An increasing number of people, particularly teenagers, spend many hours each day looking at the screens of their phones and other devices, and many find it difficult to stop. What problems does this cause, and how can they be addressed?

It has become normal for people, and adolescents in particular, to spend the greater part of their waking hours staring at a screen, often unable to put their devices down even when they want to. This compulsive habit damages both individual wellbeing and social life, but a combination of personal discipline, parental guidance and corporate regulation could bring it under control. The most immediate casualties of screen addiction are physical and mental health. Hours of scrolling late into the night disrupt sleep, and sleep-deprived teenagers concentrate poorly, perform worse at school and become more vulnerable to anxiety and depression. Equally damaging is the effect on relationships: family members sit together in silence, each absorbed in a private digital world, while face-to-face conversation, the skill on which friendships and careers ultimately depend, quietly withers. There is also growing evidence that the constant stream of notifications fragments attention so severely that sustained, deep thought becomes genuinely difficult. Tackling the problem requires action on several fronts. At the individual level, simple habits such as keeping phones out of the bedroom and scheduling fixed offline hours have been shown to reduce usage dramatically. Parents can reinforce these habits by modelling sensible behaviour themselves rather than merely lecturing their children. More fundamentally, however, governments should oblige technology companies to disable the manipulative design features, such as endless scrolling, autoplay and streak rewards, that are deliberately engineered to keep users hooked. Just as regulators once forced tobacco firms to abandon marketing aimed at the young, they can compel app developers to put user welfare above engagement statistics. In conclusion, screen addiction erodes health, relationships and the capacity for deep thought, yet it is not an unsolvable problem. If individuals, parents and regulators each play their part, the next generation may learn to control its devices instead of being controlled by them.