The firm, Crimson Hexagon, says its platform allows clients — which include major US corporations — to analyze audiences and to track brand perception and campaign performance.

Citing people familiar with the business, the Journal said the government contracts of Crimson Hexagon, which pulls public data from Facebook, were not approved by Facebook in advance.

Since 2014, US government agencies have paid Crimson Hexagon more than $800,000 for 22 contracts, the Journal said, citing government procurement data.

Crimson Hexagon has sold its proprietary analytics platform abroad, including to Turkey and Russia, where in 2014 it worked with a non-profit tied to the government, the Journal reported late Friday.

It said Crimson Hexagon appears at least once to have mistakenly received private data from Facebook’s Instagram service.

Facebook had requested further evidence from Crimson Hexagon but the Journal quoted a spokesman for the social network as saying that “based on our investigation to date, Crimson Hexagon did not obtain any Facebook or Instagram information inappropriately.”

Chris Bingham, a Crimson Hexagon executive, wrote in a Friday blog post that his firm only collects publicly available social media data, an act which is “completely legal.”

Bingham says his firm routinely vets potential government customers to ensure they comply with policies of its “data partners” like Facebook.

“For example, there are special sensitivities about how government agencies can use online public data, even though that same data is freely accessible by others,” he wrote.

Facebook acknowledged this month that it was facing multiple inquiries from US and British regulators about a scandal involving the British consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

In Facebook’s worst ever public relations disaster, it admitted that up to 87 million users may have had their data hijacked by Cambridge Analytica, which was working for US President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.

Cambridge Analytica, which denies the accusations, has filed for bankruptcy in the United States and Britain.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in May that he was rolling out privacy controls demanded by European regulators to Facebook users worldwide because “everyone cares about privacy.”

Facebook and other online platforms have also been under pressure to better protect against being used to spread misinformation or promote division, as US intelligence leaders say Russia did during the 2016 US presidential campaign.

The city-state announced Friday that hackers had broken into a government database and stolen the health records of 1.5 million Singaporeans, including Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong who was specifically targeted in the “unprecedented” attack.

Singapore’s health minister said the strike was “a deliberate, targeted, and well-planned cyberattack and not the work of casual hackers or criminal gangs”.

While officials refused to comment on the identity of the hackers citing “operational security”, experts told AFP that the complexity of the attack and its focus on high-profile targets like the prime minister pointed to the hand of a state-actor.

“A cyber espionage threat actor could leverage disclosure of sensitive health information… to coerce an individual in (a) position of interest to conduct espionage” on its behalf, said Eric Hoh, Asia-Pacific president of cybersecurity firm FireEye.

Hoh told national broadcaster Channel NewsAsia that the attack was an “advanced persistent threat”.

“The nature of such attacks are that they are conducted by nation states using very advanced tools,” he said.

“They tend to be well resourced, well-funded and highly sophisticated.”

Healthcare data is of particular interest to cyberattackers because it can be used to blackmail people in positions of power, said Jeff Middleton, chief executive of cybersecurity consultancy Lantium.

“A lot of information about a person’s health can be gleaned from the medications that they take,” Middleton told AFP Saturday.

“Any non-public health information could be used for extortion. Russian spy services have a long history of doing this,” he added.

Medical information, like personal data, can also be easily monetised on criminal forums, said Sanjay Aurora, Asia Pacific managing director of Darktrace.

“Beyond making a quick buck, a more sinister reason to attack would be to cause widespread disruption and systemic damage to the healthcare service — as a fundamental part of critical infrastructure — or to undermine trust in a nation’s competency to keep personal data safe,” he told AFP.

– Hyper-connected –

Wealthy Singapore is hyper-connected and on a drive to digitise government records and essential services, including medical records which public hospitals and clinics can share via a centralised database.

But authorities have put the brakes on these plans while they investigate the cyberattack. A former judge will head an inquiry looking into the incident.

Singapore officials have cautioned against jumping to conclusions about the attackers.

“With regard to the prime minister’s data and why he was targeted, I would say that it’s perhaps best not to speculate what the attacker had in mind,” said David Koh, head of Singapore’s Cyber Security Agency.

The hackers used a computer infected with malware to gain access to the database between June 27 and July 4 before administrators spotted “unusual activity”, authorities said.

