The European Commission has demanded the United States stick to the terms of an EU-US trade ‌deal reached last year, after the US Supreme Court struck down Donald Trump’s global tariffs ‌and he responded with new levies across the board.

The Commission, which negotiates trade policy ‌on behalf of the 27 EU member states, said Washington must provide “full clarity” on the steps it intends to take following the court ruling.

After the court struck down Trump’s global tariffs on Friday, the US president announced temporary, across-the-board tariffs of 10 per cent, which he then ‌hiked to 15 per cent ‌a ⁠day later.

“The current situation is not conducive to delivering ‘fair, balanced, ​and mutually beneficial’ transatlantic trade and investment, as agreed to by both sides” in the joint statement setting out the terms of last year’s trade agreement, the Commission said. 

“A deal is a deal.”

The comments were far more strongly worded than the Commission’s initial response on ⁠Friday, which had said only that it was ‌studying ​the outcome of the Supreme Court decision and keeping in contact with the US ​administration.

Last year’s ‌trade deal set a 15 per cent US tariff rate for most EU goods, apart from ​those covered by other sectoral tariffs such as on steel. It also allowed zero tariffs on some products such as aircraft and spare parts. The ​EU ​agreed to remove import duties on ​many US goods and withdrew a threat ‌to retaliate with higher levies.

“In particular, EU products must continue to benefit from the most competitive treatment, with no increases in tariffs beyond the clear and all-inclusive ceiling previously agreed,” the EU executive said, adding that unpredictable tariffs were disruptive and undermined confidence across ​global markets.

It said that EU Trade Commissioner Maros Sefcovic had discussed the issue ​with US Trade Representative ⁠Jamieson Greer and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Saturday. 

None of the countries that had reached trade deals with the US had indicated plans to withdraw following the Supreme Court decision, Greer said on Sunday.

“I haven’t heard anyone yet come to me and say the deal is off,” Greer told CBS News.

“They want ‌to see how ‌this plays out.”

Discounts on capital gains tax have done little to address the reason why the measure was introduced, Australia’s peak union body says, as the federal government weighs up whether to change the controversial measure.

An inquiry into capital gains tax will begin hearings on Monday, with union officials and leading economists set to give evidence.

The discount on capital gains tax, introduced in 1999 by the Howard government, allows for a 50 per cent reduction in the tax on investment properties sold after being owned for a year.

In its submission to the inquiry, the Australian Council of Trade Unions called for the discount to instead be lowered to just 25 per cent to make it more equitable.

While the discount was introduced to make capital gains tax more internationally competitive and enable more efficient management of assets, the union said 26 years later, little of this intent has been met.

“The CGT discount has been a key mechanism allowing the very rich to pay lower effective rates of tax,” the ACTU’s submission said.

“The latest Treasury data from December 2025 shows that most of the benefits of the discount are captured by the richest one per cent of Australians.”

The union’s president Michele O’Neil will be among those giving evidence on the first day of hearings, as well as trade union figure Bill Kelty and economist Alan Kohler.

The ACTU said the reduction to the discount would not be a complete answer to solve housing issues, but would go a long way to addressing issues.

While the federal government has been tipped to introduce changes to the discount in its May budget, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese did not confirm whether the move was on the cards when pressed.

“What we are doing is tax cuts this July, another tax cut the following July and when it comes to housing, we’re doing our best to deal with the supply question,” he told Sky News.

A grouping of major US airlines says the US Department of Homeland Security gave travellers scant warning ‌ahead of the temporary suspension of its PreCheck and Global Entry programs, as much of the agency shuts down.

The halt in the department-run programs will begin early on Sunday after the partial shutdown began last week following Republicans and Democrats’ failure to clinch a deal on immigration enforcement reforms.

“Airlines for America is deeply concerned that … the travelling public will be, once again, used as a political football amid another government shutdown,” the trade association and lobby group’s chief executive Chris ‌Sununu said.

News of ‌the suspensions ⁠came at “extremely short notice to travellers, giving them little time to ​plan accordingly”, he said in a statement, urging Congress to “get a deal done”.

A similar shutdown in 2025 caused losses of $US6.1 billion ($A8.6 billion) across the travel industry and related sectors, he said.

“TSA and Customs and Border Protection are prioritising the general travis (Transportation Routing and Vehicle Information System) population at our airports and ports of entry and suspending courtesy ⁠and special privilege escorts,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ‌said.

“We ​are making tough but necessary workforce and resource decisions to mitigate the damage,” she said in ​a statement to ‌Reuters.

