Can Children Survive Without Smartphones?

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Can children survive without smartphones?

[BRIEF]

About 72,000 children and teens tried, to one degree or another, in a digital detox experiment in Austria and four other European countries for three weeks in March.

• Participants (mostly schoolchildren, starting from around age 10) chose different levels of restriction: Some gave up smartphones entirely; others switched to “dumbphones.” Some kept their phones but dramatically reduced screen time or quit social media apps (after all, the experiment was voluntary).

Spoiler alert: They all survived.

The New York Times reported on the effects. They were, as you’d expect, boredom, restlessness, loneliness—missing contact with distant friends and family. But after acclimatizing, most of the youths who spoke to the Times reported positive experiences.

• “I learned to concentrate more,” said one. Many felt more present and connected to family, hobbies, surroundings and real-life interactions. “You’re looking for connections with people,” said another. “I think I listened more.” They rediscovered offline activities. Stress dropped.

After three weeks, some didn’t want to go back to smartphones. “I had over 70 messages on Snapchat, so I put it down immediately,” one girl said. “I didn’t want to look at it.”

• Another: “I checked my messages, and then I checked what I missed on Instagram and TikTok. It wasn’t much.”

Growing evidence shows how smartphones and social media heighten risks for young people of depression, anxiety, disrupted sleep, cyberbullying exposure, eating disorders, reduced attention spans and lower self-esteem.

• This is fueling public debate and prompting schools and even some countries to impose various bans. This experiment coincided with Austria announcing plans for a social media ban for under-14s.

Even many adults are pushing back against smartphone ubiquity and dominance. “Brick phones are the new elite status symbol” among high-achieving adults, the Telegraph reports. Successful entrepreneurs, celebrities and affluent professionals now wield basic dumbphones.

Consider it. At least think seriously about doing your kids a big favor by taking their smartphones away and heightening their connection to real life. Here is some help on how to crush screen addiction.

Iran War Update

• What is a “ceasefire,” exactly? Yesterday, three U.S. naval vessels reported Iranian fire. The U.S. responded with what President Donald Trump called a “love tap” against three Iranian ports. Iran responded by bombarding the United Arab Emirates, an American ally. Despite all this, Trump claims the ceasefire is still “in effect” and hopes a deal can be negotiated.
• Iran can outlast the blockade for months. That is what a cia analysis reported yesterday by the Washington Post claims. One official speaking with the Post claimed Iran’s “leadership has gotten more radical, determined and increasingly confident they can outlast U.S. political will and sustain domestic repression to check any resistance.”

Looks Like the Labour Party Took a Drubbing

Votes are still being counted, but Britain’s Labour Party seems set to receive its worst local election result in its modern history. Nigel Farage’s Reform party is the clear winner in yesterday’s local election, picking up 515 new council seats across the country so far. Labour’s total number of councillors is down to 294; the Conservatives are down to 204.

Pressure is increasing on Prime Minister Keir Starmer to resign. But he will not be announcing his resignation today. “I’m not going to walk away and plunge the country into chaos,” he said this morning.

• Yet as the Telegraph noted, “that emphasis on not leaving ‘chaos’ were he to go is more nuanced than it might first appear. What is increasingly being talked about in Labour circles is not a knife-wielding public coup to topple Sir Keir but a more orderly process where he sets out a timetable for leaving.”

Peter Mandelson—close friend of Jeffrey Epstein—had already been causing Starmer major problems. Starmer appointed him as Britain’s ambassador to the United States in 2024. Despite Starmer’s assurances to Parliament that Mandelson was fully vetted, it was later revealed that he failed the vetting. Starmer was accused of misleading Parliament and called on to resign.

Scotland and Wales also vote today. Counting has only just begun, but separatist parties are both set to do well. Scotland is likely to agitate for another independence referendum, despite voting to remain part of the UK in a “once in a generation” vote in 2014. Support for independence hasn’t necessarily grown, but unionist support is now divided among at least four major parties.

The other major winner: the Green Party, which moved to the left of Labour, going aggressively after the environmentalist, Islamic and homosexual vote.

• The party has spent much of this local election—which focused on questions like how bins are collected, local taxation is set, and potholes are filled—campaigning against Israel. Its deputy leader, Mothin Ali, celebrated the Islamist October 7 massacre of Jews, and had his U.S. visa revoked because of his support for radical Islamist terrorism. When British police stopped a crazed knife murderer who was stabbing Jews last week, Green Party leader Zach Polanski attacked them for being too harsh.
• But apparently, anti-Semitism wins votes. The party has picked up 44 additional councilors so far. It also won the mayoral race in Hackney, the first time it has ever won a directly elected mayor. A YouGov poll found Green support especially strong among young women: 44 percent ages 18 to 24 said they planned to vote Green.

Britain to shift left? The result of this massive victory for Nigel Farage and his right-wing Reform party looks set to be, paradoxically, a shift further to the left.

