Jobs’s Atlantic Vilifies Smartphones
Plus, crisis in Venezuela; a “COGE” in New Hampshire, and more
The February 2025 issue of the Atlantic features a big article by Derek Thompson about what the article describes as a solitude epidemic. Instead of restaurants, there’s takeout. Instead of movie theaters, there’s Netflix. “Americans are spending less time with other people than in any other period for which we have trustworthy data, going back to 1965,” the article says. “Self-imposed solitude might just be the most important social fact of the 21st century in America.”
Fascinating to me is what the magazine blames for the phenomenon. In a section of the article called “phonebound,” the author reports, “the 21st century’s most notorious piece of hardware has continued to fuel, and has indeed accelerated, our national anti-social streak. Countless books, articles, and cable-news segments have warned Americans that smartphones can negatively affect mental health and may be especially harmful to adolescents. But the fretful coverage is, if anything, restrained given how greatly these devices have changed our conscious experience.” Thompson reports, “phones aren’t just rewiring adolescence; they’re upending the psychology of friendship as well.”
Thompson even finds a way to blame the solitude—and the phones—for Donald Trump: “Social disconnection also helps explain progressives’ stubborn inability to understand Trump’s appeal. In the fall, one popular Democratic lawn sign read Harris Walz: Obviously. That sentiment, rejected by a majority of voters, indicates a failure to engage with the world as it really is….Too many progressives were mainlining left-wing media in the privacy of their home, oblivious that families down the street were drifting right.”
This article is only the latest in a series of anti-smartphone screeds in the Atlantic. Other pieces include “End the Phone-Based Childhood Now” by Jonathan Haidt (March 2024) and “Get Phones Out of School Now” by Jonathan Haidt (June 2023). While I was at Education Next, we published Doug Lemov’s “Take Away Their Cellphones” (Fall 2022), so I understand and am somewhat sympathetic to the argument, at least as it refers to children in school.
Yet what’s unremarked on is that the Atlantic is basically owned by Laurene Powell Jobs, who made her fortune from (the “Jobs” part is a hint) being married to Apple’s Steve Jobs, the father of the iPhone. I don’t have a sense of how closely, if at all, she gets involved in the editorial decisions, or if she agrees with the coverage of “the 21st century’s most notorious piece of hardware.” It’d sure be something if Powell Jobs’ guilt over her iPhone-based fortune were somehow driving the Atlantic coverage, like the Rockefeller Standard Oil heirs trying to ban fossil fuels, or Abigail Disney campaigning against inherited wealth. It could also be a case of the Atlantic staff trying to test the boundaries with the ownership. Either way, it’s something to see a magazine financed by an iPhone fortune campaigning so hard against smartphones. There may be other more significant causes of the solitude—everything from the decline of religion and marriage to the Covid-era public health restrictions—but those may be less easy targets for Atlantic readers.
There are starting to be a few lawsuits trying to turn smartphones into a tobacco-like target for the negative mental health effects. If they progress, it could be something to have the lawyers try to enter, as evidence, articles from Laurene Powell Jobs’s magazine.
My own pick for the 21st century’s most notorious piece of hardware would be the planes the Al Qaeda guys flew into the twin towers and the Pentagon, but the century is young. The comment section is open to paying subscribers with other nominations (the Iranian centrifuges? Whatever leaked in the Wuhan lab?)
A brazen kidnapping in Venezuela: Members of Congress are raising the alarm about a kidnapping this week in Venezuela with political implications.
Senators Booker, Shaheen, Kaine, Cornyn, Bennet, Schatz, Merkley, Durbin, and Duckworth issued a statement about the event:
“In July, the Venezuelan people overwhelmingly elected Edmundo González as the country’s next President. The defeated government of Nicolás Maduro has taken steps since that day to deny the election result and engineer a fraudulent continuation of its regime. To do so, it has imprisoned opposition leaders and issued a bounty for the arrest of Edmundo González, forcing him to flee the country. As the Inauguration Day of January 10 approaches, and González has announced plans to return to Venezuela to claim the Presidency, Rafael Tudares, the son-in-law of González, was kidnapped as he was taking his children to school earlier today. This appears to be a part of a clear pattern of steps to intimidate González from returning to Venezuela to accept the mandate of Venezuelan voters. We condemn this violence, support the right of Venezuelans to choose their own leaders, continue to press Venezuelan election officials to release the polling tallies from the July election and pledge to do all things possible to support human rights in Venezuela and impose consequences on those who violate the rights of their citizens.”
Senator Rick Scott of Florida posted on social media: “This morning, while President-Elect @EdmundoGU was in D.C., Maduro’s thugs kidnapped his son-in-law, Rafael Tudares. It’s in Nicolás Maduro’s best interest to END his brutal persecution and oppression and return Rafael right now! The world is watching closely, and every step he takes against the people of Venezuela and their duly elected leadership will have strong repercussions.”
The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation also called for the release of Tudares: “This brazen kidnapping is yet another reminder that the Venezuelan people are being held hostage by a dictator who will do anything to stay in power,” said the group’s CEO, Eric Patterson. “The Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation condemns this brutal act of repression by the Maduro regime and calls for the immediate release of Rafael Tudares, and all other political prisoners currently being held in Venezuela.”
