You see your phone light up from the corner of your eye and quickly reach for it. What started as a simple notification(通知) check snowballs into an hour-long period as you look through rows of notifications and endless social media feeds.
This is by design. Tech companies such as Google and Facebook have spent years working to make consumer technology as addictive as possible. After all, time spent with their products could equal big profits for the company.
However, that's starting to change. Apple takes action with the introduction of tools in its new operating system aimed at informing users to better manage their smartphone usage and parental controls that allow parents to better monitor and control their children's phone time.
Google also offers a "Wind Down" feature to set at bedtime, which automatically puts the phone into "Do Not Disturb". No notifications will show up on your phone, and losing all colour on-screen is certainly a cause to put your phone away.
There are still no clear guidelines on what causes tech addiction, but it's a growing concern likely on the minds of parents everywhere as they see their kids' faces constantly glued inches away from a screen. And everywhere you go, you're all but guaranteed to see people buried in their phones.
Apart from Apple and Google, Facebook deserves a fair amount of blame, as CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged in a blog post earlier this year. The social network announced plans to roll out changes aimed at making interactions more meaningful.
"By making these changes, I expect the time people spend on Facebook will go down, "Zuckerberg said."But I also expect the time you do spend on Facebook will be more valuable. And if we do the right thing, I believe that will be good for our community and our business over the long term too. "
