You’ll need to hand over your phone before you can grab a coffee at the Netherlands’ Offline Club, or attend a music event from Off the Radar. Why are the Dutch so keen on digital detoxes – and are there lessons for the rest of the world?

When I walk into Amsterdam’s Cafe Brecht , I immediately want to take a picture. The old-fashioned bar – with its plush sofas, vintage art and warm lighting – is what the Dutch would call “ gezellig ”, a word with many meanings but perhaps best summed up as “cosy” or “pleasant”. My instinct is to whip out my phone and take a photo. For friends? Future reference? Who knows? But I’ll have to rely on my memory, as I’ve checked it at the door.

I’m at the cafe for a Sunday morning “digital detox hangout”, organised by the burgeoning Offline Club . I’ve dropped my phone off in slot seven of a fancy-looking lockbox, committing to spend the next few hours unplugged. There’s a set schedule: we have some time to chat at the beginning, then 45 minutes to ourselves, another 30 minutes to connect, followed by another 30 minutes of quiet time. During the quiet time, we are invited to do any sort of activity – I brought a book – provided we don’t interrupt others.

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The photographer on an ambiguous image inspired by Greek, Roman and Egyptian art

“A former mentor, Elinor Carucci, recommends taking pictures daily as a sort of gym for the photographic mind,” Esteban Kuriel says.

On this day, Kuriel was staying at St Ermin’s hotel in London and had visited the Sir John Soane’s Museum, which houses a collection of Greek, Roman and Egyptian figurative sculptures. “The fragmented, contorted bodies inspired me, and I returned to my room to make this image. Photographing daily trains my eye, just as one trains their body at the gym, so I must play with what is available. In this case, it was this space and its furniture.”

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Microsoft alerte sur l'existence d'une faille de sécurité qui se cache dans des applications Android. Elle menace des milliards de smartphones et tablettes, avec un risque sérieux pour vos données personnelles.

Company says it is aware of issue as users complain alarms are playing too quietly or not going off

Apple is working to fix a problem that has resulted in some users complaining that their iPhone alarms are not going off – or playing too quietly.

The company said it was aware of the issue, which has been picked up by TikTok users, who have complained about incidents where their alarm has failed to sound.

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Challenger to market leader OpenAI says it wants to ‘meet users where they are’ and become part of users’ everyday life

OpenAI’s ChatGPT is facing serious competition, as the company’s rival Anthropic brings its Claude chatbot to iPhones. Anthropic, led by a group of former OpenAI staff who quit over differences with chief executive Sam Altman, have a product that already beats ChatGPT on some measures of intelligence, and now wants to win over everyday users.

“In today’s world, smartphones are at the centre of how people interact with technology. To make Claude a true AI assistant, it’s crucial that we meet users where they are – and in many cases, that’s on their mobile devices,” said Scott White at Anthropic.

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Children should be banned from most social media until 18 amid attempts to ‘monetise’ them, says Macron-commissioned study

Children should not be allowed to use smartphones until they are 13 and should be banned from accessing conventional social media such as TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat until they are 18, according to a report by experts commissioned by Emmanuel Macron.

The French president had asked scientists and experts to suggest screen use guidelines for children with a view to France taking unprecedented steps on limiting their exposure . It was unclear how the government might now proceed after the report’s publication. Macron said in January: “There might be bans, there might be restrictions.”

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Ian Russell says parental controls could weaken trust and ‘punish children for tech firms’ failures’

• Ian Russell: Tech companies need to change

Government proposals to ban the sale of smartphones to under-16s and raise the minimum age for accessing social media risk causing more harm than good, the father of Molly Russell has warned.

Ian Russell said it was “no surprise” there is a groundswell of pressure for tougher regulation of social media platforms but said plans for a fresh crackdown were flawed.

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The feature-free phone, launched at Milan design week, is the latest device to tap into young people’s concerns about attention-harvesting and data privacy

It’s almost enough to make you stop doomscrolling: dull devices are now cool.

The Boring Phone is a new, featureless flip phone that is feeding the growing appetites of younger people who want to bin their smartphones in favour of a dumbphone.

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There’s no doubt about the mental health crisis facing young people. Jonathan Haidt blames our devices – which oversimplifies the problem

In the introduction to his new book The Anxious Generation , titled “Growing up on Mars”, Jonathan Haidt tells a fanciful piece of science fiction about a child conscripted into a dangerous mission to the red planet that will deform the young person as they grow. The journey is undertaken without the parents’ consent. The ham-fisted metaphor is that technology companies have done the same to children and teenagers by putting smartphones into their hands.

Haidt, a New York University professor of ethical leadership who researches social psychology and morality, goes on to argue that smartphones ignited a wildfire of anxiety and depression in gen Z around the world, by granting them “continuous access to social media, online video games, and other internet-based activities”. He says there are four foundational harms in this degradation of youth: social deprivation, sleep deprivation, attention fragmentation, and addiction.

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