Mike Herrick has a 13-year-old daughter who enjoys using her smartphone all the time. His daughter often sends text messages to her friends, even if they are sitting a few meters apart. At times like those, he wonders about the effects that technology has on people, especially children. Herrick is a product and engineering executive at Urban Airship, a mobile technology company in Portland, Oregon. He told the Associated Press, “The power of this age we live in is that it has given everyone access to all this information and the ability to stay connected to people, but how do we manage it better?” Other technology executives have similar questions. Many say they enjoy their work. But, they also are concerned about the addictive nature of mobile devices and social media. The Pew Research Center released a study in August about what parents think about technology in the lives of their children. The study found that about 66 percent of U.S. parents worry that their teenage children spend too much time with computers or mobile devices.