The problem with this view is that its not borne out by the data and thus is moronic. I go where the data goes. I don’t care about ideology. Not even my own.

So the actual world shows that smartphone adoption is highly correlated with increasing unhappiness. And that is across countries, which starts to point more at something causal rather than just correlational. I’m not going to do your homework for you but there is more and more clear evidence being presented all the time that smartphones are bad news for happiness.

By the way, 2011-2012 is when smartphones reached ~50% of teen users.

Here’s more. As I said, do your own research. But Alan’s anti-thesis is the antithesis of what’s actually occurring. Not every advance is progress; not every novelty is worth the cost.