The pause in programs is among the emergency measures the department is taking to redirect staffing ​more than a week after Congress failed to send it more money, the Washington Post said.

PreCheck had more than 20 million active members, the TSA said in 2024, while ​total ​vetted airline passengers in the department’s traveller ​programs, including Global Entry, exceeded 40 million.

The ‌PreCheck program allows approved passengers to go through a dedicated, faster security lane at US airports and is designed to reduce wait times and streamline screening.

Global Entry expedites US customs and immigration clearance for pre-approved, low-risk international travellers entering the US.

Sunday’s moves follow orders from the Trump administration to another ​constituent of the department, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to suspend deployment of aid workers ​to disaster-affected areas due to ⁠the shutdown.

The competitive advantage enjoyed by some Australian exporters under the Trump administration’s trade regime could be narrowed if a flagged boost to the US tariff rate to 15 per cent is realised.

President Donald Trump was quick to respond with a plan B when the US Supreme Court deemed much of the White House’s existing tariff infrastructure unlawful.

The president pledged to use separate powers to introduce a global 10 per cent tariff from February 24, and has since taken to social media to signal a lift in this rate to 15 per cent. 

EY partner Luke Branson said the US government was yet to officially update its proclamation with the new rate, and that further legal challenge was on the cards.

Yet if such an increase to the global rate goes ahead, he said the competitive advantage experienced in some Australian sectors exporting to the US would be eroded.

Under the agenda now ruled illegal by the highest US court, many competing markets face much higher rates than the 10 per cent paid on Australian exports. 

“A global tariff rate of 15 per cent will level the playing field for Australian exporters,” the firm’s Oceania global trade lead told AAP.

“The increase in the rate will bring the so-called ‘baseline’ tariff into line with a number of the trade deals struck between the US administration and key trading partners.”

The United States is a modest buyer of Australian goods, making up roughly five per cent of total exports annually.

Beef and gold are among Australia’s biggest export markets to the US and early indications suggest these items will remain exempt.

Independent economist Saul Eslake expected a modest direct impact on Australia from the latest trade developments given the size of the market for domestic producers.

He noted worst-case economic scenarios failed to materialise in 2025.

“The effects of the tariffs to date, while Trump had imposed them on Australia, were quite limited,” Mr Eslake told AAP.

He did anticipate more uncertainty as countries scrambled to decode and respond to the latest announcements, and said that could weigh on economic activity. 

The indirect influence of tariffs on Australia’s bigger export markets, such as China, remained a concern, with weaker exports of those countries into the US potentially weighing on their imports from Australia.

The United States Studies Centre research director Jared Mondschein said the legal tool pursued by the Trump administration, Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act, had never been used for tariffs before.

“It basically allows President Trump to buy some time as they use the more conventional manners of imposing tariffs,” he told AAP.

Mr Mondschein said it would slow the US trade agenda down as it pursued more conventional methods on firmer legal footing.

“So we won’t have the wild gyrations.”

Mr Mondschein said the latest developments were unlikely to make the situation much simpler for Australia, noting the middle power was still undergoing consequential negotiations on pharmaceuticals with the US.

The year’s first round of inflation figures will provide a clearer picture on whether the Reserve Bank’s recent hike to the cash rate was a one-off or a sign of further increases to come.

Wednesday will see the release of inflation data for January, the first set since the Reserve Bank chose to hike interest rates to 3.85 per cent at the start of February.

Headline inflation is expected to stay largely at the same levels of 3.8 per cent, although economists from the Commonwealth Bank have tipped a slight reduction to 3.7 per cent.

The trimmed mean inflation, where volatile items are removed, is expected to remain unchanged at 3.3 per cent.

The measure is still above the Reserve Bank’s target band of between two and three per cent.

January’s data will coincide with the last of the energy rebates coming to an end, which will cause a bump in inflation.

But NAB senior economist Taylor Nugent said the end of power bill relief would not mean a large overall increase.

“We expect that to be offset in January by softer fuel and travel inflation, and from policy changes weighing down a little on health and childcare inflation,” he said.

But even with inflation remaining steady, economists are still tipping further interest rate hikes with the Commonwealth Bank and NAB both tipping an increase to 4.1 per at the Reserve Bank’s board meeting in May.

This week will also see the release of capital expenditure figures, with a 0.7 per cent quarter-on-quarter growth in new investment likely to be confirmed on Thursday.

Wall Street investors are meanwhile expecting strong investment growth in information media and telecommunications industries after the US Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s global tariffs.

