for them. Sometimes this can have devastating effects: this past summer, for example, thousands of students lost their university admissions after algorithms—used in lieu of pandemic-canceled standardized tests—inaccurately predicted their academic performance.
Children, in other words, are often at the forefront when it comes to using and being used by AI, and that can leave them in a position to get hurt. “Because they are developing intellectually and emotionally and physically, they are very shapeable,” says Steve Vosloo, a policy specialist for digital connectivity at Unicef, the United Nations Children Fund.
NEW YORK TIMES
By Mariya Manzhos
Thanks to their adventuresome parents, some screen-addled children are getting a reprieve — and an education — at sea.
Two years ago, Alison and Luke Williams bought a 44-foot monohull Moody Blue with the dream of sailing around the world with their three children. But many commitments tethered them to shore: two full-time jobs, piles of debt, and their children’s school in New South Wales, Australia.
Then the pandemic hit. Mr. Williams, 43, lost his job at the landscaping company, the school went online, and life became restricted to the home. “If not now, when?” they thought.
They sold their home, most of their belongings and moved their crew of three kids ages 7, 12 and 13, two Labradoodles and a cat onto their new floating home. “Covid has given us a push forward rather than holding us back,” said Ms. Williams, 39, who left her job as a kindergarten teacher. They are reclaiming something they’ve lacked for years. “We finally have time as a family.”
HEALTH
By Ashley Mateo
Today, I’ve spent 2 hours and 51 minutes scrolling through Instagram, Twitter, and other apps—and it’s not even dinnertime. I’m not alone. Comscore’s 2017 U.S. Cross-Platform Future in Focus report revealed that to be the exact amount of time the average American spends staring at his or her phone each day. Even scarier: When you add in other types of devices, that time goes all the way up to an average of 10.5 hours a day, according to the 2018 Quarter 3 Nielsen Total Audience Report. Wow is right.
Of course, you probably didn’t need to know average usage numbers to know that we all rely on technology for pretty much everything—navigating our way to new spots, connecting with loved ones, and even finding answers to questions we never knew we’d ask.
PSYCHOLOGY TODAY
By Lea Lis MD
The cutting off of girls' social lives is a really big deal. I am seeing many mental health issues, depression, self-esteem issues, and boredom, malaise, and more. This is happening with many of my patients who have been more strictly quarantined. The lack of sports or other structured activities has left many girls disconnected, bored, apathetic, and many are gaining weight.
One of my patients, “Julie,” stated the quarantine made her very lonely and depressed at times. She is depressed with weight gain which impacted her body image and self-esteem. She told me the problem is that she feels disconnected, “It's not a real connection on the phone.” She went on to say that she missed her friends, and while a call “gets the tone of voice,” it does not feel real and “seemed like simple-minded conversation.” It is hard staring at the screen instead of being with a person. Julie elaborated that when she had a problem, she “would not reach out to a friend, teacher, or guidance counselor. I just did not feel that people could help me.”
NEW YORK POST
By Bethany Mandel
At every pediatrician appointment for the last several years, I’ve been asked about how much “screen time” my kids are getting. I’m reminded by the doctor that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends children younger than two avoid digital media other than video chatting. And for children ages 2 to 5, the limit is supposed to be one hour of high-quality children’s programming per day.
It wasn’t just pediatricians sounding the alarm on the dangers of screen time. Every child expert for the last decade has warned about the dangers of too much: in young kids its impact on brain development, fine and gross motor skills; and for everyone its linkage to obesity and short attention spans. A growing kids podcast industry has sprouted trying to offer parents screen-free alternatives, and one of the most popular topics of conversation in parenting groups is weaning kids off of screens.
PR NEWSWIRE
By Twigby
COVID-19 has changed our reliance on technology as remote learning and working from home has increased. According to new data from Twigby, a nationwide phone service provider, 39% of survey participants have been relying on their phones more due to social distancing. Twigby conducted the survey to better understand how the pandemic is affecting customers overall service experience.
The survey asked participants to relay if they are depending on their phone service more, less or with no change during the COVID-19 outbreak. The results reveal that the pandemic has affected phone usage with large increases in app usage, texting and calling. With the increase in phone usage, people are charging their phone more as well.
PARENTS
By Nicole Johnson
Video conferencing has become the new norm for school, work, and play, but so many kids and parents are just over it. Luckily, there are ways to cope through the calls.
It is a typical work and school day at my house, which means no less than six Zoom calls. My husband is holed up in the bedroom on a work call trying to avoid the chatter of our four school-age children, while I attempt to find a quiet space to meet with one of my students and another teacher from the primary school where I continue to work remotely. I schedule the Zoom calls on my calendar the way I used to schedule the kids' activities and appointments.