There are some hopes that Trump will take a harder line against Maduro than Biden did. Western Hemisphere Subcommittee Chairwoman María Elvira Salazar, a Republican of Florida, issued a joint statement today with House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast, who is also a Florida Republican, about what they described as “the anti-Maduro regime protests taking place in Venezuela and around the world on January 9, ahead of Edmundo González Urrutia’s planned inauguration on January 10.” Salazar and Mast said: “Today, America stands with María Corina Machado as she leads millions of Venezuelans in protest against the brutal, Chavista regime of Nicolás Maduro. As Edmundo González prepares to return to Venezuela, we warn Maduro and his thugs the United States is watching and, like Venezuela, it will be under new and stronger leadership soon. When President Trump takes office the days of appeasement are over.” We shall see; Machado was reportedly detained today by Maduro, so for all the talk of Russia, Ukraine, China, and Iran, the sleeper foreign policy crisis confronting Trump on day one might just be the one in Venezuela. It has oil, it can send refugees, and Iran has been making inroads there, too, so there are plenty of reasons to pay attention.
Build on Federal Land: The Trump administration “should focus on identifying federal parcels of land within or adjacent to metropolitan areas that could be transformed into housing,” a professor at the University of Chicago, Michael Albertus, recommends in a Bloomberg opinion article. “Federal land transfers to local governments for specific development projects can skirt some of these controversies. If done right, such transfers could be an important piece in solving America’s housing crisis, while at the same time injecting more economic dynamism in some of the most attractive places to live.”
Albertus links to a 2022 report by Republicans on the Joint Economic Committee, including Senator Mike Lee of Utah, on “addressing the national housing shortage by building on federal land.”
It sounds promising, though it would also help simultaneously to ease barriers to building on land that is now privately held. Trump, himself a real estate developer, has sometimes sent mixed signals on that; for a while in 2020 he was campaigning with the accusation that the Democrats “want to destroy our suburbs.”
Recent work: “Gaza 70-Degree ‘Cold’ Chills Media Curiosity as New York Times Depicts Israel as Baby Killer” is the headline over my latest piece for the Algemeiner.
“You wouldn’t know it from the press coverage, but infants also do die for reasons other than cold or Israeli bombardment. In New York City in 2021, 400 infants died before their first birthday, for causes including respiratory distress, infections, cardiovascular disorders, sudden infant death syndrome, and congenital malformations. The Times has paid those New York City deaths less attention than the ones in Gaza, perhaps because they don’t provide as ready an opportunity to vilify the Jewish state.” Check out the whole thing over at the Algemeiner if you are so inclined.
Biden’s lame-duck antisemitism settlements: The chairman of the House Education and Workforce Committee, Tim Walberg, Republican of Michigan, is faulting the Biden administration for hastily settling antisemitism complaints against universities in the waning days of the administration. “It’s disgraceful that in the final days of the Biden-Harris administration, the Department of Education is letting universities, including Rutgers, five University of California system campuses including UCLA, and Johns Hopkins, off the hook for their failures to address campus antisemitism. The toothless agreements shield schools from real accountability. The Trump administration should closely examine these agreements and explore options to impose real consequences on schools, which could include giving complainants the opportunity to appeal these weak settlements. And certainly, no more complaints should be settled before President Trump takes office,” Walberg said. “These so-called resolutions utterly fail to resolve the civil rights complaints they purport to address. The Department is shamefully abandoning its obligation to protect Jewish students, faculty, and staff and undermining the incoming administration.”
A “COGE” for New Hampshire: New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte’s first executive order is to create a “COGE,” a commission on government efficiency, modeled on the Trump-Musk-Ramaswamy “DOGE.”
“I am proud to launch the Commission on Government Efficiency today and appoint two of the smartest business guys I know, Governor Craig Benson and Andy Crews, to lead it. COGE will put proposals on my desk to streamline government, cut spending, and ensure we’re doing everything we can to create value for taxpayers. Most importantly, COGE will help us do all of this while honoring our unbreakable commitment to provide for our most vulnerable citizens who depend on the services our state government provides. Together, we will ensure our government runs as efficiently and effectively as possible for all of New Hampshire,” she said.
Ayotte’s inaugural address took a swipe at the state’s southern neighbor: “You heard me talk a lot about Massachusetts on the campaign trail, and the reason I did is because it is a cautionary tale. Look at the out-of-control spending, tax hikes, illegal immigrant crisis, people and businesses leaving in droves — what is normal today in Massachusetts wasn't always this way. Year after year, their model of higher taxes and more government has made it harder to run a small business and harder for families to make ends meet.” She added, “To the businesses of Massachusetts, we'd love to have you bring your talents to the Granite State. Reach out to us – we're happy to show you why it's better here.”
Her whole inaugural address is worth a quick look. “We're #1 for…Freedom, Opportunity.”
“National Day of Mourning”: It seems excessive, and somewhat arbitrary, to close the stock market and the post office for the funeral of President Carter.
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It would be interesting to know what percent of Laurene Powell Jobs' wealth remains in Apple stock.