Smartphones

Yet my smartphone has affected my life in often negative ways. The world I disappear to inside it has made me – and probably you – angrier. That’s my main impression of how the world has changed since 2007: we’re all a lot more pissed off with each other. And I really do blame phones. Humans are profoundly social and wired to solve the problems of existence by forming into collaborative groups. When we feel we belong and are…

Digging deeper into the data, which comes from the Understanding America Study, we can see that people in their twenties and thirties in particular report feeling increasingly easily distracted and careless, less tenacious and less likely to make and deliver on commitments. While a full explanation of these shifts requires thorough investigation, and there will be many factors at work, smartphones and streaming services seem…