At Google, some employees use a tool that restricts time spent on email. A senior Apple Inc. executive said his wife used a device that sets iPhone and iPad limits for their children. Members of a venture capital firm meditate before phone-free quarterly meetings. Slava Rubin, co-founder of crowdfunding site Indiegogo, has a strict no-screen policy for gatherings and adopted a similar rule for his bedroom.
"Literally, the only electricity we use is one lamp," he says.
Faced with a deluge of text messages, social-media updates, emails and other distracting alerts, tech executives, entrepreneurs and rank-and-file workers in Silicon Valley are trying to limit their use of the gadgets and digital services they helped create. The efforts show how the industry is grappling with its own concerns about the attention-sapping effects of the smartphone age. On Monday, a group of former employees from Google, Facebook and elsewhere announced the creation of a group called Center for Humane Technology to raise alarms about the harmful effects of modern technology on children, and to pressure companies to make products less intrusive and addictive.
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