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    Real Risk to Youth Mental Health Is ‘Addictive Use,’ Not Screen Time Alone, Study Finds

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    Researchers found children with highly addictive use of phones, video games or social media were two to three times as likely to have thoughts of suicide or to harm themselves.As Americans scramble to respond to rising rates of suicidal behavior among youth, many policymakers have locked in on an alarming metric: the number of hours a day that American children spend glued to a glowing screen.But a study published on Wednesday in the medical journal JAMA, which followed more than 4,000 children across the country, arrived at a surprising conclusion: Longer screen time at age 10 was not associated with higher rates of suicidal behavior four years later.Instead, the authors found, the children at higher risk for suicidal behaviors were those who told researchers their use of technology had become “addictive” — that they had trouble putting it down, or felt the need to use it more and more. Some children exhibited addictive behavior even if their screen time was relatively low, they said.The researchers found addictive behavior to be very common among children — especially in their use of mobile phones, where nearly half had high addictive use. By age 14, children with high or increasing addictive behavior were two to three times as likely as other children to have thoughts of suicide or to harm themselves, the study found.“This is the first study to identify that addictive use is important, and is actually the root cause, instead of time,” said Yunyu Xiao, an assistant professor of psychiatry and population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medical College and the study’s lead author.Addictive behavior may be more difficult to control during childhood, before the prefrontal cortex, which acts as a brake on impulsivity, is fully developed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Latest Air Jordans? They’re Digital

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      As the sneaker boom recedes, brands like Nike and Adidas are targeting younger audiences by meeting them where they are — in the virtual world of ‘Fortnite.’In March, when Jordan Brand released the Air Jordan 4 “Brick by Brick,” a collaboration with the BMX athlete Nigel Sylvester, they sold out almost instantly, quickly doubled in value on the resale market and were championed by collectors as an early contender for sneaker of the year.But for some sneaker fans, the real fun began two months later, when the “Brick by Brick” became available in Fortnite — as a fully digital replica that could be purchased for 1,000 “V-Bucks,” the game’s virtual currency, or about $8.99.Fortnite, the online multiplayer shooter by Epic Games, introduced Kicks, a vertical within its popular in-game marketplace dedicated to footwear, in November. Alongside a handful of quirky proprietary designs, the virtual shop sells shoes by Nike, Jordan Brand, Adidas, Vans and Crocs, which can be worn by player avatars and shown off during matches. For gamers — especially kids — these digital sneakers represent a form of creative self-expression. “The younger generation sees what happens on the internet as no less important than the offline world,” Funs Jacobs, a technology and culture strategist, said. “To older generations, it sounds insane, but it’s a bit of an identity thing.”Digital versions of Nike sneakers in “Fortnite.”NikeThey’re also a big business. Fortnite, a free-to-play game, has more than 500 million registered users and an average of over two million active players every day. Its $5 billion in annual revenue comes almost entirely from the sale of virtual goods. Though Epic would not provide exact sales figures, a representative from the company said players had selected and applied Kicks to their avatars nearly seven billion times since November.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Monster-Slaying Game You Can Play Almost Anywhere

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      You’re a space marine. The mission is to shoot your way through a monster invasion unfolding on the moons of Mars. And the monsters? They come from hell.When Id Software — six mostly 20-somethings at the time — pitched this gleefully unhinged premise to prospective recruits in 1993, millions answered the call. The technically masterful, thrillingly glib video game that Id released online crashed Carnegie Mellon University’s network within hours because so many students were playing. Two years later, actual Marines were using a version of it for training exercises, and it had purportedly been downloaded onto more computers than Windows 95, the newest PC operating system. The game was called Doom.Sequels, prequels and offshoots inevitably followed, including this month’s Doom: The Dark Ages, with each new title bringing more resources to the pursuit of mass exorcism.But Doom’s most entertaining developments happen in the shadow of the franchise, where fans resurrect the original game over and over again on progressively stranger pieces of hardware: a Mazda Miata, a NordicTrack treadmill, a French pharmacy sign.These esoteric achievements quickly became a meme. Now they look more like a legacy.Doom defined the first-person shooter genre, put computer games on the map and helped ignite a graphics war. But what many hard-core tech hobbyists want to know is whether you can play it on a pregnancy test.The answer: positively yes. And for the first time, even New York Times readers can play Doom within The Times’s site. (Start by hitting the button below. The game is rated Mature for both violence and blood and gore.) More

