Smartphones aren't cigarettes

23 Dec, 2025

The call for restrictive regulations on smartphone usage, especially for minors, is on the rise. As of November, twenty-eight US states had enacted policies banning or restricting cellphone use in K-12 schools.¹ In June, the Dutch government released recommendations that children under 11 not be given smartphones,² while the European Commission has expressed openness to an EU-wide social media ban for children under 16.³ Along with this anti-smartphone vigor, a catchy policy metaphor has been emerging: that “smartphones are the new cigarettes”.⁴

In his 2019 book Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport popularized this comparison, noting similarities between Big Tobacco and modern tech companies.⁵ Increasing, tech skeptics are equating the use of screens by other people in your environment to secondhand smoke. As Richard Cytowic writes in his 2024 book Your Stone Age Brain in the Screen Age, “[s]creens of any sort act like secondhand smoke, affecting both the user and anyone within range” (4).⁶

Accordingly, the “smartphones are cigarettes” metaphor has also been gaining traction in the policy space. Last year, leading WHO expert and executive council member Natasha Azzopardi-Muscat recommended that “[c]ountries should consider regulating digital devices like smartphones in a similar way to tobacco products”.⁷ But is this metaphor really appropriate?

True, there are many similarities between tobacco and smartphones. There is growing evidence of the detrimental effects of smartphone use on human health and wellbeing. ⁸ Smartphones, like cigarettes, are addictive⁹ and even pose secondhand health effects. For example, phone-distracted drivers are dangerous to others on the road¹⁰ and parental smartphone use is associated with emotional distress in children.¹¹ Finally, much like the tobacco industry until the late 20th century, the use of smartphones is largely unregulated, despite the increasing evidence of the negative effects they present to human health and wellbeing.

However, there is a key difference between smartphones and cigarettes: for those of us living in modern developed countries, we don’t currently have the option to “quit” our smartphones. Smartphones are not simply addictive, but everyday life is engineered in such a way that literally requires us to use them. Take transportation: parking your car increasingly requires an app,¹² as does renting a vehicle through car-share services,¹³ or hailing a car with ride-sharing services like Uber or Lyft. Payment services are also increasingly designed on the assumption of a smartphone: the mobile "neobank" Bunq only offers their customers banking services via the app¹⁴ and since covid, many restaurants have ditched a physical menu and require customers to select and order their food via a QR code. Even Europe’s new payment competitor to Visa/Mastercard, “Wero”, can only be used for payments via smartphone.¹⁵ While quitting cigarettes in the heyday of Big Tobacco may have posed a social burden, your access to transportation and payment services didn’t depend on your smoking status.

It is also worth differentiating how we evaluate rates of use between smartphones and cigarettes. Within the European policy goal to drive down smoking rates from 25% to 5% by 2040,¹⁶ the rate refers to the percentage of the population that smokes. When we evaluate smartphone use, if we simply divide society into users or non-users of smartphones, we miss the more important data points of how frequently people are using their smartphones, for what means, and in what contexts.

Ultimately, given the inherent structural differences between cigarette and smartphone usage, it is unstrategic to use smoking regulations as the policy blueprint for tackling the impact of smartphones on society. So what metaphors might be more effective? Maybe we should look at another industry that is simultaneously harmful, addictive, but also nearly impossible to “opt out” of, due to its embeddedness in all aspects of modern life; something that the economy relies on as a sort of lifeblood; something that is also protected by powerful financial interests, who distort public information in an attempt to protect their business. So perhaps we should look at the fossil fuel industry.

The use of Big Oil as a metaphor for Big Tech isn’t completely new. The comparison was introduced by members of the Strother School for Radical Attention in 2023¹⁷, leading to their use of the term “human fracking” to describe the extractive impact of the modern attention economy, mediated by smartphone and digital tech platforms.¹⁸ Within this metaphor, the resource of interest is no longer fossil fuels, but human attention. By providing a more precise comparison, this metaphor can help us better conceptualize and tackle the problems posed by modern smartphone use.

While a proper exploration of the lessons learned from decarbonization is beyond the scope of this blog post, a few key themes can serve as a starting point. For one, the carbon debate was, and continues to be, strategically framed by the fossil fuel industry as a problem of individual choice, as if reducing ones’ own “carbon footprint” is the solution to the climate crisis.¹⁹ While individual choices do play a role in greenhouse gas emissions, this framing obfuscates the limited agency individuals have over their personal carbon footprint when they are embedded in a system that relies on fossil fuels at all levels, due to business and policy decisions far beyond their control.

Another consideration—perhaps obvious, but still worth noting: you can’t just “pull the plug” on carbon. A sudden shut-off of all fossil fuels without a robust, carbon-free energy infrastructure would mean widespread power outages and transportation failures, leading to problems like food shortages, lack of access to medicine, telecommunications, etc. Hence the need for policies that gradually phase out fossil fuel infrastructure and consumption while also building out green alternatives.

Finally, we can draw inspiration from the environmental justice movement, and more specifically, the concept of “just sustainabilities.” This term was popularized by Julian Agyeman over a decade ago in an attempt to reconceptualize “sustainability” to fundamentally integrate considerations of social justice and welfare.²⁰ In practice, this expanded definition calls for the recognition of the humanity of all people, and their right to and role in fostering an environment that supports their wellbeing.

With these examples from decarbonization in mind, any pragmatic technological policy must consider smartphones’ inherent embeddedness in society; the lack of freedom individuals have to “quit” them; and the necessity of solutions that are accessible to all. If we want to develop a sensible approach to the use (or non-use) of smartphones and other integrated forms of digital technology, before we put the onus on the individual, it is necessary to re-envision and redesign the infrastructure and social systems that the individuals are embedded within to begin with. This could entail, for instance, collectively establishing spatial and temporal boundaries on the use of smartphones—both in terms of how they are used, and whether they are used—in certain locations, situations, or moments.

Such a shift will require both a top-down and bottom-up approach. Companies (perhaps compelled by governments) will need to change the way their products are designed and introduce new products and systems that allow people to establish such boundaries. Simultaneously, individuals and communities will need to re-learn and invent new ways of relating to their technology and the culture around it. As with decarbonization, any approach that focuses solely on one side of this spectrum obfuscates agency and stymies change.

And ultimately, it is worth saying—just as smartphones are not cigarettes, the smartphone “crisis” is not the climate crisis. These challenges, however relatable to one another, are distinct, and require unique and creative solutions on all levels of use, policy, and design.

Text and artwork by: Adina

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