Dear teachers and students, good morning. I'm Becky from 1902. I appreciate this opportunity to stand here, and today I'm going to talk about why children become addicted to smartphones and how to solve this problem. As you can tell, Nowadays, everyone cannot live without a phone. If you happen to check the screen time on your phone over the weekend, you may find an insane number of over 8 hours per day.

It is true that phones can be a two-edged sword. Most of the time, using phones is an efficient way to help us study. Nevertheless, phones can become addictive when children spend a large amount of time on apps like TikTok or Instagram. Research shows that browsing short videos is one of the most common things for the young generation to relax and kill time. Those apps on the phone may distract our attention, and they never limit the time you spend on them, which means you can easily spend hours scrolling on your phone without a break. Some kids may have already been controlled by their phones. For instance, if they have difficult homework that's due within a day or two, they may choose to escape from reality and keep playing with their phone until a few hours before the deadline. That's how they get into this vicious cycle, preferring to stay in their comfort zone with their phones.

So how can we get away from phone addiction, or in other words, are there any methods to avoid that? From my perspective, the opposite side of being addicted to something is self-discipline. There are two ways to overcome this situation. The first method is to delete your most distracting apps. Which apps on your phone are distracting you most? You probably know the few apps you check most often. Delete those apps, and you will no longer waste time on them. How easy is that! The second method is to get help from others. For example, at school, we need to hand our phones to teachers, and we are not allowed to use mobile phones during study time. In addition, a few months ago, the government set a regulation about how children can only play mobile games on weekends during a specific time period. That's also a way to protect our young generations from the overuse of smartphones.

In conclusion, time is priceless and should not be wasted on meaningless short videos and apps. You can spend less time on your phone by turning off push notifications, deleting the most distracting apps, setting app limits, or leaving your phone in your bag. Smartphones can be excellent and helpful tools used for a variety of purposes. When you find yourself mindlessly scrolling through your phone, they become a distraction rather than an addition. Thank you.