Phones Reveal, Don’t Cause, Social Failures

Rather than acting as a singular cause of modern social ills, smartphones function mainly as a displacement machine and an amplifier that expose preexisting vulnerabilities (sleep disruption being an exception with strong evidence). Policies and interventions should therefore target underlying vulnerabilities and activity substitution instead of only restricting devices. — Shifts the policy debate from banning or blaming phones to addressing the social and structural conditions (sleep, supervision, leisure substitution) that phones reveal and interact with.