New York Times writer Ross Douthat wrote an article warning people about what he called "the real threat to the human future." What is it? Douthat explains: "the one in your pocket or on your desk, the one you might be reading this column on right now." Douthat explains:

Search your feelings, you know it to be true: You are enslaved to the internet. Definitely if you're young, increasingly if you're old, your day-to-day, minute-to-minute existence is dominated by a compulsion to check email and Twitter and Facebook and Instagram with a frequency that bears no relationship to any communicative need.

Compulsions are rarely harmless. The internet is not the opioid crisis; it is not likely to kill you (unless you're hit by a distracted driver) or leave you ravaged and destitute. But it requires you to focus intensely, furiously, and constantly on the ephemera that fills a tiny little screen, and experience the traditional graces of existence—your spouse and friends and children, the natural world, good food and great art—in a state of perpetual distraction.

Used within reasonable limits, of course, these devices also offer us new graces. But we are not using them within reasonable limits. They are the masters; we are not. They are built to addict us … madden us, distract us, arouse us, and deceive us. We primp and perform for them as for a lover; we surrender our privacy to their demands; we wait on tenterhooks for every "like." The smartphone is in the saddle, and it rides mankind.