A great weight sits perched on us. It's called a head. It houses our brain and presents our face to the world. It comprises roughly 10 percent of our body weight. Heavy enough at the best of times, it grows heavier as it inclines forward. Held high, it's a 5.5-kilogram burden on the neck of a person who weighs 55 kg. Bent forward 15 degrees, the burden becomes the equivalent of 12.2 kg; 30 degrees, 18.1 kg; 45 degrees, 22.2 kg; 60 degrees, 27.2 kg.

Lately more and more people are bending farther and farther forward, peering ever more intently into a tiny screen packed solid with ever more irresistable attractions. We are speaking — or rather, the weekly magazine Spa! is speaking — of smartphones. Its package of articles, from which the above data are extracted, is titled "The tragedy of smartphone addiction."

A slouching posture is hardly the worst of it. Smartphone abuse, we are told, rots the brain, dims the eyesight, heightens anxiety, feeds insomnia, dulls thought, trivializes communication, distorts our view of the world with an inundation of false and/or shallow information, takes up ruinous amounts of time, and makes us prey to all kinds of insidious swindles, most notably in the form of PR dressed up as fact.