A screen can be useful and still take too much.

That is the problem SCREENS ARE THE NEW CRACK is built to solve.

This is not a book that tells you every screen is harmful, that dopamine is a “pleasure chemical,” or that you need to disappear into a digital monastery. It makes a harder argument: when digital systems repeatedly override intention and displace sleep, movement, daylight, deep focus, conversation, play, and real-world experience, the cost can spread far beyond the screen itself.

Drawing on research across attention, sleep, physical activity, mental health, vision, childhood development, and behavioral design, Kalil Laichi builds a whole-life model of screen risk. You will learn why “screen time” alone is too crude, how algorithms and stopping-cue removal make capture easier, why children face a different risk profile from adults, and why “not yet proven” is not the same as “safe” — or “dangerous.”

The book introduces:
• CHOSEN vs CAPTURED — the distinction that matters more than raw screen hours.
• THE SCREEN RISK MAP — Dose, Content, Capture, Vulnerability, Timing, Context, Displacement.
• DEVELOPMENTAL DEBT — a model for the capacities children may practice less when screens displace the experiences that build them.
• THE LIFE THEFT EQUATION — a way to see how captured daily hours can compound into years of waking life.
• THE SCREEN RECLAIM METHOD — a practical system to diagnose capture, engineer friction, run experiments, rebuild neglected capacities, reinvest recovered time, and govern technology without rejecting it.

SCREENS ARE THE NEW CRACK is for adults, parents, knowledge workers, students, and anyone who has looked up from a screen and wondered where the time went.

The goal is not less technology for its own sake.

The goal is a life in which technology is chosen — not the thing doing the choosing.