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Blaming smartphones is a recent meme for a phenomenon that precedes smartphones

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone

>Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community is a 2000 nonfiction book by Robert D. Putnam. It was developed from his 1995 essay entitled "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital". Putnam surveys the decline of social capital in the United States since 1950. He has described the reduction in all the forms of in-person social intercourse upon which Americans used to found, educate, and enrich the fabric of their social lives. He argues that this undermines the active civic engagement which a strong democracy requires from its citizens.



" He concluded the main cause was technology "individualizing" people's leisure time via television and the Internet, suspecting that "virtual reality helmets" would carry this further in the future."

Smartphones fit nicely in his conclusion.


Ah yes, I forgot about all of those “meme” studies of youth mental health showing a marked decline during the 1950s like we see today with studies that analyze mental health after the introduction of the smartphone.


Nothing else in youths lives has changed even remotely since 1950s other than the smartphone, it clearly must be the cause!




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