The existence of smartphones alone makes life much better than it was 20 years ago.

Strongly disagree. The existence of smartphones has accelerated the development of social media, which negatively impacts people's mental health and children's attention spans. Their popular adoption has also driven the growth of disgusting surveillance ad-tech. Blegh. I'd gladly go back to using a Garmin GPS and carrying a Nokia if it meant that we didn't have all the accompanying garbage.

Sure, I mean, you might be priced out of a home but you can play flappy birds.

So that's something.

You might be interested to know that that phone also gives you access to all the worlds knowledge, all music and art, all literature and films, you can buy anything with it and have it delivered directly to you and you can instantly communicate with anyone in the world multiple ways at almost no cost. And you can play Flappy Birds.

in some ways its worse, the internet has literally made everything more competitive