While Singapore has some of the most advanced military weaponry in the region, the government says it fends off thousands of cyberattacks every day and has long warned of breaches by actors as varied as high-school students in their bedrooms to nation states.

Earlier this month US intelligence chief Dan Coats described Russia, China, Iran and North Korea as the “worst offenders” when it came to attacks on American “digital infrastructure”.

Driven by a passion for technology, Krating Poonpol, who could be considered the biggest influence on the Thai start-up ecosystem, has opened a new chapter in his career with the launch of education technology (edtech) accelerator StormBreaker Venture.

StormBreaker Venture is founded and operated by Disrupt Technology Venture Co and is funded by many investors.

Krating, the founder of Disrupt Technology Venture, said the edtech start-up industry in Thailand is still in the infant stages compared with other parts of the world where it is a big industry. For example, in China there are unicorn start-ups such as VIP Kid and iTutor. One is already a listed company with a US$4 billion valuation, while another one has a $3 billion valuation. This is a renaissance phase in edtech.

It aims to create five edtech start-ups in 2018, and another 10 in 2019. In 2020, there will be products and services aimed at transforming the education system and impacting a million to 10 million people in 2020 in Thailand.

“Zero to one and from one to ten, my passion is to change the country by creating future leaders. I believe education can create change for all,” said Krating.

EdTech aims to play an important role in addressing the pain points of the education system. Therefore, Thailand and other countries in Southeast Asia have the most potential to leapfrog in edtech in the next five years.

StormBreaker Venture is an ongoing project from Education Disruption Conference & Hackathon, which was set up at the beginning of this year.

It will focus on five priority areas: English learning (English for All); STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) and Coding for All; Cloud-Powered School; Teacher of The Future; and Reskill Professional.

“Thais need an effective learning platform that can be easily accessed all around the country, which also includes STEM subjects. The Thai education system is not modern enough and lacks an efficient operating system to minimise the work overload of teachers from unnecessary non-teaching tasks.

“The cloud-powered school has been created to help teachers focus more on the teaching process. Our teachers still need to resell their profession as the ‘Teacher of The Future’, and need more efficient equipment for working in the future. The learning process in the digital technology era is not defined only in schools and universities. Everyone of all age groups should “Reskill Professional” to be prepared for the instant transformation in the digital disruption era,” said Krating.

“These are just a few examples regarding the education opportunity that needs to be fulfilled with start-ups or technology and this only needs true dedication and intention to change our country with a powerful education system impacting over 1 million Thais to get a good-quality education system that they deserve,” said Krating.

Thailand cannot change without a revolution in education.

The start-ups ecosyetem in Thailand is growing rapidly but it is faced with the problem of shortage of talent. It needs to create the education innovation ecosystem, said Krating.

Only five teams will be selected in the three-month intensive and exclusive bootcamp and have a demo day in January 2019. The qualified start-ups will be granted funding from Bt500,000 to Bt 1.5 million per start-up with a runway connected to the top regional and global edtech venture capital until series A.

StormBreaker Venture has three main partners to support the programme’s edtech start-ups – Line Thailand, Learn Capital, the venture capital specialising in edtech with funding of over Bt1 billion, and 500 TukTuks II.

Solving educational problems

The candidates must have qualifications and the teams should have expertise in business, in technology as a programer or developer, and in education. Moreover, they need to already have a product or prototype or MVP tested in the real market. Last but not least, they should have the capability to solve educational problems for more than 1 million people and a strong potential to expand and grow regionally.

“There is no limit to gender, age, or career. We are looking for someone with determination and passion to transform education and Thailand,” said Krating.

They will be trained by world-class mentors and advisers and many top national mentors, including Michael Staton – a partner of Learn Capital and a world top-100 innovator in education; Luis Pinto, the global operations partner of Learn Capital, as well as former executives of Microsoft for Education.

The StormBreaker Venture has also partnered with Thailand Education Partners to facilitate start-ups to do field tests and experiment with the prototype in the Education Sandbox in three provinces – Satun, Chon Buri, and Kalasin – which together have around 2,000 schools.

“They will have an opportunity to gain investment funds from Line Scale-up Package and Line Thailand. The start-ups might also get an opportunity to receive Line official and be one of the official Line services funded by Line Thailand,” said Krating.