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      Grand Theft Auto VI Delayed Until May 2026

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      The previous game in the franchise was released in 2013 and has generated more than $8 billion in revenue for Rockstar Games.The anticipated video game Grand Theft Auto VI has been delayed until May 26, 2026, Rockstar Games announced on Friday.Fans had expected to return to the sun-drenched beaches and gleaming condominiums of Vice City, a fictionalized Miami, this year based on the game’s first trailer, which featured Tom Petty’s “Love Is a Long Road.”“With every game we have released, the goal has always been to try and exceed your expectations, and Grand Theft Auto VI is no exception,” Rockstar said in a statement. “We hope you understand that we need this extra time to deliver at the level of quality you expect and deserve.”Rockstar did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Matthew Ball, a video game analyst, said that Grand Theft Auto VI had been expected to drive the sales of PlayStation and Xbox consoles this holiday season. Few other video games had announced release dates this fall, wary of directly competing with what is expected to be a blockbuster title.“For the rest of the market, GTA’s delay provides much needed — though only temporary — oxygen,” he said. “The title was expected to devour billions of dollars in consumer spend.”The previous game in the franchise, Grand Theft Auto V, was released in 2013 and has generated more than $8 billion in revenue. More

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      Judge Rebukes Apple and Orders It to Loosen Grip on App Store

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      The ruling was a stinging defeat for Apple in a long-running antitrust case brought by Epic Games, the maker of Fortnite, on behalf of app developers.A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Apple must loosen its grip on its App Store and stop collecting a commission on some app sales, capping a five-year antitrust case brought by Epic Games that aimed to change the power that Apple wields over a large slice of the digital economy.The judge, Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers of U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, rebuked Apple for thwarting a previous ruling in the lawsuit and said the company needed to be stopped from further disobeying the court. She criticized Tim Cook, Apple’s chief executive, and accused other executives at the company of lying.In her earlier ruling, Judge Gonzales Rogers ordered Apple to allow apps to provide users with external links to pay developers directly for services. The apps could then avoid the 30 percent commission that Apple charges in its App Store and potentially charge less for services.Instead, Judge Gonzalez Rogers said on Wednesday, Apple created a new system that forced apps with external sales to pay a 27 percent commission to the company. Apple also created pop-up screens that discouraged customers from paying elsewhere, telling them that payments outside the App Store may not be secure.“Apple sought to maintain a revenue stream worth billions in direct defiance of this court’s injunction,” Judge Gonzalez Rogers wrote.In response, she said Apple could no longer take commissions from sales outside the App Store. She also restricted the company from writing rules that would prevent developers from creating buttons or links to pay outside the store and said it could not create messages to discourage users from making purchases. In addition, Judge Gonzalez Rogers asked the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California to investigate the company for criminal contempt.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Do the iPhone 16E and Google Pixel 9A Compare to More Expensive Models?

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      With all the talk about tariffs driving up costs, the word “cheaper” should bring comfort to just about anyone. That’s why I’m delighted to share that the cheaper smartphone from Google has arrived, a few months after Apple released a somewhat cheaper entry-level iPhone — and that both products are very good.Google this week released the Pixel 9a, the $500 sibling of its $800 flagship smartphone, the Pixel 9. It competes directly with the $600 iPhone 16e released in February, the cheaper version of Apple’s $800 iPhone 16.Both of the new phones have the staples that people care most about — great cameras, nice screens, zippy speeds, modern software and long battery life. To cut costs, they omit some fancier extras, like advanced camera features.Is it a wise idea to save some bucks, or better to spend more on the fancier phones? To find out, I strapped on a fanny pack and carried all four phones with me for the last week to run tests.The upshot: As is often the case, you get what you pay for. The $800 phones are slightly better in terms of features and performance than the cheaper versions, and the $600 iPhone is faster and has a better camera than the $500 Pixel.But more important, the cheaper Pixel and iPhone were nearly indistinguishable from their $800 counterparts in several of my tests. In some cases, like battery life, the cheaper phones were even better.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Burned Out, Davey Wreden Tried to Heal by Making the Cozy Wanderstop

