Hey there, it's the first Sunday of March, friend.You press your phone, look at it and you're in. Face ID. You do it a gazillion times a day without thinking. But have you ever wondered, what if someone else looked at your phone? A stranger. A coworker. That guy behind you at Starbucks.
🔐 What are the odds a random person could unlock your iPhone with their face?A) 1 in 10,000, B) 1 in 100,000, C) 1 in 1,000,000 or D) 1 in 1,000,000,000. Hint: Your face is doing more heavy lifting than you realize. Answer's at the end!
🍫 Quick heads up. Gmail has a bouncer, and he's picky. If you don't click anything in my emails, Gmail assumes you don't care and quietly moves me to spam. Next thing you know, you're wondering why I ghosted you. I didn't. I'm in your junk folder next to a coupon for tactical sunglasses. So do me a solid. Tap a link today. Any link. Even this one.It tells Gmail we're good. Takes one second. Keeps me showing up. Deal? Deal. — Kim
We pick up our phones 186 times a day and spend over 7 hours on screens. We've eliminated virtually every moment of stillness from our lives.
Creativity scores have been declining since 1990, right when screens started filling idle time.
Boredom activates the brain's "default mode network," the state where original thinking, problem-solving and self-reflection happen. We killed the conditions for our best ideas.
📖 Read time: 3 minutes
Let me tell you a story. In 1990, a young woman sat on a delayed train from Manchester to London. Four hours. No smartphone. No earbuds. No Wi-Fi. She didn't even have a pen.
So she sat there, staring out the window.
By the time that train pulled into London, she had imagined an entire world: a boy wizard, a school called Hogwarts, seven books mapped out in her head. Her name was J.K. Rowling. That idea became Harry Potter, a franchise worth over $15 billion.
If that train ride happened today, she would have scrolled Instagram for four hours. And you and I would have never heard of Harry Potter. That's not a hypothetical.
🧮 It's math
The average American picks up their phone 186 times a day. That's once every five minutes during waking hours. We spend over 7 hours daily staring at screens. And 53% of us say we want to cut back but can't.
We've done something no other generation in human history has done. We eliminated boredom. Completely. Every idle moment, every waiting room, every quiet car ride, every line at the grocery store gets filled with a screen.
We did it so fast we never stopped to ask: What if boredom was doing something important?
🧠 Your brain on nothing
Neuroscientists have a name for what happens when your brain isn't focused on anything: the default mode network. It's the state your mind enters when you're folding laundry, staring at clouds or zoning out in the shower. And it's where the magic happens.
In default mode, your brain connects dots it can't connect when you're busy. It processes emotions, replays memories, rehearses the future and wanders into ideas you'd never reach on purpose. Researchers say this is where creativity, problem-solving and self-reflection live.
The default mode network needs one thing to activate: nothing. It needs a gap. A pause. A moment with no input.
We used to get those moments constantly. Waiting for the bus. Sitting in a doctor's office. Riding in the back seat as a kid. Now? We fill every single one of them with a podcast, a scroll, a notification, a game.
Data shows that's costing us. A landmark study out of the College of William & Mary analyzed nearly 300,000 creativity test scores spanning decades. Creativity had been rising steadily for years, right alongside IQ. Then, around 1990, it started falling. And it hasn't stopped. IQ kept climbing. Creativity didn't.
The drop was sharpest in kids. The ones who've never known a world without screens in every pocket.
🗳️ What do you think?
I'm not going to tell you to throw your phone out the window. (I'd be a hypocrite. I'm on mine constantly.) I do think we removed an ingredient from our lives that we didn't know we needed.
Boredom wasn't the enemy. It was the blank canvas. I'm curious what you think. So I'm asking:
POLL: Has killing boredom been good or bad for us?
I'll share the results next week, and I genuinely want to know where you land. Hit the button to vote.
