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Project Reboot Speaker cautions local high school students about spending too much screen time on their devices By JARED DANIELS NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
“The average 18-year-old is on pace to spend 94% of their remaining free time in life consuming online entertainment.” That was a statement made by Dino Ambrosi, the founder of Project Reboot, who held a three-day seminar this week about screen time at the Mental Wellness Center in Santa Barbara. Meeting with about a dozen local high school students, Mr. Ambrosi sought to encourage them to be more mindful of the amount of time they’re spending on technology — particularly social media platforms — as well as strategies to help them in overall time management skills. The concept of Project Reboot was born out of a course Mr. Ambrosi started and first taught as a senior at UC Berkeley, which he says has helped students cut down three-and-a-half hours on average of their daily use of technology. The course itself, which is still offered at the university, was inspired by his own struggles with phone addiction while he was a college student. “I’m on a mission to help as many high school and college students as I possibly can build healthy relationships with tech,” Mr. Ambrosi told the NewsPress Wednesday. “I had a really unhealthy relationship with my phone when I went to college. I just didn’t do a good job of handling the discomfort that came with that transition. “Your phone is a 24/7 source of instant gratification that’s in your pocket at all times. I was just habitually turning to it, and it really messed up my college experience.” One of the lessons that Mr. Ambrosi seeks to impart to people is that they think critically about the value they get out of using social media. “The incentives of social media companies are not aligned with your best interests, whatsoever,” Mr. Ambrosi said. “If you don’t think carefully about how you want to interact with these platforms, you’re going to spend way more time on them than they really deserve because they have some of the world’s leading psychologists and access to trillions of points of data on user behavior to figure out how to keep you scrolling.” “Define why you use the app in one sentence, and set a clear intention for how much of your time the value that app adds is actually worth,” he instructed. Technology addiction has received increased attention over the years as medical professionals, tech researchers and elected officials try to make sense of how technology’s overuse is affecting people, especially teenagers and young adults. “Young people themselves describe it in plain words that they know social media not only drains their personal time, but also their energy and that it has a direct impact on their own feelings of mental wellness,” said Mental Wellness Center CEO Annamarie Cameron. “We also hear a lot from parents about their concerns about it. So it’s clear, there’s no debate that it’s an issue that Please see SCREEN TIME on A4
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Santa Barbara City Councilmember Kristen Sneddon has been working with the public works director on a timeline to remove parklets on Coast Village Road.
Sneddon seeks to remove parklets on Coast Village Road By NEIL HARTSTEIN NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
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Dawson Kelly, a senior at San Marcos High School, left, and Dino Ambrosi, founder of Project Reboot, get together Wednesday at the Mental Wellness Center, where Mr. Ambrosi was stressing the importance of limiting screen time on students’ devices.
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Determined to succeed
UCSB student achieves her dreams despite spinal muscular atrophy By KATHERINE ZEHNDER NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
Dino Ambrosi gives a presentation to high school students about the moderate use of smartphones and computers.
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Santa Barbara City Council member Kristen Sneddon is on board for removing the parklets along Coast Village Road in Montecito. In an email to the NewsPress, Councilmember Sneddon said she’s been working with the public works director for months on a timeline for removal “and have been surprised that they are still there.
“I have been clear on my input where CVR has been involved,” she said. “I’ll go back and look for contacts from Brunello, but I have met with and heard from enough businesses on CVR to know it is time.” Brian Brunello, co-owner of The Liquor and Wine Grotto, previously sent copies of a petition signed by 25 Montecito businesses and seven landlords to the
Atieh Taheri proved her doctors wrong. When she was 18 months old, she was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy. But Ms. Taheri not only has lived much longer than her physicians expected, she is a doctoral student studying computer engineering at UCSB. And now she’s using her studies to help others with SMA or similar diseases to integrate smoothly into society. Ms. Taheri talked to the News-Press about SMA during August, which is Spinal Muscular Atrophy Awareness Month. “My mom was always saying that when I was born she could see differences between me and other children,” said Ms. Taheri, who is under the supervision of Professor Misha Sra in the Perceptual Engineering Lab at
UCSB. “I couldn’t put pressure on my feet, like other children do when they learn to walk” So her mother took her to the doctor. When she was around a year and a half old, “my doctor told my mom to take me to a neurologist to see what was happening because I couldn’t walk. I was weak. My mom could see differences between me and my older sister when she was my age,” said Ms. Taheri. Doctors told her mother that Ms. Taheri would probably not survive, “I wouldn’t live beyond a year or a year and a half.” At about 18 months old, Ms. Taheri had a muscle biopsy, which diagnosed her with SMA. Doctors assumed because of her disease that Ms. Taheri would not live very long. “When I was 10 years old, my mom was Please see UCSB/SMA on A4
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Classified................. B4 Life...................... B1-2 Obituaries............... A4
Wednesday’s SUPER LOTTO: N/A Meganumber: N/A
Wednesday’s DAILY 4: 8-5-8-2
Tuesday’s MEGA MILLIONS: 1-8-10-25-32 Meganumber: 00
Wednesday’s FANTASY 5: 3-8-9-35-36
Wednesday’s DAILY DERBY: 07-02-09 Time: 1:47.93
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Sudoku................... B3 Weather................. A4
Wednesday’s DAILY 3: 2-8-2 / Wednesday’s Midday 9-7-8