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Title

Article: Hanging Up

Impact Score

4 / 10

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Summary: The article examines the persistent challenge of reducing smartphone dependency, noting that while legislative and technological solutions like classroom phone bans and locking devices have had limited success, some individuals are turning to extreme digital detoxes. It suggests that more effective than deprivation is replacing phone use with fulfilling activities, framing the goal not as being anti-technology but as pro-community and presence.

Main Topics: The societal struggle with smartphone overuse, historical context of internet addiction, mixed results of current remediation efforts, and strategies for fostering real-world connection and presence.

Original URL

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/07/briefing/hanging-up.html

Source Feed

NYT > World News

Published Date

2026-03-07 11:31

Fetched Date

2026-03-07 09:00

Processed Date

2026-03-07 09:01

Embedding Status

Present

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Not Clustered

Raw Extracted Content

The Morning
If decreasing dependence on our phones feels impossible, we might benefit from considering what we’d want to fill the space that they occupy.
In 1996, my colleague Pam Belluck wrote about a 17-year-old so addicted to the internet that he spent “more than six hours a day online and more than an hour reading his email.” More than an hour on email! It seems quaint now. Pam documented the phenomenon of “netaholism” and the support groups that were emerging to help people resist the whine of their dial-up modems.
Here in 2026, our efforts at remediation of our own screen dependence are meeting with mixed results. Most states now have laws to keep phones out of classrooms, but students are destroying the lockable pouches where their devices are stowed. A Wirecutter writer tried to downgrade to a BlackBerry, only to find that life without maps and banking apps was unrealistic.
But! There’s hope! Even if that hope comes via methods that seem extreme. “What used to be innocent enough — checking social media to see what our friends were up to — has escalated into a battle of wills in which there can emerge only one victor: man or phone,” my colleague Madison Malone Kircher wrote recently. She reported on Brick, a device that locks down your phone and requires you to tap it against a plastic square in order to reinstate access to certain apps. Desperate times, desperate measures.
People are repairing to the woods, building full-scale replicas of Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond — no plumbing, no electricity, definitely no Wi-Fi. One modern transcendentalist’s dwelling has just a kerosene lamp, a desk and research materials to keep him from using Google. “It naturally makes me not want to check email impulsively,” he told The Times.
Sometimes it feels as if our phones are our captors, and we’re in perpetual search for a device or a detox that will release us. We’re constantly negotiating: I’ll keep my devices out of the bedroom. I’ll wait 15 minutes after waking before checking social media.
No matter how reasonable our efforts to decrease dependency, however, there’s frequently an element of deprivation involved. More effective, perhaps, are solutions that fill the empty space. I have a friend who reads in the morning before checking her phone, another who meditates. Replacing checking your phone with something else seems like a step in the right direction. You can’t have your phone for this period of time, but you can have this other very satisfying activity. It sounds like the way you’d bargain with a child, but for many of us, our relationship with our phones is not so different from a child’s with a blankie.
My colleague Callie Holtermann reported recently on a group of students at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, N.M., who undertook a six-day tech fast. This led them to insights that seem elementary to anyone who remembers life before phones, but profound when you consider how commonplace it has become to be present but not really there.
“When I’m in a situation where I have nothing to do, I cannot find someone to hang out with other than the people who are around me,” one student reported. “In not being able to communicate over distance, I have to be more invested in communicating where I am.” It seems simple: communicating where we are. But how often are we truly invested in that? How often can we say we’re not at least partly invested in communicating elsewhere, only half-aware of what’s happening before us?
The organizer of the tech fast told Callie about a previous project to establish a tech-free dorm at St. John’s. Over time, the project’s focus shifted from being “anti-tech” to “pro-community.” Yes! That feels like an important distinction as we try to unshackle ourselves from constant phone checking. Rather than frame our plight as what we’re against, rather than focusing on what we are cutting out, we might frame it around what we’re seeking: community, connection, presence. It’s easy to list all the ways in which screen dependence detracts from our lives, but we don’t often articulate what becomes possible on the other side.
I’ve taken to picturing moments and events without phones. What would this scene look like if we couldn’t beat a digital retreat as soon as the conversation lagged? What would this car ride, this bar, this meeting, this lying-around-on-a-Saturday-afternoon look like if no one were checking their device? First, it feels a little weird — all that empty space. But then you get to imagine what would fill it.
It’s an interesting thought exercise. What do we want our lives to look like? How do we bring the benefits of the cabin in the woods to our everyday routines? As a scholar of American Transcendentalism put it to The Times, “The whole point for Thoreau was a deliberate experiment in simplifying our wants — what we think we want — and trying to get to the heart of what it means to live a full life.”
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The Israeli military said it had launched another broad wave of strikes on Iranian government infrastructure. Soon after, the Iranian state media said Israeli strikes had hit a major domestic airport in Tehran.
U.S. officials believe Russia has provided Iran with wartime intelligence, including satellite imagery showing the locations of ships and military personnel.