KIDSHEALTH
By Elana Pearl Ben-Joseph, MD
Most teens use some form of social media and have a profile on a social networking site. Many visit these sites every day.
There are plenty of good things about social media — but also many risks and things kids and teens should avoid. They don't always make good choices when they post something to a site, and this can lead to problems.
So it's important to talk with your kids about how to use social media wisely.
INDEPENDENT
By Anthony Cuthbertson
Phone users under coronavirus lockdown are reporting significant increases in the amount of time they are spending on their devices.
On Sunday, iPhone users received their weekly Screen Time alerts, prompting a surge in social media posts about the knock-on effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Other phone tracking apps like YourHour also flooded users with notifications about their phone usage.
The spike in phone use appears to stem from social distancing measures put in place by countries around the world aiming to contain the outbreak.
MCLEAN HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL
By Jacqueline Sperling, PhD
The social media platform Instagram made headlines last year for suppressing likes in an effort to curb the comparisons and hurt feelings associated with attaching popularity to sharing content. But do these efforts combat mental health issues, or are they simply applying a band-aid to a wound?
It’s a small step in the right direction, says Jacqueline Sperling, PhD, a psychologist at McLean Hospital who works with youth who experience anxiety disorders, about Instagram’s recent restriction. “Even if you remove the likes, there continue to be opportunities for comparisons and feedback. People still can compare themselves to others, and people still can post comments.”
Lifehack
By Denise Hill
Boredom in children is common and something that every parent, teacher and sane adult wants to avoid. We’ve all heard the old saying: “An idle mind is the devil’s workshop.” So we expend time, energy, and lots of cash trying to ensure that our child’s mind doesn’t become the devil’s place of business.
Thrive Global
By Katie Santamaria
The other day, my mom called my friend in a momentary panic, saying, “Where’s Katie? I want to talk to her, but she isn’t picking up her phone.” In that moment, I felt proud. I obviously wasn’t proud because my mom was struggling to reach me, or because I was ignoring her call — I was proud because I had no idea where my phone was.
Tucson.com - Opinion
By Renée Schafer Horton
Parents today are constantly pressured to keep their children entertained. This really ramps up during summer when parents fear that every second of a child’s life must be “enriched” or he’ll wind up on a therapist’s couch or joining a circus.
But it’s impossible to be entertaining 24/7. Worse, it results in children who expect life to be all unicorns and rainbows and become whiny, anxious, device-addicted kiddos when they discover that it is not.
The Guardian
Instagram users in Australia will no longer be able to see how many likes a post has a received under trial changes to “remove pressure” on the digital platform’s users.
Instagram will on Thursday begin rolling out the trial update removing the total number of likes on photos and viewings of videos on user feeds and profiles, and permalink pages.
Thought Catalog
We don’t commit now. We don’t see the point. They’ve always said there are so many fish in the sea, but never before has that sea of fish been right at our fingertips on OkCupid, Tinder, Grindr, Dattch, take your pick.
Fatherly
Kids used to complain about being bored. That’s become rarer in an age when there’s no lack of things to do when bored, including apps, podcasts, webisodes, video games, viral videos, e-books, or texting friends “i m bored.” The idea of even being bored is becoming endangered.
New York Times
Parents around the country, alarmed by the steady patter of studies around screen time, are trying to turn back time to the era before smartphones. But it’s not easy to remember what exactly things were like before smartphones. So they’re hiring professionals.
NPR
Ninety-eight percent of families with children now have smartphones. Young children Nathan's age consume over two hours of media per day on average, tweens take in about six hours, and teens use their devices for nine hours a day, according to the nonprofit Common Sense Media.
Mark Manson Net
By Mark Manson
In the time it took me to outline this article I checked Twitter three times and my email twice. I responded to four emails. I checked Slack once and sent text messages to two people. I went down a rabbit hole of YouTube videos once, costing me about 30 minutes of productivity, and I probably checked my books’ ranks on Amazon roughly 3,172 times.
Gizmodo
At a preliminary Senate hearing today on the subject of potentially putting legislative limits on the persuasiveness of technology—a diplomatic way of saying the addiction model the internet uses to keep people engaged and clicking—Tristan Harris, the executive director of the Center for Humane Technology, told lawmakers that while rules are important, what needs to come first is public awareness.
New York Post - Opinion
Americans are lonelier than ever, and the crisis now impacts our children.
The loneliness of older people, those in the twilight of their lives, has received a great deal of attention in the last few years. An alarming share of Baby Boomers — one of every 11, according to The Wall Street Journal — are growing old without any family around.
ABC News
By Dr. Leila Haghighat
“Once upon a time” may be better read on paper than on a screen.