He invited anyone with a strong passion to transform education for more than 1 million people and interested in joining the project to submit their applications by August 24 to the following link:

https://www.disruptignite.com/accelerator/edtech-accelerator

The qualifying teams will be announced on August 31.

It offers participants the chance to win a share of more than Bt2 million prizes and a trip to Silicon Valley in the US.

Somkid Jiranuntarat, chairman of Kasikorn Business Technology Group, said that TechJam is designed to inspire learning and raise standards across the three key areas: coding, data science and creative problem solving and design. The competition is aimed at energising the skill areas that are seen as vital to the future development of Thailand and which will allow the country to compete in the new world of the digital economy.

“KBank, as Thailand’s leading digital bank, realises the necessity of supporting the development of talented technical and design resources not only for our own technological excellence but also to support the future of the country as well,” said Somkid. “TechJam is further evidence of KBank’s commitment towards service excellence and continuing to provide the best financial services to our customers.”

Somkid said the main purposes of TechJam 2018 are threefold. It will seek out the top talent in the three areas from across the country and to expand the opportunities for them. They will be exposed to new design and technology concepts, enabling them to participate in a world-class technology competition.

“Second, it will help inspire those workers thinking about entering or switching over to the tech world to do so by joining the competition and learn about the opportunities and experiences along the way,” Somkid said.  “Third, it will introduce the rest of the country to the world of tech and creative innovation, bringing them into the heart and soul of the tomorrow squad – the future of the country.”

KBTG expects at least 3,000 people from all over Thailand to take part in the competition. “Coding is the pillar of all things digital. Data is believed to be the new oil,” Somkid said . “Two of the most valued companies in the world, Google and Facebook, create and sustain their values based purely on data. Technology must be purposeful. Only through creativity and design can empathy and insights be turned into meaningful innovations. Ones that can make life better for the people.

“Technology and design talent are now the major drivers of Thai digital and innovative economy. Under Thailand 4.0 initiative, the value-adding through innovation can only be realised if the country possesses adequate skills and expertise that can turn insights into technology and innovation.

“KBTG always places significant importance on skills enhancements of key resources. We believe these are vital to the strength of the country relating to software development, data science and design.”

During the regional and national competitions, competitors will be challenged with “tough, but fun, exercises derived from cutting-edge technology, frameworks and best practices” being used in the industry.

Throughout the three-month period, competitors will also be inspired to learn new skills and experience from the judges, who are experienced practitioners, as well as pick up tips and tricks from them and network with each other.

“KBTG looks at TechJam as a new way of learning and inspiring our top talent to improve upon themselves to achieve higher standards. Apart from the rewards, all winners are invited to join KBTG and continue to thrive within the company’s innovation and highly dynamic environment and culture. In fact, two third of last year’s winners are now KBTG family members,” said Somkid.

“All winners are also invited to join TechJam’s cohort and be recognised as being accepted into a group of proven talent  who we will continue to support through future meet ups, tech events and partnerships.”

Applications will be accepted until August 10. The final round is scheduled for November 3, at KBTG headquarters in Chaeng Watthana, Bangkok.

Thai consumers have reached a new high in online commerce, thanks to Facebook Messenger’s latest deal with Kasikornbank for a one-stop shopping experience on mobile apps.

The deal makes online commerce on the giant social media platform easier and more convenient as payment can be done seamlessly with just a few clicks.

Under the arrangement, consumers can do away with making payment for their purchase in a separate online session.

Previously, buyers had to pay first and then send a payment receipt to merchants to complete the transaction, but the new collaboration allows shoppers to use Kasikornbank’s K PLUS to make a seamless payment on the same platform. Buyers no longer have to enter bank account numbers or switch screens while shopping.

This new system underlines the digital marketplace’s responsiveness to consumers in Thailand’s social commerce market which is growing exponentially.

The Electronic Transactions Development Agency (ETDA) estimates the country’s overall e-commerce value at around Bt137 billion for 2017, with 51 per cent of the transactions conducted on social media, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

Facebook, which has more than 50 million users in Thailand, ranked one of the social platform’s top-five markets, says messaging is a key driver of rapid social commerce growth here.

Thanawat Malabuppha, president of Thai E-Commerce Association, said that social commerce is the largest segment of B2C (business to consumer) e-commerce in Thailand, accounting for 40 per cent of the overall B2C market.

