Fighting screen addiction

浙江宁波市鄞州高级中学 洪 帆

我们的生活越来越离不开智能手机，有些人已经到了上瘾的地步，连走路的时候都要玩手机。这带来了一些社会问题，也促使一些科技公司采取行动，它们正从技术层面入手来使人们摆脱手机上瘾。

题材 科技与生活 体裁 说明文文章词数359 难度 ★★★ 建议用时7′

海词积累

1.instinctively adv.本能地

2.notification n.通知；通告；告示

3.empower v.授权；增加（某人的）自主权

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（激励）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.当你在社交媒体无休止的推送中浏览一排排通知时，一个简单的通知就变成了一个小时的会议。

【点石成金】本句中What引导的是一个主语从句，并在句中作主语。as引导的是一个时间状语从句。句中的动词swipe原意为“挥起（物体）击打；刷（磁卡）”，用在此处生动地描述了手机使用者快速浏览推送信息的行为。