The court, which ‌has a conservative majority, ruled 6-3 against Trump’s global tariffs, under a federal law meant for national emergencies.

The S&P 500 climbed 0.69 per cent to end Friday at 6,909.51 points.

The Nasdaq gained 0.90 per cent to 22,886.07 points, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average ⁠rose 0.47 per cent to 49,625.97 points.

Australian share futures crept up 16 points, or 0.17 per cent, to 11,293.

The S&P/ASX200 shaved 4.8 points, down 0.05 per cent to 9,081.4, on Friday as the broader All Ordinaries gave up 13.4 points, or 0.14 per cent, to 9,303.2.

Australian officials don’t want women and children linked to Islamic State to return to the nation, but the threshold hasn’t been reached to bar them from receiving passports.

Some 34 women and children tied to Australians who travelled to the Middle East to fight for the terrorist group have been trying for days to travel home from a Syrian refugee camp.

The so-called “ISIS brides” have been issued with Australian passports, a right afforded to citizens, but one of the women has been given a temporary exclusion order, barring their re-entry for up to two years.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said security agencies had not passed on any advice that would block the group from receiving the required travel documents to return to Australia.

“There’s been no advice from ASIO that the passports act provisions have been activated,” he told ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday.

“On the information that we have, the best way to protect Australians has not involved any further temporary exclusion orders.

“We don’t want them to come back … we’re actively making sure we do nothing to help them.”

The 34-strong cohort was not a coherent group, Mr Burke added, but enough information was available to issue the single exclusion order.

“We know the different individuals, we know the state of mind and effective ideology of different individuals,” he said.

“Our agencies have been following them for a long time.”

The minister noted a majority of the cohort were born in Australia and he confirmed state and federal agencies had been working together to mitigate any potential risks from their return.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the government was not in contact with any member of the cohort, but he threatened charges would apply if they come back to Australia.

“Australian citizens have rights and they also have responsibilities, and those responsibilities mean that the Australian government, like with anyone else, will apply the full force of the law to anyone who has broken Australian law,” he told Sky News.

“What we have is a situation, whereby, is Australia providing repatriation, which did occur in 2019 and 2022? No is the answer to that.”

Labor has been under pressure from the opposition to block the entire group from entering Australia, however Mr Albanese said his government was operating under laws introduced by the coalition.

“When it comes to the issue of citizenship, that has rights as well under our constitution,” the prime minister said.

“There are issues there and the coalition know that is the case.”

Opposition defence spokesman James Paterson reiterated that the government should do more to stop the cohort’s arrival.

“It is very clear that the government can refuse a passport to an Australian citizen if they receive advice from a competent authority like ASIO or the AFP if a person is a threat to security,” he said.

“Denying their passport would deal with that threat to security.”

The granting of a temporary exclusion order to one of the cohort meant further orders could be granted, Senator Paterson added.

“Those powers need to be used and this government seems very reluctant to use them,” he said.

Imagine water pooling on the bathroom tiles and starting to mop while the tap is still running.

It’s an apt analogy for the world’s climate change response over the past three decades, according to Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative president Kumi Naidoo.

“Eighty six per cent of what drives climate change is fossil fuels,” says the former head of Greenpeace and Amnesty International.

The South African human rights and environmental activist has penned an essay on Australia’s opportunity to lead the transition away from non-renewables and secure a future for its Pacific neighbours.

In Mr Naidoo’s view, the failure to mention fossil fuels in the outcomes of November’s UN climate talks in Brazil is emblematic of a foundering global climate response due to the heavy presence of oil, gas and coal interests.

Yet he still walked away from the 30th Conference of the Parties summit in the Amazonian city of Belem feeling cautiously optimistic.

Dozens of countries were agitating on the issue of fossil fuel on the sidelines, he told AAP.

COP30 president Andre Correa do Lago has since promised to deliver a plan for a just transition away from the polluting fuels ahead of the next conference in Turkey.

The Belem Declaration, formulated to sit outside the main COP30 deal, has been endorsed by 80 countries – including major coal and gas producer Australia – and allows states to signal support for a fossil fuel roadmap.

Momentum is now building behind an inaugural international conference on fossil fuel phase-out to be held in Columbia in April.

Mr Naidoo is encouraging Australia to attend, particularly given its negotiating role at the next round of international climate talks.

After a protracted stand-off with Turkey on the 31st COP summit, Australia finally ceded hosting rights on the proviso the Pacific could run a pre-summit leaders’ event and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen could lead negotiations.

