Digital hijack of everyday life

Visit an airport, café, or restaurant and look around. People sit together or wait alone; their attention is absorbed by a screen. During my international travels, I observe human behaviour: how people spend their time while waiting for their flight. This allows me to see nuanced behaviour. In restaurants, I notice how photographs take precedence over companionship and the gratitude and satisfaction of enjoying a meal, how people speak to the servers, and how they converse with their companions. It is fascinating to see how ordinary, everyday moments have become highly digitalised.
As a professor and researcher with twenty-four years of experience across countries, I have witnessed a paradigm shift in people's digital behaviour across all age groups, especially students. Over the years, content-consumption patterns have shifted, and students have struggled to put aside their phones despite constant nudging. My observations are not a diagnosis, but they have prompted an important question: are we deliberately engaging with technology, or are we subconsciously allowing it to determine and organise our lives and priorities?
According to the DataReportal Digital Report 2025, drawing on research data from the consumer research company (GWI), adult internet users across surveyed markets spend an average of six hours and 38 minutes online each day. The figure includes work, learning, and leisure; it establishes the scale of online activity, not the extent of harm.
Recently, in a public space, I watched a boy, perhaps 9 or 10 years old, crying insistently. When his mother handed him the mobile, he became quiet almost immediately. Much later, he threw the mobile on the ground and resumed his tantrums. This incident is not isolated; I have witnessed similar occurrences on flights, in airports, malls, and other public spaces. These incidents alone cannot establish how digital consumption affects children's behaviour. Yet these incidents leave me wondering about the significance of screens in our daily routine.
According to the World Health Organisation’s (WHO) research published in 2024, problematic social media use among adolescents rose from 7% in 2018 to 11% in 2022. This study examined 280,000 adolescents in 44 countries and regions across Europe, Central Asia, and Canada. Similarly, an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) report in 2025 stated that in almost all countries surveyed, at least half of 15-year-olds spent 30 hours or more a week on digital devices. OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2022 findings state that 30% of students surveyed across OECD countries reported digital distractions in most or every mathematics class. Digital distraction affects not only the user but may also impact others in the same learning environment.
Digital distractions, engagement, and content consumption are no longer confined to classrooms or public spaces, nor are they limited to a particular age group. They have entered our mornings and our evenings. Speaking on the World Economic Forum’s Meet the Leader podcast in 2026, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt observed that many people check their mobile phones for notifications immediately after waking, even before getting out of bed, and again just before going to sleep. Haidt argues that checking your phone immediately after waking up can shape your thoughts, actions, intentions, and the rest of your day.
The question is not whether technology belongs in our lives. It does. Not every hour spent online should be treated as wasted. The question we should be asking is: Are our habits reflecting our priorities? Is the mobile stealing our mornings and nights?
I deliberately chose ‘hijack’ in the title to prompt students, parents, government, industry, working professionals, and technology companies to reconsider what captures our attention and whether we consciously choose where it goes.
A device should improve our lives, not silently become our life. The digital hijack begins not when we use a device, but when using it stops being a conscious choice. Progress cannot and should not be measured only by connectivity; it must encompass holistic well-being. We must reclaim the freedom to be fully present with our work, with one another, and with ourselves.