🗣️ TEXT/POST THIS STAT: Americans pick up their phones 186 times a day. U.S. creativity scores have been falling since 1990. Harry Potter was invented on a 4-hour train ride with no phone and no Wi-Fi. Maybe boredom wasn't the problem. Learn more free at GetKim.com.
📩 Send this to someone who can't put their phone down for five minutes. (So ... everyone?) Forward this. It might be the nudge they didn't know they needed. And it might spark the best conversation you've had in a while.
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Alex talked to a creepy guy outside a club. What she didn't know? He recorded the whole interaction via smart glasses. The video was then posted to 500,000 strangers on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. I talked to her about the fallout.
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WEB WATERCOOLER
🕷️ eBay's nightmare paycheck: You might remember me talking about this on the show back in January. A couple who ran a small e-commerce newsletter wrote some critical coverage of eBay. The company's response? Executives texted "take her down" and seven employees launched a full-blown stalking campaign. Live spiders. Live cockroaches. A bloody pig mask. A funeral wreath. A book about surviving your spouse's death. They even surveilled the couple in person and tried to plant a GPS tracker on their car. Seven employees went to prison. eBay paid a $3 million criminal penalty. And this week, the couple settled their $500 million civil lawsuit against eBay and its former CEO days before trial. Terms are confidential. The CEO was never criminally charged. Let that sit for a second. Someone wrote a newsletter article that a company didn't like. And a Fortune 500 corporation responded with a horror movie.
Preach your own sermon: The pope told priests to stop letting AI write their homilies. In a closed-door meeting, Pope Leo XIV warned clergy that AI can deliver words but it can't share faith. Fair point. (Also applies to your work emails, just saying.) Meanwhile, the Vatican quietly rolled out AI-powered live translation at St. Peter's Basilica in up to 60 languages. So AI can't write the sermon, but it can translate it instantly for the entire world. That's not hypocrisy. That's actually the perfect line to draw. Use AI to reach more people. Don't use it to replace the thing only you can bring.
✈️ The sneaky travel tax: Booking a spring trip? Airlines and hotel websites use your IP address to track your searches. When they see you checking the same flight repeatedly, the price magically goes up. It's called dynamic pricing. I use ExpressVPN to hide my location and mask my IP. When their site can't track me, I get the lowest price instead of the inflated one. Get four extra months right now.*
Samsung upgrade fee: So Samsung just dropped the Galaxy S26 series, and two of the three models got a $100 bump, S26 is $899, S26+ is $1,099. They're pointing at a global memory chip shortage. The S26 Ultra didn't move, still $1,299. You can preorder now, they ship March 11, which gives you about two weeks to talk yourself out of it.
🩸 The brain heads-up: Get this. Scientists built a blood test that can predict Alzheimer's symptoms years before they show up by measuring a protein called p-tau217. No brain scan required. Only blood. The model landed the timing for roughly 9 out of 10 people. Early detection means earlier treatment and better planning for families. This will be incredible if it actually works.
IN PARTNERSHIP WITH
Nearly 8 billion emails exposed. Is your email safe?
That's why I use and trust NordPass. It keeps all my passwords safe, generates strong new ones for me, and automatically fills login details so I never have to remember them.
NordPass protects you by:
Storing passwords securely in an encrypted vault.
Generating strong, unique passwords for every account.
Alerting you if your credentials appear in a leak.
🎧 Or search "Komando" wherever you get your podcasts. I'm everywhere.
DEVICE ADVICE
⚡️ 3-second tech genius: Take the spring out of a click pen and coil it around your charger cable where it meets the plug. Stops the cable from bending and breaking at the weak point. Saves you $30. You're welcome.
📉 Stop overpaying for cell service: Look at this note I got from a reader: "I'm a month into Consumer Cellular and received my first bill, down $148 to $64 and no change in my service!" You get the exact same nationwide 5G coverage without the massive markup. Switch and get $25 off with code KIM25. Over 50? Get one line of unlimited talk, text and data for just $35.*
🗂️ Mac's Finder is weird: By default, it opens to "Recents," and who needs that? Go to Finder > Settings > General > Other and choose something like documents or downloads. Then hit the View menu and enable Show Path Bar and Show Status Bar. Now the bottom of every Finder window shows exactly where you are and how big the folder is. Much more useful.