A major strength of social commerce is its wide range of merchants or vendors where the cost of doing business is cheaper than using separate e-commerce websites or smaller e-marketplace platforms.

“Thais love shopping on social media platforms as they prefer to chat with merchants before making purchases. Currently, there are hundreds of thousands of small merchants and SMEs doing social commerce. The majority of Thais spend hours on social media on a daily basis,” said Thanawat.

Kasikornbank’s latest deal with Facebook Messenger allows consumers to do away with making payment for their purchase in a separate online session.

New deal allows onestop shopping on mobile apps for thai online consumers. Photo/AFP

According to John Wagner, managing director of Facebook Thailand, such a bank transfer solution gives businesses of all sizes an opportunity to close sales faster and boost engagement with their customers in a more secure and efficient way.

Wagner said that the modernisation and digitisation of people’s personal communication behaviour is transforming their expectations about how they should be able to communicate with businesses as more people are turning to messaging apps to connect with businesses around the world.

As of April, 2018, there were as many as 8 billion messages between people and businesses on Facebook Messenger apps, representing a four-fold growth year on year.

Wagner said the so-called conversational commerce (commerce on Messenger platform) was a trend that was gaining global traction, with a massive push in Thailand where the personalised online shopping experience via direct messaging has boosted customers’ trust and made them more likely to buy.

“Business messaging offers clear practical benefits such as convenience. But it can also play a much deeper, more meaningful role for both people and businesses. The sense of human connection that conversation unlocks can give consumers the confidence to convert.

“Among people surveyed who message businesses, the majority say that being able to message a business helps them feel more confident about the brand,” said Wagner.

Currently, 51 million Thais use Facebook each month. Thai SMEs are leading the world in social commerce and innovation as they were among the first to develop social commerce businesses, which is helping to fuel Thai economic growth, and becoming a major trend for SMEs in other countries.

On Facebook, people share more than 17 billion photos, and 400 million people use voice and video chat, while more than 150 million people use Instagram – also owned by Facebook – to connect with businesses on a monthly basis.

In Thailand, there are about 2.5 million SME pages on Facebook, with as many as 40 million people connected to these pages while about 100 million people outside of Thailand are connected to Thai SME pages.

During a recent visit to Zhongguancun International Innovation Building in Beijing, this writer witnessed how robots developed by Beijing-based service-robot start-up Yunji Technology can replace humans in performing certain tasks.

“Run”, an intelligent commercial service robot, was developed in 2016 to deliver goods to the room of hotel customers, show them the way and provide publicity information. Not surprisingly, it is dubbed the “hotel” robot.

Here’s how it works.

ISVs such as BoCloud (China), UEC Group Ltd. (China), Yusys Technologies Co. (China), EAB Systems (Hong Kong), Monoplus(Japan) and Biqmind (Singapore) are now offering solutions based on Red Hat OpenShift to help companies in the financial services, IT, and oil and gas sectors accelerate their innovation journey, Red Hat said in a press statement.

To help enterprises in Asia Pacific capture emerging opportunities, ISVs in the region are integrating Red Hat OpenShift into products and services that can enable success for cloud-first customers. Red Hat OpenShift is built on open source innovation and standards including Kubernetes, the container orchestration engine, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and is trusted by many companies around the world. It provides a more secure and stable platform for container-based deployments without sacrificing current investments, enabling mission-critical, traditional applications to coexist alongside new, cloud-native and container-based applications.

Red Hat OpenShift unites developers and IT operations to build, deploy and manage applications consistently across hybrid cloud infrastructures and helps enterprises deliver modern and traditional applications more quickly and efficiently, the statement added.

Balaji Swamy, director of ISV and Embedded Business for Red Hat Asia Pacific, said: “Businesses in Asia Pacific are increasingly realizing how a leadingcontainer platform such as Red Hat OpenShift can help them increase agility and accelerate innovation to be ahead of their competitors. With OpenShift, customers can enjoy a consistent environment throughout their organization, from development through production, with the knowledge that enhanced security capabilities areintegrated throughout the entire application lifecycle. We are pleased to support ISVs and the expandedOpenShift community as they drive new opportunities across the region and industries.”

