I suppose it makes a change from Brexit, obesity and plastic bags. Recent weeks have seen a litany of hand-wringing about the time people spend on their mobile phones. So severe is the apparent crisis that even my colleague, the great and iron-willed Tim Harford, has been chronicling his efforts to shake off the mobile curse.
I am slightly surprised we have not seen this modern calamity captured in heart-tugging news pictures akin to the environmental catastrophe tropes of seals trapped in plastic bags. Perhaps some terrifying pictures of frazzled toddlers clutching Huaweis, or children gazing at their tablets and singing “They’re here”, like the little girl in front of the TV in Poltergeist.
Now, I do not wish to dispute the valid societal concerns raised by the overuse of mobiles, but surely some perspective is needed. This is not an epidemic of homelessness or a flu pandemic. Indeed, it feels rather more like the kind of middle-class moral panic that followed the invention of the television.