Don't share your Windows login with people: Give them their own. Go to Settings > Accounts > Other users > Add account. They sign in with a Microsoft account, or hit "I don't have this person's sign-in information" to set up a local account with its own password. Your files, your settings, your business. Theirs stays theirs.
Make your phone read anything out loud to you: Long article? Recipe with messy hands? Eyes just tired? On iPhone, go to Settings > Accessibility > Spoken Content and toggle on Speak Screen. Swipe down from the top of any screen with two fingers, and your phone reads everything on it out loud. Speed it up, slow it down, pause whenever. On Android, go to Settings > Accessibility > Select to Speak and toggle it on. Tap the floating button, then tap any text. Turns your phone into a personal narrator.
🔄 Free AirDrop that works on everything: Tired of emailing photos or files to yourself to get them from your phone to your PC? Stop. There's a free open-source app called LocalSend that lets you send files between any devices on your Wi-Fi. iPhone to Windows. Android to Mac. Laptop to tablet. No account, no cloud, no file size limit. Download it at localsend.org. Apple and Google charge you nothing for their versions, but they only work within their ecosystems. This one doesn't care what you own. I love that.
WHAT THE TECH?
Image: Photon Matrix
🦟 Laser tag: backyard edition
You know what's more annoying than a mosquito? Missing it and clapping your hands like a confused seal.
Meet the Photon Matrix, a Chinese-built mosquito air defense system. This pint-size Bug Iron Dome uses lidar to spot bloodsuckers in 3 milliseconds, tracks targets within 3 to 6 meters and zaps up to 30 mosquitoes per second with a laser beam. It even avoids pets and people. I hope.
Costs $468 to $668, which is a pretty good deal for a Death Star.
LOGGING OUT …
🔜 Tomorrow: Before you panic-pay a huge medical bill, let AI cross-examine your hospital receipt. I'll walk you through exactly what to request (itemized + codes) and what to paste in to surface overcharges. 80% of all medical bills have errors. I'll show you how to find yours, that's in tomorrow's newsletter.
😳 The answer: C) 1 in 1,000,000. Your face is literally one in a million. (Finally, proof.) That's a massive upgrade from Touch ID, which had a 1 in 50,000 chance of being fooled by a random fingerprint. Face ID is 20x more secure. But here's the thing most people miss.
If someone holds your phone up to your face while you're sleeping, it can still unlock. Fix that right now. Go to Settings > Face ID & Passcode and scroll down to toggle on Require Attention for Face ID. This forces your iPhone to confirm you're looking at it with your eyes open before it unlocks. Sleeping? Won't work. Distracted? Won't work. Five seconds to set up. Do it.
Now, one final joke. A Tibetan monk sees the face of Jesus in a tub of margarine. He raises his eyes to the heavens and exclaims, "I can't believe it's not Buddha!" (I heard that groan!)
🧠 Curiosity is compound interest for your brain. Keep investing. — Kim
Kim Komando • Komando.com • 510+ radio stations • Trusted by millions daily
🏆 THE KIM CHALLENGE:Forward this to ONE person who needs to hear it today. Pick the person who popped into your head while reading. You know who it is.
Companies and products denoted by an asterisk (*) within this publication are paid sponsors or advertisements. As an Amazon Associate, the publisher earns from qualifying purchases. Statements regarding products denoted by a double asterisk (**) have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration; such products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. This newsletter is provided for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute legal, financial, medical, or professional advice of any kind. Readers should consult with a qualified professional before making any decisions based on this content. The publisher disclaims all liability for any loss, damage, or injury resulting from the use of or reliance on the information contained herein.
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Keep a civil tongue.