At the dawn of 2026, social media influencers at home and abroad proclaimed it the year of the "analog lifestyle," a call to reduce digital connectivity as smart tech and screen time dominate a person's attention span. Selly Tan, an influencer from California, said people are "craving something real again," and vowed to print her photos, read more books and magazines and take up hobbies that don't need Wi-Fi.
On a recent trip, my daughter and I were tossing her stuffed animal around the hotel room. The toy spun around near the ceiling and came to rest on the corner of the TV, high above our heads. My daughter pointed and tried to explain where the animal landed, on the, the, the ... she didn't have the word for "TV." Yep, we had to tell our 4-year-old what that big, black rectangle was called.
I thought: Wait a minute, I can't just start a 16-year-old on antidepressants,' says Chatterjee. He wanted to understand what was going on in the boy's life. They talked for a while, and Chatterjee asked him about his screen use, which turned out to be high. I said: I think your screen use, particularly in the evenings, might be impacting your mental wellbeing.'
Parents tell me this all the time, often with a mix of frustration and worry: My child just can't focus the way I could at their age. School feels harder. Emotions escalate faster. Distraction seems constant. But attention isn't a moral trait. It isn't a virtue some children have and others lack. Attention is a cognitive capacity-and it is deeply shaped by the conditions surrounding a child: sleep, stress, sensory overload, and the environment in which we're asking focus to happen.
Blindness is a very scary disability, says Prof Lauren Ayton, deputy director of the Centre for Eye Research Australia at the University of Melbourne. But people don't realise actually about 90% of vision loss can be prevented or treated. And like many other problems, keeping the eyes healthy so often comes down to good diet, keeping active, and regular check-ups.
Parents who shove tablets or phones in their kids' faces. Kids nowadays need to learn how to entertain themselves and regulate their emotions rather than mindlessly scroll at 2 years old. I personally think parents who do this are taking the lazy way out and are just allowing the tablet to parent for them; there is no discussion or creativity taking place. When I was a kid, I always had books, coloring books, sudoku, crosswords, and word searches with me everywhere I went as entertainment, and I think these options are a better alternative.
mobile phones were far from universal and our social lives were mostly physical and local. In the 25 years since, technology has changed how we live in profound ways. Most people check their phone within minutes of waking and return to it on average 186 times a day. Computers and the systems that sit behind them mediate every aspect of modern life, shaping how we move through the world.
