I'm kinda curious as to why you think that's the case. I mean, smartphones are nice, and having a browser, chat client, camera etc. in my pocket is nice, but maybe I have been terminally screen-bound all my life, but I could do almost all those things on my PC before, and I could always call folks when on the go.

I've never experienced the massively life changing effects of having a smartphone, and (thankfully) none of my friends seem to be those people who are always looking at their phones.

While many technologies provided by the smartphone were indeed not novel the cumulative effect of having a constant access to them and their subsequent normalization is nothing short of revolutionary.

For instance, I remember the time when chatting online (even with people you knew offline) was considered to be a nerdy activity. Then it gradually became more mainstream and now it's the norm to do it and a lot of people do it multiple times per day. This fundamentally changes how people interact with each other.

Another example is dating. Not that I have personal experience with modern online dating (enabled by smartphones) but what I read is disturbing and captivating at the same time e.g. apparent normalization of "ghosting"...