Under this arrangement, Mr Naidoo said it would be “completely unacceptable” were Australia not in attendance at the Columbia summit as a “positive and constructive player”.

“We can only pray and hope the Australian government will move beyond rhetorically embracing the urgency of climate change and start recognising it’s very neighbours on the doorstep are facing already massive climate impacts, as is Australia,” he said.

While Australian electricity generation from renewable sources in September surpassed coal for the first time, government revenues are still heavily reliant on exports of fossil fuels, including liquefied natural gas.

In the essay titled What We Owe the Water: It’s time for a Fossil Fuel Treaty, Mr Naidoo said the Paris agreement – the primary global climate pact – was an important foundational arrangement but would struggle to limit dangerous warming.

“We are not saying the climate Paris agreement should be thrown aside,” he said.

“What we are saying is it needs a complimentary component which is much more binding, and where countries commit to a phase out.”

Nodding to the challenged political environment, including the US government’s disregard for climate action, Mr Naidoo was not expecting full international support for a fossil fuel phase-out treaty immediately.

But he was hopeful hold-outs would come under pressure were such a proposed treaty put to a vote.

Mr Naidoo drew on negotiations for a landmine treaty developed in the late 1990s that, when brought to the UN General Assembly, was “very difficult” to vote against.

“It was very hard for people to say, ‘oh, I want landmines, I’m not prepared to ban it’, right?”

Reflecting on the climate movement, Mr Naidoo said campaigners had made a tactical error by framing the threat as an environmental issue.

“What we needed to do was to humanise climate.”

Mr Naidoo’s article was published by Australia Institute Press.

President Donald Trump says he will ‌raise temporary tariffs on almost all US imports from 10 per cent to 15 per cent, the ‌maximum level allowed under the law, after the US Supreme Court struck ‌down his previous tariff program as invalid.

Trump had immediately announced a 10 per cent across-the-board tariff on Friday after the court’s decision, which found the president had exceeded his authority when he imposed an array of higher rates ‌under an economic ‌emergency ⁠law.

The new levies are grounded in a separate ​law, known as Section 122, that allows tariffs up to 15 per cent but requires congressional approval to extend them after 150 days.

In a social media post on Saturday, Trump said he would use that period to work ⁠on issuing other “legally permissible” tariffs.

The ‌administration ​intends to rely on two other statutes that permit import taxes on ​specific products ‌or countries based on investigations into national security or unfair trade practices.

“I, ​as President of the United States of America, will be, effective immediately, raising the 10% Worldwide Tariff on Countries, many of ​which ​have been ‘ripping’ the U.S. ​off for decades, without retribution (until I came ‌along!), to the fully allowed, and legally tested, 15% level,” he wrote in a Truth Social post.

Trump has shown little sign of backing off his global trade war in the hours since the court’s 6-3 ​decision, attacking individual justices in personal terms and insisting he retained the ​power to impose ⁠tariffs as he sees fit.

It’s been six months since Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ productivity roundtable and the economists, business heads and union figures who attended are feeling cautiously optimistic.

Yet that’s not because of any measured uptick in Australia’s lacklustre productivity growth rate.

In fact, the nation’s supply constraints are more dire than ever, as evidenced by the recent resurgence in inflation. 

Australia’s economy is no more efficient than it was seven years ago and workers’ living standards are suffering accordingly.

The social compact is at risk, says Grattan Institute chief executive Aruna Sathanapally, who delivered a presentation on tax reform to the August gathering.

In seven wide-ranging AAP interviews, participants applauded Dr Chalmers for his ambition and initiative in holding the event.

But there is still much more that needs to be done, they say, and decades of short-term political opportunism trumping long-term public interest have made it easy to be cynical about the progress that has been made since.

Productivity Commission chair Danielle Wood agrees the government has already taken some important steps.

An overhaul of environmental approvals will help speed up supply of housing and renewable energy, while pausing changes to the construction code will go a long way to improving construction productivity.

“They are genuine productivity reforms,” she adds.

Productivity is a game of inches, Ms Wood says. Even big ticket reforms, like changes to corporate tax, might only yield a 0.5 percentage point improvement in isolation.

She hopes the roundtable laid the foundation for a broader set of changes in the budget and beyond.

Dr Chalmers did an “amazing job” of marshalling disparate views, finding consensus in the room and communicating it to the public, according to ANU Crawford School of Economics and Government research fellow Shiro Armstrong.

