Book

Smartphone Nation: Why We're All Addicted to Our Screens and What You and Your Family Can Do About It

May 2025 🇬🇧 Pan Macmillan

Smartphone Nation is UCL digital-humanities researcher Kaitlyn Regehr's 2025 book aimed at parents, educators, and policymakers navigating a phone-based childhood. Drawing on her own algorithm-amplification research, Regehr argues that not all screen time is equal: she proposes a 'digital nutrition' framework that ranks online activities from more passive, algorithm-driven consumption to more active creation and learning, and links heavy passive use to patterns she associates with reduced attention, poorer information judgment, and strained family relationships. The book explains how recommender systems are built to hold attention rather than serve users, walks through 'gaming your algorithm' techniques, and offers practical steps for building household media habits without treating all technology as equally harmful. TechKids Foundation includes it as an accessible synthesis of algorithm-literacy research for a general parent audience, not as a clinical guide.

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CITATION

Regehr, Kaitlyn. Smartphone Nation: Why We're All Addicted to Our Screens and What You and Your Family Can Do About It. Pan Macmillan, May 15, 2025.

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