Will Storr on what we’ve lost t smartphones:

Yet my smartphone has affected my life in often negative ways. The world I disappear to inside it has made me – and probably you – angrier. That’s my main impression of how the world has changed since 2007: we’re all a lot more pissed off with each other. And I really do blame phones. Humans are profoundly social and wired to solve the problems of existence by forming into collaborative groups. When we feel we belong and are valued, we’re happy; when we feel isolated and worthless, we become anxious and depressed.

Smartphones have gamified and monetised these powerful aspects of human nature. They don’t benignly offer us the connection and status we desire: they strategically withdraw it in order to drive engagement. Whenever we’re outraged by the behaviour of an identity group that’s not our own, it’s an attack on our status: we are drawn further into our phones to find out more and perhaps take part in a counterattack – an attempt to restore our threatened status and reinforce the connection with our team. We’re made to feel good or bad by likes, reposts, comments or follower-counts, but our phone issues these precious rewards unpredictably, just as a slot machine does – and just as Fogg described. It’s this unpredictability that helps make them compulsive.