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      Nothing moves quickly in Wanderstop. To make a single cup of tea in the new video game is a meditative ritual of deliberate steps.The recovering hero, Alta, has to forage for tea leaves, dry out those leaves, plant seeds for fruit to flavor the tea, water those seeds, watch the plant grow, harvest the fruit individually, and then, with a fantastical apparatus the player traverses using rolling ladders, heat up the water, drain it into a brewing pot, throw the ingredients in one by one, go to a shelf of bespoke mugs, select one, place it under a tap and — finally — pour.There is recognition for doing so without spilling a single drop but no punishment if it is not perfect. It is not that kind of game.Davey Wreden, the 36-year-old writer and director of Wanderstop, has not released a stand-alone game in a decade. He burned out after commercial success with The Stanley Parable (2013), an absurd meditation on cubicle life and choice that has been cited as an inspiration for the TV show “Severance,” and artistic acclaim with the game’s follow-up.Wanderstop was supposed to be different from those mind-bending works, a calming experience set at a woodland tea shop.It did not end up that way.“I started out trying to make this game in a way that it wasn’t going to be a complex story about me and my life, and I failed to do that,” Wreden said. “The more that I began having Alta speak the words in my own head, the more compelling it got.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Censoring Games

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      What China’s influence over Marvel Rivals reveals about censorship.Marvel Rivals is one of the biggest video games in the world. Since its launch in December, more than 40 million people have signed up to fight one another as comic book heroes like Iron Man and Wolverine.But when players used the game’s text chat to talk with teammates and opponents, they noticed something: Certain phrases, including “free Hong Kong” and “Tiananmen Square,” were not allowed.While Marvel Rivals is based on an iconic American franchise, it was developed by a Chinese company, NetEase Games. It has become the latest example of Chinese censorship creeping into media that Americans consume.You can’t type “free Tibet,” “free Xinjiang,” “Uyghur camps,” “Taiwan is a country” or “1989” (the year of the Tiananmen Square massacre) in the chat. You can type “America is a dictatorship” but not “China is a dictatorship.” Even memes aren’t spared. “Winnie the Pooh” is banned, because people have compared China’s leader, Xi Jinping, to the cartoon bear.The restrictions are largely confined to China-related topics. You can type “free Palestine,” “free Kashmir” and “free Crimea.”Why does all of this matter? Video games are not just sources of entertainment; they are also social platforms. Every day, hundreds of millions of children and adults log on to games like Fortnite, World of Warcraft and, yes, Marvel Rivals to play together and hang out. For many young people, these games are as social as Facebook or X.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      With an Evil Empire’s Power Comes Great Responsibility

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      Weighty player choices give the fantasy role-playing game Avowed an impressive central narrative. But simplistic combat and rote side quests keep it from excellence.Most video games are power fantasies. You might have endless lives or be capable of shrugging off mortal wounds and clearing out dozens of bad guys with superhuman prowess.The role-playing game Avowed wholeheartedly embraces the fantasy, yet stands out as a game that encourages the player to think about what it means to be so powerful. It asks us to engage with our power rather than simply benefit from it.At its most predictable, Avowed manifests this empowerment with the typical medieval fantasy fare of swords and shields and wands and guns, which you will use to blast your way through any impediment blocking your path forward. But these battles are only a colorful distraction next to your character’s real source of power: your mandate, as the envoy of a distant emperor, to decide how things should be run in the wild and untamed Living Lands.Composed of a few independent fiefs, the Living Lands resemble the Caribbean islands before their settlement by European powers, complete with piratical touches like aquamarine coves, waterlogged ruins and flintlock pistols. You have arrived to root out the source of a mysterious plague and to soften the ground for your expansionist benefactor’s future colonization efforts.It’s novel to play a game as, if not entirely a villain, an unsympathetic tool of power. Your empire, Aedyr, has a downright awful reputation in the Living Lands, exacerbated by your bloodthirsty colleagues known charmingly as the Steel Garrote. Throughout the game you’ll be tasked with defusing diplomatic flare-ups caused by the Steel Garrote and its nasty leader.The Living Lands resemble the Caribbean islands before their settlement by European powers, complete with piratical touches like aquamarine coves, waterlogged ruins and flintlock pistols. Obsidian EntertainmentWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More