"Recently, my son's middle school offered a reward for perfect attendance: a bus trip to Los Angeles for a Clippers game, leaving immediately after school. I wanted to send him a little money for dinner. But because the arena is cashless, the school advised parents to load money on the students' smartphones instead. It's just one example of something that happens constantly now. After-school plans live in group texts."
"I'm addicted to my phone - and not like a character on "The Diplomat," where the fate of the free world depends on my next text. I'm just your garden-variety doomscroller. I'm the kind of person who opens Instagram intending to check one thing, then emerges an hour later after watching a stranger redecorate a bathroom. The phone is like cigarettes for my eyes, and I can't stop lighting up."
Families face growing pressure to provide children with smartphones because schools, extracurriculars, and venues increasingly use mobile apps and cashless systems. Middle-school rewards, group texts, coaching apps and teacher messaging assume student access to phones for payments, scheduling and communication. Some parents resist giving an 11-year-old a cellphone to preserve unstructured childhood time while grappling with their own device dependence. A device-free backpacking trip produced relief from compulsive phone use, demonstrating the potential benefits of reduced connectivity. Restored service, however, triggered an immediate return to habitual checking, underscoring how pervasive and addictive smartphone use can be.
Read at Business Insider
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