The making of a smartphone zombie generation

China is ahead of the West in seeing the dangers.

- Camilla Cavendish

Imagine that a James Bond villain decided to achieve world domination not with armies or drones but through our brains.

They might manipulate our minds to get us addicted to fantasy worlds, turn us against one another, and reduce our ability to concentrate.

Inventing the smartphone would do it. Then persuading us to give it to our children.

Until now, parents who fear that these omnipresent devices have made children sedentary, distracted and depressed have been cowed by powerful companies, naive teachers and peer pressure.

Mothers who beg schools not to set homework online, undermining screen time limits, have been told technology is a "life skill". Fathers who fear phones mean their children can be targeted by predators and bullies in their own homes are met with the response that their GPS tracking keeps children "safe". Families who see how online gaming disrupts learning are told that it improves problem-solving. And, of course, some of this is true.

But it is impossible to ignore the exponential rise in teenage mental illness that has coincided with the smartphone becoming ubiquitous since the early 2010s.

In a new book, The Anxious Generation, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt argues that smart devices and overprotective parents have "deformed" the developmental processes of childhood. He is demanding that smartphones be banned for children under 14, and social media until 16.

Until recently, this would have been regarded as extreme and unenforceable. But the fightback is beginning. Florida's Governor