Comes with the coffee....
"More than half of teens ‘addicted’ to phones, poll says" by Isaac Feldberg Globe Correspondent May 03, 2016
The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. And that’s exactly what US teens are doing in a new poll on smartphone use, with more than half of those surveyed saying they feel “addicted” to their mobile devices.
When first reading this I noted in the margin of the paper that it is not just teens.
Fortunately, I have no such inclination regarding this particular product.
The poll, conducted by nonprofit group Common Sense Media and published Tuesday, surveyed more than 1,200 teens and their parents in the hope of highlighting the impact media and technology can have on parent-child relationships. In the survey, 50 percent of teens and 59 percent of their parents agreed the teens were hooked on their phones.
Younger children fare little better. Kids between ages 8 and 12 reported spending nearly six hours a day plugged in, while those 13 to 18 clocked in at nine hours a day, according to Common Sense.
This is $urprising in our agenda-driven culture and world?
It's part of an actual plan to atomize us all even in the physical presence of others. They aren't listening to you when they are checking their phones. That's why I'm petting cats.
Parents didn’t escape criticism, either. Twenty-eight percent of teens faulted parents for checking their phones too often, and 27 percent of parents also acknowledged their own addictive use of mobile devices. Alarmingly, the majority of parents copped to checking their devices while behind the wheel. More than half of the teens said they’d seen their parents do so.
Yesterday, in traffic, light changes and I hear a "honk, honk." Car crosses in front of me with woman on her phone. Right in the middle of town.
Despite both groups claiming an awareness of excessive mobile device usage, conflict over the devices continues to plague many households. About a third of those polled noted daily arguments over screen time. Ironically, the survey points to many of those arguments arising from a breakdown in communication; 77 percent of parents said their teens seemed distracted by devices even during family time, and 41 percent of teens knocked their parents for similar preoccupation.
“What we’ve discovered is that kids and parents feel addicted to their mobile devices,” said Common Sense CEO James Steyer in a statement. “It is causing daily conflict in homes, and . . . families are concerned about the consequences.”
It's the old luxuries become necessities thing, the ruling cla$$es have been doing it for centuries, and it acts as a tracker and data collector for the government -- all while convincing you how great it is.
That's some trick, man.
In a separate review, Common Sense concluded that multitasking with mobile devices impairs individuals’ learning abilities, including their capacity for memorization and effective work habits.
That's okay. ADD needs drugs to treat. Cha-ching.
In addition, such habits get in the way of face-to-face conversation, particularly handicapping children’s ability to develop empathy.
No kidding.
Steyer added that he hopes the new poll will help equip parents with the necessary information to make responsible decisions about phone use.
Ellen Wartella, director of Northwestern University’s Center on Media and Human Development, said in a statement that the results of the poll should worry parents, but she praised the survey for raising important issues.
“It is a good thing that parents and educators are focused on kids’ social and emotional learning and asking the right questions — many of which we don’t know the answers to yet,” she said. “We need to devote more time and research to understanding the impact of media use on our kids and then adjust our behavior accordingly.”
Yeah, I gue$$.
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Related: Text Trap
Don't fall for it.
"Snapchat at 107 mph? Lawsuit blames teen (and Snapchat) for crash" by Katie Rogers New York Times May 03, 2016
NEW YORK — Even in the age of social media, this particular selfie seemed extreme: a teenager strapped into a gurney, with blood running down her forehead, somehow taking the time to tap out a message to her Snapchat friends: “Lucky to be alive.”
The selfie quickly went viral and is a component of a lawsuit filed by a Georgia man accusing the teenager, Christal McGee, of recklessly using Snapchat while driving over 100 miles per hour and slamming into his vehicle last year, leaving him with severe injuries. He is also suing Snapchat, alleging negligence.
After the accident, lawyers for the man, Wentworth Maynard, distributed the photo of McGee on the gurney, leading police to open an investigation into the crash.
According to a police report, McGee, 18 at the time, was driving with three friends in a Mercedes-Benz around 10 p.m. on Sept. 10 in Hampton, Ga. She and her friends maintain that Maynard’s vehicle drifted into their lane, and then McGee crashed into his car. She lost control and ran off the road.
Maynard sustained a “severe traumatic brain injury,” his lawyer said. The police were not able to interview him that night because of his injuries, they said. Neither driver was immediately cited for a traffic violation.
Maynard and his wife filed the lawsuit on April 19. It says McGee began using a Snapchat “lens” that clocks the speed of vehicles, attempting to push her car to higher and higher speeds.
An accident reconstruction determined that McGee was driving 107 miles per hour, the lead lawyer in the lawsuit, Michael L. Neff, wrote on his website. He also published photos of the teen’s selfie and of both cars after the accident, showing the white Mercedes McGee had been driving with a smashed front end and Maynard’s Mitsubishi with a demolished left side and back end.
On Monday, Neff declined to say how he had obtained the Snapchat selfie.
“Wentworth Maynard began a five-week stay in the intensive-care unit, where he was treated for a severe traumatic brain injury,” Neff wrote on his website. Maynard and his wife are suing Snapchat and McGee to recoup all costs associated with the accident and his injuries.
The crash has become a high-profile case in the debate over distracted driving. Because of the dangers, experts are pushing to treat it — and, in some cases, penalize it — like drunken driving.
“It’s dangerous, devastating, crippling, and it’s a killer and still socially acceptable,” Candace Lightner, founder of Mothers Against Drunk Driving and a founder of Partnership for Distraction-Free Driving, told The Times.
War's based on lies are praised, but I don't want to profane the ceremony of grief with anger.
Attempts to reach McGee were unsuccessful. Last week, her grandfather, James McGee, said the teenager had also been seriously injured and that her family believed Maynard was responsible for the accident.
“He pulled his vehicle out in front of them,” James McGee said, “not giving them enough time to stop. Now they’re trying to lay the rap on her.”
James McGee said that since the accident, Christal McGee had graduated from high school and wanted to join the Air Force, but her plans had been delayed because of the crash. She is working part time, he said.
Her grandfather added: “It’s a big setup for somebody who is young and innocent.”
I don't know, and even worse, I don't care about this one-day wonder.
Maynard’s lawsuit accuses Snapchat of motivating drivers to use the filter to receive a “trophy,” one of the app’s badges given to users after they complete a task. According to Snapchat, the service has never offered trophies for high-speed driving.
A Snapchat spokesman e-mailed this statement: “No Snap is more important than someone’s safety. We actively discourage our community from using the speed filter while driving, including by displaying a ‘Do NOT Snap and Drive’ warning message in the app itself.”
Chief Mark Harris of the Lovejoy Police Department, one of several law enforcement agencies that operate along the road on which the crash occurred, said on Monday that Christal McGee hasn’t been charged with speeding partly because there had been conflicting reports from her passengers about how fast she was driving. But the police have opened an investigation into the crash after reports said that McGee had been using Snapchat, Harris said.
There is no love or joy left reading this.
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Well, it's off to you-know-where to get you-know-what.
