Smartphones

July 18, 2023

How Location-Sharing Apps Like Find My Friends Came to Represent Affection

To a generation who grew up alongside the internet, location-sharing feels less like a privacy threat and more like an expression of affection. It started because […]
June 26, 2023

A Flip Phone Keeps Me Sane

In danger of scrolling her life away, a writer gets a vintage cellphone. I started flirting with the idea of getting a flip phone while watching […]
January 7, 2023

The Hottest Gen Z Gadget Is a 20-Year-Old Digital Camera

Young people are opting for point-and-shoots and blurry photos. Last spring, Anthony Tabarez celebrated prom like many of today’s high schoolers: dancing the night away and […]
December 15, 2022

‘Luddite’ Teens Don’t Want Your Likes

On a brisk recent Sunday, a band of teenagers met on the steps of Central Library on Grand Army Plaza in Brooklyn to start the weekly […]
September 1, 2022

An Apple Watch for Your 5-Year-Old? More Parents Say Yes.

Florian Fangohr waffled for about a year over whether to buy an Apple Watch SE as a gift. The smart watch cost $279, and he worried […]
June 23, 2022

The Rise of the 0.5 Selfie

Julia Herzig, a 22-year-old from Larchmont, N.Y., has “an obsession.” It’s with taking a new kind of selfie — one that doesn’t exactly conform. In some […]
September 12, 2020

How to Declutter Your Digital Life

Working remotely may have eliminated your commute and allowed you to spend the day in your pajamas, but it also means you’re most likely bombarded with […]
April 15, 2020

The Virus Revealed Our Essential Tech (and Weeded Out the Excess)

It has been weeks since the coronavirus brought our lives to a halt, shutting down our schools, offices and gyms. Stuck at home, we have had […]
November 19, 2016

This Life: When Tech Is a Problem Child

This Life By BRUCE FEILER In the Broadway classic “The Music Man,” set in 1912, the con artist Harold Hill shows up in River City, Iowa, […]
November 9, 2016

The Spy Who Loved Me: The Slippery Slope of Digital Surveillance

SEATTLE — In the middle of a long bicycle ride several weeks ago, I pulled over for a rest and took out my iPhone to send […]