Ms Sathanapally says the budget must build on the momentum of the roundtable and eventually result in a set of proposals to take to the next election.

While declining to be interviewed, Dr Chalmers says via a statement the budget will be the “main game” for economic reform.

Following Labor’s landslide election win and with the maximum distance until voters return to the polls, the timing of the budget is ripe for genuine reform, in the view of independent MP Allegra Spender.

“If you’re ever going to do something meaningful, this is the budget to do it, because it’s the budget where you can take the greatest risk,” she says.

Most of what the government has already implemented broadly falls into the categories of regulatory or competition reform.

Andrew McKellar, chief executive of employer group the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, says the roundtable was a “very good initiative” and helped establish the narrative needed to undertake priority reforms.

But by siding with the Greens to pass long-overdue environmental laws, Labor missed an opportunity for a more pro-business outcome that would have provided greater certainty and investment, he says.

ACCI wants the government to go further in cutting red tape to reduce the regulatory burden by a quarter by 2030.

Mr McKellar and Ms Spender are both disappointed the impact of industrial relations settings on productivity was not considered.

“Workplace flexibility and workplace arrangements are fundamentally important,” he says.

But Sally McManus, secretary of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, argues the reason productivity is in the doldrums is because businesses have stopped investing in skills.

Workers protections are not an impediment to productivity growth but a means through which they can reap its benefits, she says.

Speaking at the conclusion of the roundtable, Dr Chalmers also promised movement on tax reform, with the guiding principles of making the system fairer for younger generations and encouraging businesses to invest more.

The government has been tight-lipped so far on what tax changes are likely to be included in the budget but Treasury is reportedly investigating scaling back the 50 per cent capital gains tax discount.

Robert Breunig, director of ANU’s Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, says returning to the pre-1999 regime of indexing the discount to inflation would be a reasonable change but he wants to see it within the context of broader tax reform.

However, major tax reform is unlikely to come in the budget, he says, because history shows it usually takes decades to accomplish and requires bipartisan support or broad coalitions.

A foundational review into the tax system, conducted by Ken Henry during the Gillard government, is still gathering dust in Treasury shelves.

Using that as the basis, the government should put together a panel to conduct an implementational review and suggest concrete changes to the system, Mr Breunig says.

What could wholesale tax reform look like?

Mr Breunig advocates the Nordic dual-income model, which taxes income from assets at the same rate as income from labour.

That would reduce counterproductive incentives for investors, like parking their money in property to dodge tax. 

Meanwhile, getting businesses to invest more should be the focus of corporate tax reform.

Mr Breunig thinks an allowance for corporate equity to let firms deduct the cost of equity they put into a business is a better way of incentivising investment than the Productivity Commission’s proposed hybrid cashflow tax, which the business community has rejected as too complex.

Ms Wood disagrees. 

Reining in runaway spending also has to be part of the discussion, Ms Spender argues.

Dr Chalmers must revive the charter of budget honesty and put in place fiscal guardrails to prevent programs like the NDIS ballooning further, she says. 

As well as imposing additional burden on future generations, higher public demand is crowding out the private sector and constraining productivity growth.

For those hoping for immediate action, the iterative nature of the reform process and consensus-building can be frustrating.

Having not taken a bold agenda to the last election, mooted capital gains tax changes have already seen the opposition slam the government for pursuing a “cash grab” without a mandate.

But Ms Sathanapally says a mandate for economic reform need not come through an election. 

The process of the roundtable and the public discussion since has readied the soil for genuine reform, she says.

If Dr Chalmers lives up to his promise at the May budget, future generations will reap the rewards.

Like children, many adults are also struggling with the urge to endlessly scroll and feel like they can’t escape the pull of Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat and other platforms. 

Some experts are comparing social media addiction to casinos, opioids and cigarettes.

The companies that designed your favourite apps have an incentive to keep you glued to them so they can serve up advertising that makes them billions of dollars in revenue. 

Resisting the pull of the endless scroll, the dopamine hits from short-form videos and the ego boost and validation that come from likes and positive interactions can seem like an unfair fight. 

For some people, “rage-bait,” gloomy news and arguing with internet strangers also have an irresistible draw. 

Much of the concern around social media addiction has focused on children. 

But adults are also susceptible to using social media so much that it starts affecting their day-to-day lives. 

Dr Anna Lembke, a psychiatrist and the medical director of addiction medicine at Stanford University’s School of Medicine, defines addiction as “the continued compulsive use of a substance or behaviour despite harm to self or others.” 

