The smartphone, once hailed as a tool of great progress and prosperity, has been getting a bad rap of late. It emerged this week that when new students at Eton start the school year in September, their devices must not come with them. Instead, they will each be given a “dumb” Nokia phone that is unable to access the internet and only allows calls and texts.
Deprived teens might feel the psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who popularised the idea that we should blame smartphones for rising rates of mental health problems among young people, has a lot to answer for. Teachers at nearly two-thirds of secondary schools now say they have rules that prevent students from using their phones during the day.
But once you’re a consenting adult, is there really anything wrong with spending a bit of hard-earned downtime watching videos of golden retrievers being adorable on social media? Or taking your phone out while you’re in the supermarket queue to see which world leader’s name President Joe Biden has got wrong this time? Or, er, allowing the marvellous algorithms of social media to guide you into the kitchen and personal life of some woman in Leeds who wants to show you what she’s cooking her husband for dinner when you can’t sleep at two in the morning?