Every bad thing you've heard about smartphones, ranked

Do phones make you stupid, sad, and lonely?

Phones receive blame for everything from lack of sleep to fertility declines, but the evidence for these claims is decidedly mixed.

In Part 1 of this essay, I argued that the Smartphone Theory of Everything — the idea that phones are uniquely to blame for rising anxiety, polarization, loneliness, conspiracy thinking, and just about every other modern malady — is wrong about “Everything” but isn’t wrong about everything.

The strongest version of the case against smartphones is not that phones are poison but that they are a displacement machine: When you’re staring at your screen, you’re not sleeping, socializing, playing outside, watching TV, or learning. But the countries and demographic groups showing the worst effects are not the heaviest phone users. Instead, phones are revealing structural vulnerabilities that already existed.

That’s the theory. But I also wanted to create a living document where I go through the most popular claims in the smartphone debate and sort them into three buckets: strong evidence, mixed evidence, and weak evidence.

THE EVIDENCE

STRONG EVIDENCE

1. Smartphones are bad for your sleep.