Day of the Great Roots, 48th of the Dog Days, 526 M.E. (Castor): I accidentally discovered the cure for teenage cell-phone addiction: slow chargers.  

In a California trial against Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, Meta is accused of covering up internal research showing Instagram is addictive for teenagers. The plaintiffs, representing 29 states, say the company knew its products were harmful to children but hid that information from the public.

I've fallen down the Instagram rabbit hole myself, realizing that I wasn't paying attention to whatever I was purportedly watching on television but instead mindlessly scrawling through post after post as the algorithm kept feeding me whatever it was that it determined was engaging my interest.  

But then my 10-year-old charger, a relic from the days of iPhone 6, started losing its potency, taking longer and longer to charge the battery. Even after being on charge overnight, it was only 65 or 70% recharged when I got up in the morning. And the charge works like gasoline in an old v-shaped fuel tank - the lower it goes, the faster it drains. So each night, I was starting the slow recharge at lower and lower levels, and waking up to lower and lower partial recharges.

You can't spend hours on end on a dead phone. I started recharging during the day, plugging it in and leaving it on recharge for hours and hours during the day. Even after I finally got it up to "high" levels, like 80 or 90%, then I was prudent with its use, as I didn't want to drain it back down again.

Long story short, I bought a new charger and everything's fine. But if Apple, Meta, or some other company sold slow chargers to deliberately maximize off-line time, teenagers might start doing other things with their time while their phones recharge. Like, maybe, you know, sex and drugs. 

I might need to think this through a little more.