Did smartphones break the world as we knew it?

Mikhail V. Tamm

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arXiv · 2503.07773

Did smartphones break the world as we knew it?

Mikhail V. Tamm

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Abstract

I overview data on several radical societal changes started circa 2015: accelerated decline in fertility rate, backsliding of democracy, rise of populist politics and arrest in generational renewal of political leadership. I conjecture that all these processes have a common underlying cause: the spread of cheap and easy access to information due to wide spread of smartphones. I speculate about possible mechanisms connecting the observed changes with this underlying information revolution and discuss relevant historical parallels.

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Mikhail V. Tamm. 2025-03-10. Did smartphones break the world as we knew it?. https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.07773

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