• If Starmer is ousted, he would be replaced by someone in his own party. Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, is the likeliest successor. Burnham and allies want more benefits, more immigration and more spending.

Britain has had five prime ministers in the last decade. Each has been mired in failure.

Isaiah 3 records this prophecy of the end-time nations descended from biblical Israel (verses 1-4):

For, behold, the Lord, the Lord of hosts, doth take away … The mighty man, and the man of war, the judge, and the prophet, and the prudent, and the ancient, The captain of fifty, and the honourable man, and the counsellor, and the cunning artificer, and the eloquent orator. And I will give children to be their princes, and babes shall rule over them.

Britain’s leadership problems clearly go beyond one man, or even one party. Britain has been governed by either a Conservative or Labour government for more than 100 years. Now both seem to be dying. It truly is “Farewell Britannia.”

Rheinmetall Announces Momentous Manufacturing Projects

German arms manufacturer Rheinmetall will begin making its first-ever cruise missiles starting either in the fourth quarter of this year or early next year in conjunction with Dutch defense technology company Destinus.

• It submitted a bid to take over German Naval Yards Kiel and said it is interested in investing in a naval yard in Romania. This is part of an ongoing effort to move into naval armaments production.

These moves came right after the U.S. announced it would decrease its military presence in the nation, removing many of its 35,000-plus troops. The Trump administration also pledged to cancel the deployment of advanced missiles to Germany scheduled for next year.

Also, Germany’s Kiel Institute has just published a new paper arguing that Europe could become militarily independent from the U.S. if it launches a “Manhattan Project”-type push to militarization.

“No European combat operation is currently conceivable without approval, software or systems from the trans-Atlantic alliance partner,” they wrote. “Europe is not yet prepared to defend itself without the United States.” The paper identified 10 priorities to focus on to break this dependence.

But it states, “[t]he decisive bottleneck is therefore neither money nor technology.” Instead, it is leadership and will—with Germany playing the decisive role. “The path to European defense autonomy necessarily runs through the deployment of Germany’s financial and industrial resources for European defense,” it states.

Prophesied danger: The Trumpet forecast for decades that Germany would undergo a staggering remilitarization, based on Bible prophecy. Your Bible warns that this trend will have a terrifying effect on the entire world.

IN OTHER NEWS

German intelligence chiefs warn of “concrete and urgent” Iran threats: Yesterday, the New York Times reported that seven German intelligence officials said Germany and its neighbors fear becoming targets of bombings or other “hybrid” attacks carried out by Iranian proxy agents. Germany has allowed the U.S. to use American military bases on its soil for the war against Iran and has supported Israel with weapons exports, making Germany a particular target for Iranian retaliation. Jewish and American institutions in Germany are at particularly high risk. Four senior officials told the Times that intelligence agents and lawmakers have urged political leaders to express greater alarm. Germany is currently preparing a naval mission to secure the Strait of Hormuz, which could make it an even bigger target for terrorism and possibly lead directly to a prophesied clash.

Germany sees manufacturing boom: German manufacturing orders jumped 5 percent in March, the German government announced yesterday. This far exceeded the expected 1 percent growth theorized by a consensus of economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal. As German manufacturing grows, it is important to understand the historic and prophetic implications of this trend.

Assaults against Jews reach 46-year high: The Anti-Defamation League announced on Wednesday that physical assaults against Jews in the U.S. in 2025 reached a high not seen in nearly half a century. Although anti-Semitic incidents declined by 33 percent to 6,274 cases in 2025, the year saw a record-high of 203 anti-Jewish assaults, surpassing the previous year’s 196 incidents. Thirty-two of those assaults involved deadly weapons, resulting in three deaths. To understand the root cause of hatred for the Jews, read “The One Minority Society Loves to Hate.”

Pope hands an olive branch to Rubio, literally: Yesterday, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Pope Leo xiv at the Vatican. The meeting was meant to ease tensions over the Iran war. The pope gave Rubio an olive branch in a wooden case, calling it “the plant of peace.” In return, Rubio handed the pope a small crystal football. The American-born pope looked at the gift and simply said, “Wow, OK.” Rubio joked, “What do you get someone who has everything?” Yet underneath the levity, deep diplomatic strains still exist between America and the Vatican. Pope Leo has openly opposed President Donald Trump’s immigration policies and Middle East foreign policy. Bible prophecy says a violent clash is soon coming between America and a Vatican-led Holy Roman Empire.

U.S. public debt tops GDP: At the end of April, U.S. public debt reached $31.27 trillion, surpassing the nation’s annual gross domestic product, $31.22 trillion, for the first time since World War ii. Total gross debt (including money borrowed from Social Security and other government funds) is even higher—about $39 trillion. Gross debt first surpassed gdp in 2012–2013. Experts worry that high debt means higher interest costs, higher prices for families, and less money for defense or other programs. When debt grows faster than gdp for a long time, nations go bankrupt if their leaders don’t fix the problem.