Light Phone 2

The video below of the Light Phone 2 looks interesting. It is pretty much a phone that has a few functions: make calls, send and receive SMS, and has a contact list. There may be a few other features in there, but basically it has nothing addictive in there e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, etc. It just has useful tools in there.

Children Addicted to Smartphones

Today I went to Medicare to get a refund for a consultation with an oral surgeon. While there I noticed the place was packed with families. While waiting, I sat down next to a mother with two children, a boy and a girl. I noticed that both these children were playing games on their own smartphones. After getting my refund, I went to my father's house and passed an empty playground. When I arrived at my father's house, I noticed that all three children in his house were each playing games, one on a laptop, another on a desktop computer, and another on a smartphone. I can see the allure of these gadgets that double up as babysitters and as pacifiers. If children start to go wild and crazy, giving them a smartphone to play will make them completely silent.

I had lunch with my father and he brought along his five-year-old daughter who is my younger half-sister. We didn't know where to eat, but the little girl was insistent that we eat at McDonald's, and so off we went to McDonald's. When we got to McDonald's my half-sister was keen to play on the playground and even while she played on a playground for a while she made a new friend.

Gamers Find Gaps in China's Anti-Addiction Efforts

by Louisa Lim

Imagine this: You're playing your favorite Internet game and, suddenly, a warning flashes onto the screen. You've been playing for three hours, it says, so it's time to get some exercise. If you ignore it, the total points you've won in the past three hours will be halved. After five hours of uninterrupted play, your points will be wiped out.

That's the scenario in China, where anti-addiction software is supposed to protect gamers under the age of 18. But it hasn't been an unqualified success.

One weekday night, about 30 anxious parents sit on plastic chairs in a hall, listening intently to a speaker. She's introducing a weeklong camp designed to wean their children off Internet games.

"If I restrict him, he only plays games for two or three hours a day. If I let him do what he wants, he'd play from the morning until night," says one mother, describing her struggle to control her 14-year-old son's game-playing time.

China's one-child policy has indirectly led to this problem – spawning a generation of spoiled, but lonely, only children. The burden of parental expectation upon these children is often intense – as was once the case with another mother and her 18-year-old son. He now plays games for 10 hours a day.

From NPR. More at http://www.npr.org/...php?storyId=13897858