News Investigation

NoMophobia Is Real: NIMHANS Launches a Helpline to Help You with Digital Detox

Nov 2022 🇮🇳 The South First

This South First article covers the November 2022 launch of a national digital-detox helpline run by NIMHANS's SHUT Clinic. Manoj Kumar Sharma, the clinic's coordinator, is quoted describing what he calls 'nomophobia' — anxiety about being without one's phone — and explaining that callers are guided toward a personalized reduction plan rather than total abstinence, since he considers complete technology cessation unrealistic for most people. He emphasizes identifying which specific apps or platforms are most problematic for an individual and setting concrete, gradually reduced time limits, describing consistency as the most important factor in a successful digital detox. TechKids Foundation cites this as a contemporaneous record of the helpline's launch and Sharma's own harm-reduction-oriented approach to problematic technology use.

VIEW SOURCE →
CITATION

"NoMophobia Is Real: NIMHANS Launches a Helpline to Help You with Digital Detox." The South First, November 22, 2022. https://thesouthfirst.com/health/nimhans-launches-a-helpline-to-help-you-with-digital-detox/

REPORT A PROBLEM WITH THIS ENTRY

RELATED EVIDENCE

Talk

The Inside Story of How Silicon Valley Rewired Our Brains — Offline with Jon Favreau

Two days before The Chaos Machine published, Max Fisher joined Jon Favreau's Offline podcast for a long-form conversation about what his interviews with researchers, psychologists, whistleblowers, and Silicon Valley executives suggested about social media's effects on attention, culture, and politics. Fisher walks through the arc his book traces — from the creation of the Facebook newsfeed to the 2016 U.S. election — and argues that the pattern of harms he documented abroad is linked to the platforms' structural, engagement-maximizing design rather than to isolated bad actors. The discussion focuses on how ranking systems that reward outrage are associated with shifts in what users see, share, and believe. TechKids Foundation includes this episode as Fisher's most extended launch-week interview aimed at a general audience.

Sep 2022 🇺🇸 Crooked Media
Talk

The Chaos Machine: How Social Media Rewired Our Brains and Our World — The Rich Roll Podcast #703

In this two-hour-plus episode of The Rich Roll Podcast, Max Fisher discusses the reporting behind The Chaos Machine: how he came to cover social media as an international-affairs story, the ways he argues algorithmic feeds are associated with shifts in users' moral judgments and tolerance for outrage, and research he cites linking recommendation systems to greater acceptance of misinformation and, in volatile settings, susceptibility to violence. Fisher describes engagement-driven design as functioning like a habit-forming product, and the conversation closes with practical strategies for reducing exposure — from disabling algorithmic feeds to muting engagement metrics. TechKids Foundation includes this episode because it pairs Fisher's investigative findings with the kind of concrete, family-usable mitigation steps the library's solutions tag exists to surface.

Sep 2022 🇺🇸 The Rich Roll Podcast
Talk

Numlock Sunday: Max Fisher on The Chaos Machine

In this Numlock Sunday edition, data-journalism newsletter author Walt Hickey interviews Max Fisher about The Chaos Machine, with the full conversation published as a transcript. Fisher walks through the quantitative research he leans on most, including a large deactivation experiment in which people who stayed off Facebook for four weeks reported wellbeing gains he characterizes as roughly a third the effect of going to therapy, alongside meaningful reductions in political polarization. He describes engagement mechanics modeled on intermittent rewards, and connects the amplification of outrage content to the real-world cases — Myanmar, Sri Lanka — from his reporting. Because it is text, the interview doubles as a citable, quotable digest of the book's evidence. TechKids Foundation includes it as the most data-forward of Fisher's launch interviews.

Sep 2022 🇺🇸 Numlock News
Talk

¿Cómo afectan las pantallas a tus hijos? (BBVA Aprendemos Juntos talk)

In this long-form filmed talk for Aprendemos Juntos 2030 — the Spanish-language education series produced by BBVA and distributed with El País — Michel Desmurget speaks for close to ninety minutes on how screens relate to children's development. The INSERM neuroscience research director argues that heavy recreational screen use is associated with weaker language, shorter attention, and disrupted sleep in children; contends that app and platform design is engineered to keep young users engaged; and dismisses the « digital natives » idea as a myth unsupported by the studies he reviews. He closes with his standing recommendations: little or no screen time in the early years, firm daily limits afterward, and reading as the leisure habit he says is most consistently associated with stronger cognitive and emotional development. TechKids includes it as his major Spanish-language talk, extending his French argument to a global audience.

Jun 2024 🇪🇸 BBVA Aprendemos Juntos 2030
Video

Le livre, seul « antidote » face aux écrans (France Inter grand entretien)

Two days after Faites-les lire! was published, Michel Desmurget returned to France Inter's weekend grand entretien, interviewed by Marion L'Hour and Ali Baddou. Where his 2019 appearance pressed the case that heavy recreational screen use is associated with weaker language, attention, and school outcomes, this interview argues the response: the INSERM neuroscience research director presents pleasure reading as the one everyday habit he says the literature most consistently associates with stronger language, concentration, general knowledge, and empathy in children — the « antidote », in his own deliberately pointed word, to the screen habits he criticizes. He urges parents to read aloud early, keep books visible at home, and defend reading time against recreational screen time. TechKids includes it as the broadcast companion to the Faites-les lire! entry: the same author moving from diagnosis to remedy.

Sep 2023 🇫🇷 France Inter (Radio France)
News Investigation

« C'est l'ensemble de notre humanité qui est impacté par les écrans » (Millénaire 3 interview)

Millénaire 3, the foresight publication of the Métropole de Lyon — the public authority of Desmurget's own home region, where his INSERM lab (Institut des sciences cognitives Marc Jeannerod) is based — published this extended interview by Cédric Polère in April 2024. Desmurget restates his synthesis in civic terms: heavy recreational screen use in children is, in the research he reviews, associated with weaker language, concentration, and school achievement, and he argues the erosion runs beyond test scores to empathy, attention, and shared culture — « l'ensemble de notre humanité ». He connects declining reading skill among French school-leavers to civic vulnerability, contending that citizens who read poorly are easier targets for misinformation, and again offers reading as the counter-habit. TechKids includes it as a rare local-government-published interview, showing his argument entering French public-policy discussion, not just media debate.

Apr 2024 🇫🇷 Millénaire 3 — Métropole de Lyon
STAY CURRENT

Get new evidence in your inbox.

A weekly digest of what we added — studies, laws, films, hearings. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.

SUBSCRIPTIONS PENDING — BUTTONDOWN ACCOUNT NOT CONNECTED

OR FOLLOW THE RSS FEED →