{"id":362250,"date":"2026-03-28T05:47:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-28T05:47:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/362250\/"},"modified":"2026-03-28T05:47:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-28T05:47:13","slug":"every-bad-thing-youve-heard-about-smartphones-ranked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/362250\/","title":{"rendered":"Every bad thing you&#8217;ve heard about smartphones, ranked"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/substackcdn.com\/image\/fetch\/$s_!Vq0I!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep\/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F86f0bd44-8826-4c4e-adbb-0f13367b1ef6_1200x630.png\" data-component-name=\"Image2ToDOM\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" class=\"image-link image2 is-viewable-img can-restack\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/86f0bd44-8826-4c4e-adbb-0f13367b1ef6_1200.jpeg\" width=\"1200\" height=\"630\" data-attrs=\"{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/86f0bd44-8826-4c4e-adbb-0f13367b1ef6_1200x630.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:630,&quot;width&quot;:1200,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:1987423,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image\/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.theargumentmag.com\/i\/192246609?img=https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F86f0bd44-8826-4c4e-adbb-0f13367b1ef6_1200x630.png&quot;,&quot;isProcessing&quot;:false,&quot;align&quot;:null,&quot;offset&quot;:false}\" alt=\"\"   fetchpriority=\"high\" class=\"sizing-normal\"\/><\/a>Phones receive blame for everything from lack of sleep to fertility declines, but the evidence for these claims is decidedly mixed.<\/p>\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theargumentmag.com\/p\/against-the-smartphone-theory-of\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Part 1<\/a> of this essay, I argued that the Smartphone Theory of Everything \u2014 the idea that phones are uniquely to blame for rising anxiety, polarization, loneliness, conspiracy thinking, and just about every other modern malady \u2014 is wrong about \u201cEverything\u201d but isn\u2019t wrong about everything.<\/p>\n<p>The strongest version of the case against smartphones is not that phones are poison but that they are a displacement machine: When you\u2019re staring at your screen, you\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n<p data-attrs=\"{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/www.theargumentmag.com\/p\/every-bad-thing-youve-heard-about?utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_content=share&amp;action=share&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Share&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}\" data-component-name=\"ButtonCreateButton\" class=\"button-wrapper\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theargumentmag.com\/p\/every-bad-thing-youve-heard-about?utm_source=substack&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_content=share&amp;action=share\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" class=\"button primary\" target=\"_blank\">Share<\/a><\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Phones receive blame for everything from lack of sleep to fertility declines, but the evidence for these claims&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":362251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[85,46,321,125],"class_list":{"0":"post-362250","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mobile","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-mobile","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=362250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/362250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/362251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=362250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=362250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=362250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}