When we talk about how smartphones change the way we relate to each other, we’re talking about more than just the ability to call and text on the same device.
While those are — generally — the two primary functions of how smartphone users connect to each other (besides social media), the hopelessly bad Motorola Razr flip phones could perform those same functions and did not come close to commanding the same addictive power our current phones now possess.
More than those functions, smartphones are different because they combine 15 to 20 different functions into an incredibly small space and therefore offer a level of convenience no flip phone could hope to achieve. The axiom of American technoconsumerism is "convienence above all" and the smartphones phemonemon goes a long way to cememt that as the 21st century's greatest truism.
Their domination over us also stems from the number of psychic pleasure feedback systems they offer that our brains find inherently fun to play around in.
Message notifications have the adrenaline rush of a small, easily solvable mystery (What will this Snapchat say?) and reinforce the comforting notion that our friends are thinking about us or mentioning us on Twitter.
This is how the smartphone actually affects its possessor. It subtly and intentionally inspires an addictive relationship with a mixture of convenience and insidious pleasure-feedback.
However, it does not qualitatively change, let alone diminish, the nature of social interaction between human beings. Smartphones privilege certain forms of socializing (texting, calling, email) over others (physical interaction, letter writing, postcards, etc.), but it is important to point out that all of these technologies existed before everyone had a smartphone and none are made obsolete because of them.
The problem with smartphones lies in the addictive relationship itself, not in the avenues it provides for social interaction.
It’s true: smartphones probably do discourage face-to-face interaction to some extent. There’s little reason to meet someone person-to-person for a business meeting if a quick email sent from your iPhone could do the same job. There’s no need to drive to a friend’s apartment late at night to ask a question about an upcoming test when a text would do just fine.
But social interaction through a smartphone isn’t necessarily an inferior social experience. You forfeit some benefits by calling a person instead of meeting with them — facial expressions, physical contact, presence — but you also gain something as well: a greater focus on the lilt of someone else’s voice, the illusion that you have the other person's complete attention (The disembodied voice is talking to you and you alone.) and the power to immediately end a conversation.
Other examples: the act of reading a good book is, in some sense, a social interaction between reader and writer. David Foster Wallace was a great writer and a lucid, if bumbling, conversationalist. He needed time in order to put his best thoughts in the best order. There was a reason that his primary chosen form of human interaction was writing: “You give me 24 hours in a room,” he once said “…[t]hen I can be really, really smart.”
Communication through the written word like writing or texting, as opposed to physical interaction, gives you the luxury to choose your words more carefully. Unlike speech, the written (or texted) word does not reflect the amount of time put into it. Long text-chains actually gives the user more time to consider what and how to communicate an idea, a medium for which smartphones are suited.
There are irreplaceable aspects of physical interaction that smartphones discourage through their massive powers of convenience. Seeing someone laugh (buckling back, hands-on-stomach, head arched) at a joke is infinitely more rewarding than hearing it over the phone or, worse, seeing the never-quite-sure-if-sarcastic “lol” pop up in a text message.
But that does not mean that we are hurting our ability to interact socially when we use our smartphones; we are simply directing that social drive through modern means.