Wars often become less popular over time. But Trump is the first modern U.S. president to take the country to war without public support to begin with, Peter Baker writes.
In the video below, Malachy Browne of our Visual Investigations team explains what we’ve learned about the airstrike on an elementary school in Iran, which officials say killed at least 175 people.
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Jeffrey Clark, an architect of many of the Trump administration’s most consequential climate rollbacks, has left his position as the White House regulatory czar.
A Democratic senator said he would press for a perjury investigation into Kristi Noem, the fired homeland security secretary, saying Democrats had evidence she lied under oath.
The executive director of the National Symphony Orchestra is stepping down, dealing another blow to the Kennedy Center. A Democratic lawmaker asked a court to block Trump’s plan to close the center for two years.
Dr. Vinay Prasad, who oversaw vaccines at the F.D.A. and limited access to Covid shots, is resigning from the agency.
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Local and national leaders, including three former presidents, attended the memorial service for the Rev. Jesse Jackson on the South Side of Chicago. “He paved the road for so many others to follow,” Barack Obama said.
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Hiring fizzled in February, a sign of unexpected weakness in the labor market. Employers slashed jobs across nearly all major sectors, and unemployment ticked up. (Stocks fell to the lowest level this year.)
TRAVEL IN A WAR ZONE
Travel in the Middle East has been largely paralyzed since the war began. More than 29,000 flights to or from the region have been canceled, and some airspace is still closed. Iran’s retaliatory attacks have hit hotels in Dubai and the airport in Abu Dhabi, causing anxiety among those trying to leave.
Flights are slowly becoming more available, but thousands of travelers remain stranded. Since Middle Eastern airports are a linchpin of international travel, the disruptions have also rippled to more distant places, such as Australia, India and Indonesia, that rely on connections.
We’ve heard from more than 100 readers affected by the disruptions, many of whom have improvised expensive, often complex itineraries to escape the conflict zone. Jay Miller, a 45-year-old doctor from New Orleans who got stuck in Qatar, described his planning as “a surreal calculus,” weighing the risks of missiles against his evaporating flight options. He eventually hired a car to drive to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where he boarded a flight to Ethiopia. If all goes well, he will be back home today.
European countries, including Italy, France and Britain, arranged flights beginning early this week to evacuate their citizens. The U.S. government had been urging travelers to call a hotline, which mainly provided basic information about security conditions and commercial flights. Yesterday, though, the State Department began offering charter flights — including one in a New England Patriots plane.
— Christine Chung, travel reporter
CULTURE CALENDAR
🎬 ❤️ “Reminders of Him” (Friday): For all the ladies who love to cry into their popcorn — and the gentleman beside them, protecting the Raisinets — a new movie adapted from a novel by Colleen Hoover, the reigning queen of anguished romance, has arrived. Following “It Ends With Us” and “Regretting You,” this film stars Maika Monroe as Kenna, a formerly incarcerated woman hoping to reunite with the child she surrendered, and Tyriq Withers as Ledger, the broad-shouldered bar owner who may help her. (Hoover has a way with names.) Vanessa Caswill directs from a script by Hoover and her producing partner Lauren Levine. Hoover’s novels are feelings-forward, high-drama affairs. With any luck the drama this time will confine itself to the screen.
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Fixer-upper: Americans are on track to spend a record amount on home renovations this year. The reasons are both practical and emotional.
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Read this weekend’s issue of T: The New York Times Style Magazine.
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How to avoid counterfeit beauty products
I recently spent months immersed in the confusing and shockingly pervasive world of counterfeit beauty products, which entailed sending a dozen suspicious products to a lab for testing. Every single one had a problem. How can you avoid fakes? First, and most important, buy from brands’ own websites or authorized retailers. If you’re considering a third-party purchase, be wary of too-good-to-be-true prices (especially anything discounted by more than a third), and check the seller’s one-star reviews for customer complaints of counterfeiting. — Rose Maura Lorre
GAME OF THE WEEK
World Baseball Classic: Normally, at this time of the year, only the most die-hard baseball fans are tuning in to watch spring training. But every few years, the World Baseball Classic returns, and with it the possibility of playoff-level thrills before the daffodils have bloomed.
This is the sixth Classic. Japan has won the tournament three times, and the U.S. and the Dominican Republic once each. This year’s U.S. and Dominican rosters, in particular, will be familiar to M.L.B. fans. The American team has added two of the best pitchers in the league — Tarik Skubal and Paul Skenes — to a lineup that includes Aaron Judge, Cal Raleigh and Bryce Harper. And the Dominican hitters are, quite possibly, even better, including Juan Soto, Fernando Tatis Jr., Manny Machado and Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
Pool play runs through the week, and the knockout stage begins Friday. Games to check out this weekend: Britain vs. the U.S., tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on Fox; and the Netherlands vs. the Dominican Republic, tomorrow at noon on Fox.
NOW TIME TO PLAY
Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was upfield.
Take the news quiz to see how well you followed this week’s headlines.
And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Crossplay, Connections and Strands.
Thanks for spending part of your weekend with The Times. — Melissa
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Melissa Kirsch covers wellness and lifestyle and writes The Morning newsletter on Saturdays.
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