Over the past decade, advertisers have spent untold millions trying to turn Talia Kocar and her peers in the millennial generation into loyal customers. But on a recent afternoon in Santa Monica, Calif., in a kind of consumer torch-passing, Ms. Kocar, 25, watched a focus group of teenagers drink free Snapple and suck Doritos powder off their thumbs while answering questions about their smartphones.

In my book Overload! How Too Much Information Is Hazardous to Your Organization, I noted that the number of admissions to hospital emergency rooms due to concussions caused by collision with lamp posts by people walking on the street while texting had doubled every year for a period of five years.

The serious nature of the problem was driven home to me after a San Diego man plummeted to his death off a cliff this Christmas Day. Witnesses at the scene reported that he wasn’t watching where he was walking, but was looking down at his phone. In 2013, a tourist in Melbourne, Australia had to be rescued by police after she walked off a pier while focused on Facebook.

Dave Chappelle is done with smartphones — at least while he’s performing. On Tuesday, a Hollywood Reporter exclusive detailed the stand-up comedian’s deal with San Francisco tech startup Yondr, which makes phone sleeves that lock your device within a designated “no-phone zone,” for his shows at Chicago’s Thalia Hall, running through next Tuesday.

Two years ago, a student of mine named Nicole was torn on where to start her career. While applying for jobs in finance, technology, consulting and marketing, she suddenly realized that her biggest concern wasn’t what she did, but where she worked.

A while back, I realized that something was amiss in my relationship with my telephone. Notifications, email, Facebook, Twitter… it all became a constant drain on on my attention, the internet following me around like a shadow. I just couldn’t give it up! So I asked the readers of Boing Boing about the current situation with low-end dumbphones, in the hopes that something was out there that could do the things I needed to do (send texts and make calls) without having me permanently dripped to the great saline bag of bullshit in the cloud.

There are plenty of reasons to put our cellphones down now and then, not least the fact that incessantly checking them takes us out of the present moment and disrupts family dinners around the globe. But here’s one you might not have considered: Smartphones are ruining our posture. And bad posture doesn’t just mean a stiff neck. It can hurt us in insidious psychological ways.

While distracted driving has commanded lots of attention (albeit not a commensurate amount of correction), another digital hazard — distracted walking — is on the rise, with sometimes disastrous consequences.

Brevity may be the soul of wit when it comes to texting, but punctuation is key.

No one likes receiving a text with a period attached to the end, according to a new scientific study. Sure, it might be grammatically correct but people really will think you’re a jerk.

With the news that we’re now spending more time on our phones than with our significant others, it might be time to think about reducing our screen time.

In fact, 62% of recently polled Brits said they hate how much time they spend on their phones. If you also wish you were less addicted to your device, we might be able to help.

In a world full of information we seem to be constantly toggling between managing all the new impressions we get on a daily basis and feeling totally overwhelmed by information overload. With the arrival of the Internet we were told that things would become easier – less paper clutter to worry about and more time to enjoy life.