At the fourth annual Asia Pacific Spectrum Management Conference, which wrapped up yesterday, Du Yeqing, vice-president of the 5G product line at Huawei Technologies Co, said continuous large bandwidth (100 MHz per operator) would improve both investment efficiency and user experience by 10 times and promote mobile broadband to new heights.

“C-band is the golden spectrum for 5G. It has been released or will be released for operators in countries worldwide. Continuous large bandwidth will be the cornerstone for 5G business success,” he said at the three-day conference.

According to Du, the current focus of 5G is to coordinate C-band spectrum planning. He warned that other key technologies and requirements must not be overlooked.

“Uplink-downlink decoupling can reduce the number of sites and associated costs by enabling 5G deployment on existing spectrums (2G, 3G and 4G) and allow continuous coverage on C-band,” he said.

Du stressed the need for precise synchronisation, reduced interference, less spectrum isolation, and higher spectral efficiency.

Countries with insufficient C-band spectrum can allocate 100 MHz of continuous large bandwidth on TDD 2.6/2.3 GHz to each operator. Du believes this will improve investment efficiency, while helping to prepare for an evolution towards high bandwidth 5G.

Brett Tarnutzer, head of spectrum at GSMA, a global telecommunications industry body, said harmonised spectrum is fundamental for 5G. He urged governments and regulators in the region to support the need for 5G spectrum at international spectrum discussions including the World Radiocommunication Conference 2019.

“Immediate action is essential due to the lengthy timeframes involved in making new mobile spectrum available,” he said.

Hu Wang, spectrum coordinator for the Asia-Pacific region at Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA), said 5G represents a new communication paradigm for Asian society.

“Simultaneous access to low, mid and high bands will be needed to meet all major 5G requirements and usages,” he said.

Hu said expeditious and timely regulatory action is needed to make the existing harmonised mobile bands suitable for 5G in Asia.

He suggested ensuring affordable access to spectrum for users, as it would bring huge benefits to society including an increase in gross domestic product. Auctions should be designed to stimulate spectrum usage, to maximise benefits for society, and to attract investments in infrastructure, rather than expectations to generate more revenues.

Richard Womersley, director of spectrum consulting at LS Telecom, echoed Hu’s view. He said 5G spectrum needs to be made available to industries on a lower cost basis.

Nattawut Ard-Paru, division director of spectrum policy and strategy at the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission, is encouraging closer coordination between all stakeholders in the telecomS industry. He considers strong cooperation and harmonisation among neighbouring countries as a key to the success of 5G business.

Jolly Wong Chun-Kau, adjunct professor at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, said harmonised spectrum and technical standardisations are essential to achieve early 5G deployments. He urged to promote mobile network sharing to lower capital and operational expenses and facilitate innovative services.

Areewan Haorangsi, secretary general of Asia Pacific Telecommunity (APT), said powering the Internet of Things (IoT) revolution and 5G spectrum requirements are of specific interest to APT. The organisation plans to assist its members in developing national spectrum roadmaps and coordinating spectrum for cross-border needs.

Hosted by Forum Global, the International Telecommunication Union and APT, the conference is aimed at providing a platform for regulators, telecoms operators, equipment makers and other industry stakeholders in the region to gather to discuss how to promote spectrum allocation and formulate clear industry policies.

This success assures customer confidence while accelerating customer services with scalable hyperconverged infrastructure and easy to use in just a click, Nutanix said in a press statement Thursday.

“Last year, TRIS had redefined the new offices. One of our policies and goals is to gain more efficiency so we move on to transform and modernize the existing traditional IT systems, which  requires; the new Data Center in a limited space; our employees should have worry-free with the IT operation; and the transformation must be completed in a shortest time, within one-month.  At the new office, all employees will have to be able to work and communication through all available channels and provide services to clients with zero technical interruption.” said Dr. Waitune Pokachaipat, President, TRIS Corporation Limited.

TRIS and TRIS Rating replacing ordinary analog phone system with Skype Phone, using Session Initial Protocol (SIP) via high-speed wireless network and integrating all communicating channels into one system. As a result, this transformation differentiates and improves companies’ services level by minimizing and fasten employee communication process while outstandingly create greater services for customers, the statement added.

