Hemingway could have, if he wanted to, spent half the afternoon writing reviews of his favorite bars. You don't need Yelp for that. Just like Picasso could have spent his time taking pictures of food or whatever the author imagines people do with Snapchat.
This all seems more like an excuse. "I could be Hemingway if only that dastardly Yelp weren't distracting me all the time!". Yelp isn't the one to blame here.
The 1800s called and would like their willpower moralizing argument back.
Less snidely, ignoring the context in which actions take place is not reasonable. We are immensely shaped by the environment that we are a part of.
The trickier question of how to balance such realizations with the concept of individual responsibility? It seems the jury is still out on that one. My guess is that the most productive efforts will be those that produce better outcomes from a systemic perspective, through more harmonious alignment of underlying incentives and a developing understanding of human nature.
Also, both Picasso and Hemingway spent lots of time socializing, especially with other artists. At the most distilled level, that's what people use all this new-fangled technology for.
Did you read the article? The author addresses and counters this notion that digital socializing brings us together.
See, you've put all of your spiritual and ethical eggs in to your technologic worship so you are completely closed off to the notion that smartphones might actually be really horrible. You're basically just defending your own thinly veiled insecurities about how you give your own life meaning.
Woah, calm down - I was just expanding on the single comment I replied to.
I'm an old fogey who isn't young or cool enough to have all my eggs in that basket. My eggs are far more in the sitting-around-reading-books-and-newspapers and hiking-in-the-mountains baskets.
But I do think this hysteria is pretty overblown, as your comment demonstrates.
This all seems more like an excuse. "I could be Hemingway if only that dastardly Yelp weren't distracting me all the time!". Yelp isn't the one to blame here.