A new study suggests that toddlers interact more with their parents when they read print books compared to electronic versions. The results of the study were published today in the journal Pediatrics.
New York Times
By Nellie Bowles
Screens used to be for the elite. Now avoiding them is a status symbol.
Bill Langlois has a new best friend. She is a cat named Sox. She lives on a tablet, and she makes him so happy that when he talks about her arrival in his life, he begins to cry.
World Happiness Report
The years since 2010 have not been good ones for happiness and well-being among Americans. Even as the United States economy improved after the end of the Great Recession in 2009, happiness among adults did not rebound to the higher levels of the 1990s, continuing a slow decline ongoing since at least 2000 in the General Social Survey (Twenge et al., 2016; also see Figure 5.1).
Medium - Positive Returns
By Erica Orange & Jared Weiner, The Future Hunters, and Eshanthi Ranasinghe, Exploration & Future Sensing, Omidyar Network
Mental health issues today have almost become pandemic. Depression and anxiety in particular are increasing rapidly, with much still clinically under- and undiagnosed. This pattern is persistent around the world. The World Economic Forum estimated that direct and indirect costs of mental health amount to over 4 percent of global GDP, more than the cost of cancer, diabetes, and chronic respiratory disease combined. This could cost the global economy up to $16 trillion between 2010 and 2030, and more than $6 trillion annually after that, if a collective failure to respond is not addressed.
Making Sense with Sam Harris
In this episode Sam Harris speaks with Johann Hari about his books Chasing the Scream and Lost Connections. Johann Hari is the New York Times bestselling author of Chasing the Scream, which is being adapted into a feature film. He was twice named "Newspaper Journalist of the Year" by Amnesty International UK.
New York Times
by Pamela Paul
“It's especially important that kids get bored — and be allowed to stay bored — when they're young. That it not be considered “a problem” to be avoided or eradicated by the higher-ups, but instead something kids grapple with on their own."
Washington Post - Opinion
When my dad connected our family computer to the Internet in 1992, all I saw were green letters on a black screen. He tried to explain what was so amazing about the Internet: “You can find out what the weather is like in Beijing,” he said. “Or you can download ‘The Apology of Socrates’ for free. The entire text!”
Time
By Jamie Ducharme
If you’re waiting for brilliance to strike, try getting bored first. That’s the takeaway of a study published recently in the journal Academy of Management Discoveries, which found that boredom can spark individual productivity and creativity.
GQ
By Clay Skipper
Remember when you were a kid and you used to say, “Mom, I’m booored,” and she’d tell you to go entertain yourself? Maybe you don’t. Maybe you weren’t as whiny as me. Or maybe you were born sometime in the last two decades(ish), and had a childhood that perpetually involved a screen. But there was a time before the iPhone (and after the Industrial Revolution, which, really, gave birth to leisure time) when we humans desperately tried to avoid the dark embrace of boredom. Having nothing to do meant spending time alone with your own thoughts. Which: Ew.
New York Times
By Nellie Bowles
A wariness that has been slowly brewing is turning into a regionwide consensus: The benefits of screens as a learning tool are overblown, and the risks for addiction and stunting development seem high. The debate in Silicon Valley now is about how much exposure to phones is O.K.
Thrive Global
By Jason M. Kingdon
It’s time to shut down all your phones and electronic gadgets. The thought of having to do this would most likely cause a mix of strong emotions in many people today. Today’s generation have become too dependent on all digital devices, from their smartphones to their laptops and gaming consoles. This brought the attention of mental health experts to the concept of digital health and wellness.
USA Today - Opinion
By Pete Ingram-Cauchi
Enough of the hand-wringing; tech is here to stay. We can teach kids to use social media more productively, and be more responsible about our own use.
New York Post
In August 2016, I wrote an editorial for The Post about “digital heroin,” where I compared the addictive potential of screens — video games, social media, smart phones — to that of a drug like heroin.
The article hit a nerve. Six million views later, the term “digital heroin” has entered the popular culture.
Forbes
Smartphones have clearly become an indispensable part of our lives and society, keeping us connected and aware of minute-to-minute breaking news, weather systems, even changes in marital status of pop icons and celebrities.
Psychology Today
Perhaps the most common question I get in all my talks to parents and families around the country is What should I do when my kid says he’s bored and I don’t want to give him the device?
Just this week, a mom told me that her son is always asking her What’s next? I’m bored, what should I do next? This mom, like most parents these days, feels a tremendous pressure to occupy her son’s every moment, to urgently get rid of his boredom and provide him with activities to quell his what’s next? plea.
Rewire
By Marguerite Darlington
Let’s say you’re having one of “those” days at work (you know the type of day I’m talking about) and you find yourself thinking, “I can’t wait to get home to my friends/partner/family so that I can be with the people that I truly care about.”
