AddictionNews has published dozens of stories about smartphone addiction, including whether it’s real or not, the costs it has imposed on schools, and the court cases seeking to hold tech companies accountable for the damages their devices have caused.

Something I’ve seen very little of, however, is people who know what they’re talking about explaining what it takes to tame smartphone addiction. Recently, The Times ran an in-depth article on a high-end digital detox facility in New York, where patients — mostly teenagers — are charged $8,500 (uninsured) for a 12-week outpatient program.

The New York Center for Living “feels less like an addiction clinic and more like a wellness centre,” writes Josie Ensor, Chief U.S. Reporter for The Times, who toured the facility offering “high-end therapy for students and young professionals.” Unlike the clientele at most addiction clinics, visitors to the New York Center for Living apparently don’t mind being photographed. One thing you don’t see in any of their photos is someone holding a smartphone.

Smartphones are placed in sealed pouches upon arrival for the daily program. The schedule supposedly allows patients to continue attending school or going to work, so it is likely limited to a few hours per day. The program involves individual, group, and family therapy sessions, including:

• Motivational Interviewing
• Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)
• Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT)
• Psychodynamic & Narrative Approaches

The New York Center for Living also offers a wide variety of more traditional addiction treatment services, such as programs for alcohol addiction, opioid addiction, and nicotine addiction, including medication-assisted treatment (MAT). They see intensive therapy as the common service uniting behavioral and substance use addictions, and stress as the common origin story of all addictions:

While other institutions offer digital-detox retreats and wilderness-therapy camps, short-term abstinence has not shown to translate into long-term behaviour change. Psychologists say that is because such an approach treats the [symptoms] and not the [causees] of addiction, such as stress, anxiety, and social isolation.

Ensor is escorted through the facility by Executive Director, Dr. Nicholas Kardaras, a philosopher/psychologist who spent decades treating substance use addictions before adding the technology addiction program. Dr. Kardaras is the author of two bestselling books on technology addiction, Glow Kids (2016) and Digital Madness (2022), and one interesting non-bestseller, How Plato and Pythagoras Can Save Your Life.

Dr. Kardaras explains to Ensor the toll that internet addiction takes on the brain, in particular the reduction in gray matter in the prefrontal cortex. He then provides some chilling anecdotal evidence that can only be gathered through confidential interviewing over time. In a group therapy session with several teenage boys, one boy explained that when he reads, his mind does not formulate the imagery that goes with the words:

It’s like the movie screen in my brain doesn’t work.

The other boys said they experienced the same difficulties. They can read, “The horse jumped over the fence,” but they don’t visualize the horse or the fence. They know what the words mean but they don’t visualize the imagery. They’re used to having the images fed to them nonstop, Dr. Kardaras says, from apps such as TikTok and Instagram Reels.

The New York Center for Living provides therapy to teach patients how to cope with the stresses of living and the added stress of technology restriction. They teach yoga and art therapy, two of the most effective treatments in both stress reduction and resilience building. In an appearance on the Dr. Phil show a few years ago, Dr. Kardaras recommended parents encourage their children to engage in sports, music, and theater as activities that “build up a psychological immune system.”

A little technology helps, too. The Center uses the Brick smartphone blocker. The size of a tin of breath mints, the magnetic Brick is a physical device that you program with the apps you want to restrict (including blocking the ability to install apps). Tap the smartphone to the Brick, and those apps can’t be accessed until the brick is tapped again. How does this help?

If the Brick is stuck to the fridge and you tap and go into your office or bedroom to study or work, you can’t just pick up the phone when time lags because you’ll have to go all the way back to the Brick to reactivate those apps. It blocks the tendency to reach for the phone at the first sign of boredom. Also, if you brick certain apps when you leave the house, you won’t be able to access them until you return home. This encourages social engagement.

A dozen CNN newsroom staffers tried the Brick for a month, and the results were pretty impressive. First, the app tracked their usage, so they could see how much time they were burning on TikTok and Instagram, etc. Then, apps can be turned off using preset schedules, such as during non-working hours. All employees experienced a dramatic reduction in smartphone usage, from one to three hours per day.

Use restrictions, however, don’t deal with the underlying issues that are driving people to use smartphones excessively. Smartphone addicts need to understand it’s the stress driving them to use the device. The phone is not helping them to cope with stress but is, in fact, making it worse.

Written by Steve O’Keefe. First published June 9, 2026.

Sources:

“The internet addiction clinic where 13-year-olds are in rehab,” The Times, May 27, 2026.

“Psychologist: ‘Phone Addiction Is More Difficult to Treat Than Heroin’,” Dr Phil, January 30, 2023.

“Can the Brick actually kill your phone addiction? 11 of us used one to find out,” CNN, March 22, 2026.

Image Copyright: bialasiewicz.