The New Luddites current favorite hobby horse is the evils of smart phones and all the myriad ways they are destroying civilization as we know it. These people are exceptionally tiresome but they never seem to tire of badgering us with their end-of-the-world warnings.
Rather than repent, I offer the following: according to a study by Lena Edlund and Cecilia Machado, cell phones may be responsible for the dramatic decrease in crime from 1990 to 2000. Well, at least there is a negative correlation between cell phone usage and the homicide rate. Mathematical grownups know that correlation doesn’t imply causation but the paper is suggestive and the reason Edlund and Machado give for correlation appears reasonable.
You might think that that reason is obvious: cell phones make it easier to quickly report crime as it’s happening. But that’s not the reason Edlund and Machado give. They say that cell phones changed the illegal drug trade making it less important for gangs to hold and defend territory. They attribute the fall in homicide rate to a decrease in gang violence.
The paper has received some push back—mainly from people with their own theories of what caused the decline—but its explanation seems more sensible than some of the competing theories such as the rise in abortions.
The cautious reader should always treat studies like these with suspicion. Most of them boil down to “Hey! Look at this correlation.” Still, it’s a pleasant change from the New Luddites’ incessant doom saying.