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.
@article{arxiv.2503.07773,
title = {Did smartphones break the world as we knew it?},
author = {Mikhail V. Tamm},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.07773},
year = {2025}
}