I agree that the smartphone has a strong addictive power but so does the internet, alcohol, various drugs ... It wasn't alone in a "source of shifting stressors".

So I think it s difficult for me to be completely convinced on this thesis because they didn't speak about the nearly concomitant 2008 event that in my mind could explain why teenager would fall to addiction. The fact that the smartphone was the new addiction is not irrelevant but it isn't the full explanation.

And likely still is due to the long term ramifications.

With that in mind, I think the worst effects of smartphones/social media/etc are yet to come.

Kids these days broadcast every last embarrassing detail of their lives all over the internet, and smartphones make it possible to do so conveniently from any location, so there's no time to reflect or consider whether it'll come back to bite you. When these kids grow up and realise the extent of the embarrassing (or possibly incriminating) information they've shared about themselves (and how little control they have over that data), it's going to hurt.

Whether smartphones themselves have 'destroyed' a generation is debatable, but the combination of smartphones and social media is certainly going to cause some mental health issues in the future (if it hasn't already).

You might not have been. I certainly was and I know many other people who were doing that and worse. Don't generalise, it's dumb.