“I felt so lonely… I could not sleep well without sharing or connecting to others,” a Chinese girl recalled. “Emptiness,” an Argentine boy moaned. “Emptiness overwhelms me.” A Ugandan teenager muttered, “I felt like there was a problem with me,” and an American college student whimpered, “I went into absolute panic mode.” These are but a few of the lamentations plucked from one thousand student participants in an international study of media use that spanned ten countries and five continents. They had been asked to abstain from all digital media for a mere twenty-four hours, and the experience
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