“Skype Phone demands a large number of servers which also required time and fund to support the tuning protocol. When experimenting Nutanix’sHyperconverged Infrastructure solution, a technology that combines together the server, storage and virtualization and working with Nutanix Enterprise Cloud OS, we discovered that it meets our requirements in terms of space saving from 2 racks to one block (2U), we took only 15 minutes to install 10 units of Skype server. Nutanix empowers us to quickly overcome several obstacles and our staff could barely feel the change. We can possibly invest with Nutanix as much as we need, in just one-click management and scale on-demand model.We are able to test environment where we can try an experiment whenever we want.”  said Mr. Annop Dumrongpanichakit, Senior Vice President, IT and Digital, TRIS Corporation Limited.

“Nutanix system has pre-installed with its native hypervisor AHV, which allows TRIS to save the cost of hypervisor license. At the moment, TRIS uses Nutanix in 2 phases to support Microsoft Cloud and Skype. Nutanix is pleased to have confidence and trust from TRIS and we will continue this partnership to leverage the forefront technology that supports today’s and future demands in Thailand.” said Mr. Thawipong Anotaisinthawee, Country Manager, Nutanix (Thailand).

Nutanix Acropolis delivers Open Platform for virtualization and mobility applications, utilizing Web-Scale architecture.  Acropolis Hypervisor (AHV) is natively built virtualization solution. Based on the proven Linux KVM hypervisor, AHV is hardened to meet the most stringent enterprise security requirements and integrated management through Prism. AHV also delivers high availability with minimal configuration and no additional software purchase, Nutanix said.

“TRIS is well-respected as a trusted consulting company for private and public sectors while TRIS Rating provides rating services based on independent and neutral practice. Thus, reliability, speed and professional experts are considered highly important. Nutanix’s infrastructure technology enables us achieving 100% Unified Communications operation. With Skype, we barely need a data center controller and can reduce maintenance cost and pollution generating. At the same time, we can save more than 40% of electricity bill and reduce a large amount of everyday hidden costs. After using Nutanix’s technology, we are able to increase productivity, performance and improve working process. We are confident in Nutanix and will definitely continue to use Nutanix technology in the next coming phases.” added Dr. Waitune.

A new study out Tuesday says digital overload could be linked to a “modest” but significant rise in new ADHD behaviors, offering a warning to parents about the potential dangers of too much screen time.

The findings in the Journal of the American Medical Association were based on nearly 2,600 Los Angeles teens who answered survey questions over a two-year period — making it one of the largest and longest studies on the topic to date.

The more social media, streaming video, text messaging, music downloads or online chats they engaged with, the more likely they were to report symptoms like difficulty organizing and completing tasks, or trouble remaining still.

About 10 percent of youths who said they commonly used digital media platforms frequently showed new ADHD symptoms over the study period, said the report.

In contrast, 4.6 percent of students who were not frequent users of any digital activity showed ADHD symptoms.

Researchers cautioned that the rise in ADHD symptoms was “modest” and at least some of the effect might be explained by confounding factors.

Also, since the study was observational in nature and was based on survey responses by the teens themselves, researchers said they could not prove that smartphone use actually caused ADHD symptoms.

Still, the findings offer a solid basis for more research because “this was a statistically significant association,” said Adam Leventhal, a professor of preventive medicine and psychology at the University of Southern California.

“We can say with confidence that teens who were exposed to higher levels of digital media were significantly more likely to develop ADHD symptoms in the future.”

Previous studies have shown that ADHD, a psychiatric condition involving persistent difficulty sustaining attention, hyperactivity and impulsivity, affects about seven percent of youths in the United States and may be on the rise in some populations.

Earlier studies examining the effect of television watching and playing video games found modest increases in ADHD among children.

According to Jessica Agnew-Blais, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience at King’s College London, the authors were “rightfully cautious not to over-interpret” their findings.

“The authors only assess ADHD symptom frequency, so it remains unclear whether relatively small changes in ADHD symptom frequency over these two years are disruptive or impairing in everyday life,” she said.

“It is worth noting that over 80 percent of students reported high frequency use of digital media, and the vast majority of these students do not have elevated ADHD symptoms.”

Another expert who was not involved in the study, Andy Przybylski, an associate professor at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford, described the research as “interesting” but “tentative.”

“The study is a proof of concept that tells us we need very large samples when we design future studies because the possible effects are extremely small,” he said.

The next studies on the topic should move away from self-reported survey answers and include clinical diagnoses and external measurements of device use, experts suggested.