Nearly two decades after the arrival of smartphones, society is grappling with a problem that has grown worse over time: People love their phones so much that they can\u2019t put them down.<\/p>\n
Schools all over the globe, citing lower academic performance from digital distraction, are banning the devices from classrooms<\/a>. Thousands of lawsuits have accused tech companies of designing phone apps to be addictive, including a recent case in California, where a jury found Meta and Google to be liable<\/a> for causing harm. Widespread concern over phone dependence has even helped start a \u201cdumbphone\u201d renaissance<\/a> with people choosing minimalist handsets to escape our app-obsessed, brain-rotting culture<\/a>.<\/p>\n And yet, as much as older adults complain that today\u2019s youths are glued to screens, few recognize that they, too, are part of the problem. Parents trying to enforce screen-time rules on their children often fail to abide by similar restrictions for themselves. (Counting hours of screen time, it turns out, isn\u2019t a great solution anyway, and there are more useful steps.) So the scrolling continues.<\/p>\n But enough about our problems. What are the solutions? I interviewed experts, including professors who offered research-backed techniques to curb problematic phone use. They suggested remedies such as coming up with a media consumption plan for the whole family and enforcing screen-free zones throughout the house.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s what to know.<\/p>\n Assess the problem.<\/p>\n First, it\u2019s important to assess whether you or your child is simply a person who uses the phone a lot or a person with behavior that could be considered addictive.<\/p>\n Jason Nagata, an associate professor of pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, drew a parallel to substance abuse. Plenty of people enjoy the occasional drink, but the behavior becomes problematic when it begins to impair their social lives, affect their relationships or hurt their work.<\/p>\n The same types of red flags can apply to phone use. If a person is spending most of his or her time scrolling through social media apps instead of making friends, that could be a sign of a phone problem. Or if your child\u2019s grades are slipping because he or she is scrolling through social media instead of studying, it may be time to consider intervening.<\/p>\n Come up with a family media plan.<\/p>\n As is often the case, household behavior starts with the adults in the room.<\/p>\n One study, led by Dr. Nagata, found that higher media use among parents was linked to more problematic phone use in their adolescent children. And for younger people who appeared to be addicted to their phones, the health problems cascaded: They were more likely to show symptoms of depression, attention deficit disorder, suicidal behavior and sleep disturbance.<\/p>\n On the flip side, studies have also found that problematic phone use among younger people was significantly reduced when parents set limits on the family\u2019s phone use in certain situations, such as during bedtime and mealtime, Dr. Nagata said. Children slept better when phones were kept out of the bedroom, and they tended not to binge eat when the devices were kept out of the dining room.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s important that parents practice what they preach,\u201d Dr. Nagata said. \u201cIf you make rules about phones at the dinner table, you have to follow the rules.\u201d<\/p>\n So come up with a family media plan. This could be a dynamic plan that varies throughout the week. For instance, the rules could be more rigid on weekdays \u2014 no phones at the dining table on school days \u2014 but loosened on weekends to let teenagers make plans to go out with friends.<\/p>\n Coming up with a robust family media plan is easier said than done because adults typically struggle with balancing home life with the demands of the office. Dr. Nagata confessed that if he had to break his own rule and use his phone at the dinner table, he first communicated to his family that he was on call for work.<\/p>\n Think less about time and more about content.<\/p>\n For much of the smartphone era, people concerned about phone use focused on screen time \u2014 the hours spent on their devices \u2014 as a metric to determine if they were addicted. But academics now generally agree that screen time is a dated concept because not all screen time is equal: A person could be spending lots of hours each day writing work-related messages or reading a book on the phone \u2014 tasks that are not problematic.<\/p>\n