Fighting screen addiction

浙江寧波市鄞州高級中學 洪 帆

我們的生活越來越離不開智能手機，有些人已經到了上癮的地步，連走路的時候都要玩手機。這帶來了一些社會問題，也促使一些科技公司采取行動，它們正從技術層面入手來使人們擺脫手機上癮。

題材 科技與生活 體裁 說明文文章詞數359 難度 ★★★ 建議用時7′

海詞積累

1.instinctively adv.本能地

2.notification n.通知；通告；告示

3.empower v.授權；增加（某人的）自主權

You see your phone light up from the corner of your eye and instinctively reach for it.What started as a simple notification turns into an hour-long session as you swipe through rows of notifications through 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.

However,that's starting to change,and we could be at the turning point in how software is designed. Apple and Google are adding new features aimed at limiting phone usage, and apps like Instagram are rolling out features intended to help you manage your time with the app better.

Apple was likely encouraged to action after two major investors,Jana Partners and California State Teachers' Retirement System, urged the company to help fight phone addiction in children in an open letter to the board of directors at Apple earlier this year.

Apple responded with the introduction of tools in its new iOS 12 operating system aimed at informing and empowering users to better manage their smartphone usage and parental controls that allow parents to better monitor and control their children's phone time.

Google has included similar tools in the upcoming version of Android Pie that it's dubbed “Digital Wellbeing”.The company also offers a“Wind Down”feature to set at bedtime,which automatically puts the phone into“Do Not Disturb” mode and puts the entire screen in grayscale mode.No notifications will show up on your phone,and losing all color on-screen is certainly an incentive（激勵）to put your phone away.

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.”

——From CNN

Reading Check

Are you also a heavy cellphone addict？What are you going to do to fight screen addiction?

Language Study

Difficult sentence

What started as a simple notification turns into an hour-long session as you swipe through rows of notifications through endless social media feeds.當你在社交媒體無休止的推送中瀏覽一排排通知時，一個簡單的通知就變成了一個小時的會議。

【點石成金】本句中What引導的是一個主語從句，并在句中作主語。as引導的是一個時間狀語從句。句中的動詞swipe原意為“揮起（物體）擊打；刷（磁卡）”，用在此處生動地描述了手機使用者快速瀏覽推送信息的行為。