But what do you actually do when you get home? Statistics say, you probably spend most of that time on one or more of your digital devices.
TED Talks
Do you sometimes have your most creative ideas while folding laundry, washing dishes or doing nothing in particular? It's because when your body goes on autopilot, your brain gets busy forming new neural connections that connect ideas and solve problems. Learn to love being bored as Manoush Zomorodi explains the connection between spacing out and creativity.
Thrive Global
By Alec Sears
It seems that boredom has nearly reached extinction. With digital devices always in hand, we are constantly connected to news, entertainment, and social interaction without having to make extra time in our schedules. This ability to easily absorb stimulation has left us with a hypersensitivity to empty time—driving us to fill every moment with something in a desperate attempt to avoid the profound discomfort of boredom.
New York Post
As for the notion that a screen device somehow leads to better educational outcomes, there has been a growing mountain of research indicating just the opposite. For example:
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said in a 2015 report that heavy users of computers in the classroom “do a lot worse in most learning outcomes.”
New York Post
Experienced sailors, Barbara McVeigh and her husband exposed their children to the natural beauty near their home in Marin County, Calif. — boating, camping and adventuring in the great outdoors. None of this stopped her 9-year-old son from falling down the digital rabbit hole.
New York Post
Susan* bought her 6-year-old son John an iPad when he was in first grade. “I thought, ‘Why not let him get a jump on things?’ ” she told me during a therapy session. John’s school had begun using the devices with younger and younger grades — and his technology teacher had raved about their educational benefits — so Susan wanted to do what was best for her sandy-haired boy who loved reading and playing baseball.
Becoming Minimalist
By Joshua Becker
“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” —Anne Lamott
Technology has some wonderful benefits. I use it almost every day. And I would never, ever argue against the responsible use of it.
However, that being said, it is becoming increasingly obvious that our world is developing an unhealthy attachment to it:
Independent
"I'm bored!"
Never will you hear more exasperation in a child's voice than when they utter these words.
When we were kids, the very thought of being bored seemed insufferable.
But now, as adults, we've got so much going on in our lives — so many distractions, responsibilities, and technology at our fingertips to amuse ourselves with — that boredom just doesn't seem like an option anymore.
Fast Company
By Elizabeth Segran
We feel guilty that we’re constantly plugged in.
We sense that our smartphones are making us less focused, that constantly checking our email and Twitter is making us less productive, and more disconnected from our real lives. But what do we really knowabout how our devices are affecting us? We have plenty of anecdotes, but the science of how always-on technology impacts human behavior is still in its infancy.
The New York Times
By Jane E. Brody
Excessive use of computer games among young people in China appears to be taking an alarming turn and may have particular relevance for American parents whose children spend many hours a day focused on electronic screens. The documentary “Web Junkie,” to be shown next Monday on PBS, highlights the tragic effects on teenagers who become hooked on video games, playing for dozens of hours at a time often without breaks to eat, sleep or even use the bathroom. Many come to view the real world as fake.
New York Times
By Nick Bilton
When Steve Jobs was running Apple, he was known to call journalists to either pat them on the back for a recent article or, more often than not, explain how they got it wrong. I was on the receiving end of a few of those calls. But nothing shocked me more than something Mr. Jobs said to me in late 2010 after he had finished chewing me out for something I had written about an iPad shortcoming.
The New York Times - Movie Review
By A.O. Scott
In the course of procrastinating over a deadline — I mean conducting research for this review — I typed “Is Internet addiction real” into a Google window and received 29 million results and no conclusive answer. Some experts think the addiction model fits compulsive, time-sucking online behavior perfectly, while others are skeptical. After a while, I stopped reading to check for Twitter updates and take a quiz or two, but two hours later, I’m not ready to admit that I have a problem.
Psychology Today
The modern concept of boredom goes back to the 19th century. For Erich Fromm and other thinkers, boredom was a response to industrial society, in which people are required to engage in alienated labor, and to the erosion of traditional structures of meaning.
THE ATLANTIC
By Robinson Meyer
As I sit down at the table, move my napkin to my lap, and put my phone on the table face-down. I am at a restaurant, I am relaxed, and I am about to start lying to myself. I’m not going to check my phone, I tell myself. (My companion’s phone has appeared face-down on the table, too.) I’m just going to have this right here in case something comes up.
Of course, something will not come up. But over the course of the next 90 minutes I will check my phone for texts, likes, and New York Times push alerts at every pang of boredom, anxiety, relaxation, satiety, frustration, or weariness. I will check it in the bathroom and when I return from the bathroom. I don’t really enjoy this, but it is very interesting, even if some indignant and submerged part of my psyche moans that I am making myself dumber every time I look at it. As, in fact, I am.