| I have been studying this problem as it developed over the past decade (mobile revolution), and am torn between the two perspectives on it. What desktops and laptops afforded that mobile takes away, 8 usable fingers aside, is the factor of dedicated computer use (reduced context switching with non-mobile), providing a much better opportunity to keep predominant brainwave patterns away from the "fight or flight" state historically associated to rapid context switching. Therefore there is one categorical problem (excessive computer use) that is indeed shared across mobile and non-mobile computational platforms alike, and we can point to the people who used their desktops or laptops so much that it could be considered unhealthy, all well before the mobile revolution. At the same time, the modern epidemic exacerbates the problem by not only summing total computer time between mobile and non-mobile, but there is added the additional factor or rapid context switching which is nearly unavoidable with mobile platforms. If that wasn't enough, there is also evidence that these newer behavioral patterns are bleeding back from mobile into non-mobile computing, meaning that people are now using desktop/laptops as though they were mobile platforms, rapidly context switching when 10+ years ago they simply did not do this. Altogether, the evidence indicates that you are right overall, the smartphone was a catalyst to a change in how the internet is interacted with which is the real problem by and large, but conversely, we might be able to use both mobile and non-mobile platforms in a way which minimizes context switching and in so doing restores healthy beta brainwaves rather than encouraging the unhealthy "fight or flight" patterns indicative of this modern (first world) epidemic. |