During her testimony at a landmark social media harms trial in Los Angeles, Lembke said that what makes social media platforms so addictive is the “24/7, really limitless, frictionless access” people have to them. 

Some researchers question whether addiction is the appropriate term to describe heavy use of social media, arguing that a person must be experiencing identifiable symptoms. 

These include strong, sometimes uncontrollable urges and withdrawal to qualify as addiction. 

Social media addiction is not recognised as an official disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is the standard reference psychiatrists and other mental health practitioners use to assess and treat patients. 

That’s partly because there is no widespread consensus on what constitutes social media addiction and whether underlying mental health issues contribute to problematic use. 

But just because there is no official agreement on the issue doesn’t mean excessive social media use can’t be harmful, some experts say. 

“For me, the biggest signpost is how does the person feel about the amount, and how viewing it makes them feel,” said Dr Laurel Williams, professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Baylor College of Medicine. 

“If what they discover is they view it so much that they are missing out on other things they may enjoy or things that they need to attend to, this is problematic use. Additionally, if you leave feeling overwhelmed, drained, sad, anxious, angry regularly, this use is not good for you.”

In other words, is your use of social media affecting other parts of your life? 

Are you putting off chores, work, hobbies or time with friends and family? 

Have you tried to cut back your time but realised you were unable to? 

Do you feel bad about your social media use?

Ofir Turel, a professor of information systems management at the University of Melbourne who has studied social media use for years, said there was “no agreement” over the term social media addiction, and he doesn’t “expect agreement soon”.

“It’s obvious that we have an issue,” Turel said. 

“You don’t have to call it an addiction, but there is an issue and we need, as a society, to start thinking about it.” 

Before setting limits on scrolling, it’s helpful to understand how social media feeds and advertising work to draw in users, Williams said. 

“Think of social media as a company trying to get you to stay with them and buy something — have the mindset that this is information that I don’t need to act on and may not be true,” she added. 

“Get alternate sources of information. Always understand the more you see something, anyone can start to believe it is true.”

Ian A Anderson, a postdoctoral scholar at California Institute of Technology, suggests making small, meaningful changes to stop you from opening your social media app of choice. 

Moving the app’s place on your phone or turning off notifications are “light touch interventions,” but more involved options, like not bringing your phone into the bedroom or other places where you tend to use it, could also help, Anderson said. 

Tech tools can also help to cut back on tech overuse. 

Both iPhones and Android devices have onboard controls to help regulate screen time.

Apple’s Screen Time controls are found in the iPhone’s settings menu. 

Users can set overall Downtime, which shuts off all phone activity during a set period of their choice. 

The controls also let users put a blanket restriction on certain categories of apps, such as social, games or entertainment or zero in on a specific app, by limiting the time that can be spent on it. 

The downside is that the limits aren’t hard to get around. It’s more of a nudge than a red line that you can’t cross. 

If you try to open an app with a limit, you’ll get a screen menu offering one more minute, a reminder after 15 minutes, or to completely ignore it.

If a light touch isn’t working, more drastic steps might be necessary. 

Some users swear by turning their phones to grey-scale to make it less appealing to dopamine-seeking brains. 

On iPhones, adjust the colour filter in your settings. 

For Android, turn on Bedtime Mode or tweak the colour correction setting. 

Downgrading to a simpler phone, such as an old-school flip phone, could also help curb social media compulsions. 

Some startups, figuring that people might prefer a tangible barrier, offer hardware solutions that introduce physical friction between you and an app. 

Unpluq, for instance, is a yellow tag that you have to hold up to your phone in order to access blocked apps. 

Brick and Blok are two different products that work along the same lines — they’re squarish pieces of plastic that you have to tap or scan with your phone to unlock an app.

If that’s not enough of an obstacle, you could stash away your phone entirely. 

There are various phone lock-boxes and cases available, some of them designed so parents can lock up their teenagers’ phones when they’re supposed to be sleeping, but there’s no rule that says only teenagers can use them.

Yondr, which makes portable phone locking pouches used at concerts or in schools, also sells a home phone box.

If all else fails, it may be a good idea to look for deeper reasons for feeling addicted to social media. 

Maybe it’s a symptom of underlying problems like anxiety, stress, loneliness, depression or low self-esteem. 

If you think that’s the case, it could be worth exploring counselling that is becoming more widely available.

“For people struggling to stay away — see if you can get a friend group to collaborate with you on it. Make it a group effort. Just don’t post about it! The more spaces become phone-free, the more we may see a lessened desire to be ‘on,'” Williams said. 

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